The Bliss is out now!
Image: Cedric Tang
West Australian indie outfit South Summit have treated us with their debut album, The Bliss. To celebrate, the band are taking us through the collection of songs track-by-track.
“Being our first album and putting everything on the table, the meaning behind The Bliss...it’s the diamond in the rough, It’s a story narrating how far we have come; we’re trying to bring that to the table and show everyone our musicianship, while having fun with it,” band member Nemo Reuben shares.
Next year, the five-piece will be hitting the road on a national tour. Kicking off in Brisbane on February 21, the run of shows will continue on to Sydney, Newcastle, Richmond and Adelaide, before wrapping up in Perth on March 8. Tickets are on sale now!
TAKE ME DOWN
Zaya: Listening to that as the first song, we really wanted to leave that impression with the listener that this is the tone of the album. They can see that we’re not mucking around! Usually people will start off with a fast, upbeat song on the album, but we wanted to use it as a statement piece; we’re not gonna come in and give you the fastest, most pop songs straight away. We’re gonna hit you with how we’re feeling.
Nathan: This is also the first track that we wrote for the album. This, for us, signifies the start of the writing process. We wrote it last August; as soon as we wrote this track, we thought this was going to be a good record. That set us up for a really good album session.
Nemo: It definitely sparked the creativity of the album.
Trindall: We also said it was going to be the intro song from the start!
CATACOMBS
Zaya: It’s definitely our little dance tune, but it has a darker meaning behind it as well. Being the second song, it comes straight in having those vocals…and then hits you with the dancing vibe after. Take Me Down takes a little to get into it, so by the time Catacombs comes it’s like, “Now we want to get everyone buzzing and into the album.” My favourite bridge that we wrote is on this track.
Trindall: It’s also one of the poppier tracks on the album, short and sweet. I think it was intended to be short and punchy, that was the brief from the start. We made it pop but still us; it still has that sick vibe to it.
Nathan: Throughout the whole track, there is some sort of singing the whole way through. It was important to hit the fans with a straightforward track early. It’s one of the first songs under three minutes that we’ve ever done. It’s our shortest ever, snappy as fuck track!
EXCEPTIONAL
Nathan: It’s a pretty clean track, hey. We changed this a lot in the studio when we were physically tracking our individual parts. The OG song was a few keys lower, it was a bit slower as well.
Trindall: Our producer recommended that we try to go down a step, for Zaya’s vocals, and it really opened it up. You can hear it in the choruses.
Zaya: The original was so much lower, it was an octave lower in the chorus. A massive inspiration for this chorus was Outkast, the little twang they use. They were a massive inspiration for this song and when we went into the studio, we had that in mind; experimenting with different things. They experimented so much with a lot of their tunes too, so we took that when we went into this. Josh and I made the first recording, the demo; it was cool to dive into different inspirations and then different characters for this song. It was cool.
Nathan: Dave has been awesome, we’ve worked with him since our first proper single. We recorded an EP at the start and it was kinda fly on the wall, but we’ve worked with him for three years now. He understands us and he understands what we want, and how we achieve that. For the album, the process didn’t really change a whole heap from what we’ve done with him in the past. I would say though, that one thing that did change was how we related one song to the next; how we would keep that similar theme to the record. Having a common theme, he helped with that. This was really hip hop referenced, in terms of the production. We didn’t want it to sound like a local indie artist. It’s a sick sound in the Australian scene and we have definitely referenced it in the past, but steering away and doing something new for us was really important.
Fynn: We definitely went more down the road of really not trying to make sound just like a band room. We wanted some more of that hip hop production, where the drums weren’t overly clean.
CURRENTS
Nathan: We had six tracks that were the OG ones we started with. It’s probably one of our favourites to play all together.
Fynn: This was one of the only ones we played live before we recorded it too.
Zaya: We had no lyrics for it, but we played it live! Made lyrics up on the spot. We went to New Zealand for the first time as a band to tour last year, and being our introduction to reggae as well, we wrote this one about going home. Currents being our river back home. All the beauty in that, of going back home. So, little experiences like that we had when we were in New Zealand…we knew we had to write a song about that experience.
Back home, reggae is such a vital part of life, especially in the islands and NZ. Bringing those roots, we knew we had to do it right.
Nemo: It’s the first track that has a reggae feel, coming into the album. In the order of things, it’s the first track that introduces reggae, it’s a cool starter song to have with that sound.
OTTOWAY
Trindall: It’s not easy, there are five strong heads in the band! Musically though, it’s getting the best out of everyone. There is no bias, we’re just trying to help each other out, being honest. We’ve grown now, having been in the studio, we’ve been making music for about four years now. We’ve been learning from each other and feeding off each other. If someone is stuck, there’s always someone you trust there to ask the question, “What do you think about this?” I think that’s the main thing; just being there and being honest for each other. We’ve also learned to cop it on the chin if there’s something you think is good, but the rest of the band doesn’t!
Nemo: This track speaks about that, our differences. Speaking about our home, Perth City, and how we’ve come about. It speaks on this journey we’ve had.
Fynn: The track also completely changed within a day; when it first came in, it was a completely different song.The whole basis of the song wasn’t there. The part of the song that I’d say is probably most recognisable now, was not even there.
Nathan: It was one of those ones that just elevated in the studio. It’s a perfect reference to how we collaborate on this record, and how the songs have changed from the OG ones; as soon as we all get our heads on it, there’s a heap of ideas…10% may be sick, but we have to create a safe environment where we have the honesty to be like, “Let’s try again and work on the next one.” This track really utilised that well and we wound up with a sick track.
HOLY CASCADE
Nathan: This is South Summit at its core. This one is the one that just came together in the studio so easily. Everything was there, everything that we tried was a cool thing we enjoyed playing. A lot of this is instrumental.
Zaya: We had no boundaries on this, we just experimented with it. From our early stuff, what we used to do in South Summit…a lot of our songs went up to the five minute mark, and we didn’t care about anything. Having radio play or putting it into a box to fit this or that; we just had so much fun with it. We didn’t really care.
Nemo: It really suits being the last song of Side A, finishing off strong and having a jam. It explains in a nutshell what we are: South Summit, having a jam.
INTERLUDE
Fynn: This was connected to the song.
Nathan: It was always planned, we always wanted an interlude to start off the flip-side of the record. To bring you into that real slow rising vibe. A lot of our favourite records from other artists have an interlude, and we thought it was a sick idea.
Fynn: Originally, it was going to be the intro to the song Giving It Up – that whole section. It is connected, but we split it up.
Trindall: Giving It Up wasn’t intended to be a single, so we stuck with the idea and thought it was sick. But a six minute single doesn’t really go that well. I’ve always wanted to do an interlude, so it worked perfectly.
Zaya: It’s not as fancy as it sounds, we literally just put a mic in a room, downloaded this app on our phones and walked around the room on our phones, making notes.
Nathan: It sounds like a full orchestra, but it’s us with our phones fucking around, but it turned out the sickest sounds. It’s crazy. We have some sick iPhone footage of us just fucking around!
GIVING IT UP
Nathan: It still feels fresh, it’s a song that everyone likes to hear live as well. There’s definitely a strong reaction when we play it live; it’s our highest streamed song that isn’t River Days. That’s a pretty good feat for us, because ‘River Days’ has been played heaps; we want that one song to take off, but this song is the closest to it.
LET’S RIDE
Nathan: This was born out of a pure South Summit jam.
Fynn: It was always a very cruisy jam. It wasn’t very dynamic, it had the same groove going the whole way; we wanted that for the track as well. We don’t have much of that in our discography, we like to go up and down, but this song is pretty cruisy a lot of the time.
Trindall: The whole song is two chords, so it’s reliant on the dynamics in those choruses, where it calms down heaps and takes a breather. If we didn’t have those two parts, where it’s slowed down and sped up, it would be more obvious. Because we really pushed those two moods, it makes the song feel really good. It’s pretty hard to do a two chord song.
Nathan: Especially to have it feel interesting the whole way through, with the same two chords, but I think we achieved it with this song.
STRIPES
Nathan: This one is a bit of a testament to River Days in a way, it has a similar sound; that slow, chilled out vibe but with a really strong and powerful emotional story behind it. We have this filtered throughout the record, but we don’t have one as raw or as blatantly obvious where that’s the story behind it. We really wanted to lay all the cards on the table with this.
It enters into a new realm, three quarters of the way into the record – which is sick. We start to wind down the album a little bit, and then just kick into the last two tracks.
Fynn: Sonically, it’s interesting. It’s not necessarily the sound we gravitate towards; that and River Days, they’re not necessarily the sounds we listen to. The closest to that, that we would, would be Sam Fender. Other than that, it’s not something we’d generally play a lot. It was interesting to explore that sound.
Nemo: In a nutshell, writing those tunes that pull the heartstrings…having those meaningful songs on the album, it means a lot to people. Having the raw meaning behind the song touches people in a certain way; those tunes are always good to have on the album.
MR MR
Zaya: This one had been in the vault for so long. It’s actually changed heaps; it used to be one of our live songs that we recorded and that we used to play, even before our second EP had come out.
Nathan: It was part of our live repertoire for the last three years, which is crazy when we hear what it has turned into now. Every version is sick in its own right, but we hit a common ground on the one we have at the moment. It’s the fourth out of four reggae tracks on the record, so it brings it home.
Fynn: We’ve had four different versions of this song! It was pretty funny when we finally recorded it, we looked back at the old versions like, “We should have done this…” We still play a heavier version of it live.
Nemo: It was one of those songs that was never recorded and when we’d play it live, people would ask us what the song was that had “mister mister” in it. So we knew we had to put it on this album, otherwise we’d never do it.
WE ARE THE LIONS
Nathan: I think we just wanted a huge ending to cap off the album. We all really like this, so we wanted to end with a really huge track. This one literally soars the whole way; we were all working so hard on this song. It is at the five minute part and has that huge outro – it’s a sick track, we love it. It’s a really fun, enjoyable ending; we don’t really have too many songs that are at this intensity, so to finish off the track at that level is unique.
Fynn: When we first wrote it, we were always saying, “We’re going to play this live at a festival,” it feels like an anthem, or it did when we were recording it. It just drives. This is the album of outros!
The Bliss is out now!
SOUTH SUMMIT TOUR DATES
Friday 21st February Brightside Brisbane, QLD
Saturday 22nd February Oxford Art Factory Sydney, NSW
Sunday 23rd February Over The Ditch Festival Newcastle, NSW
Friday 28th February Corner Hotel Richmond, VIC
Saturday 1st March Jive Bar Adelaide, SA
Saturday 8th March The Rechabite Perth, WA
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