HARRY HOOK IS REAL

Upon initially seeing the title, one cannot ignore it – an approach strategically employed by Harry. But the hippos that were once introduced to South America by Pablo Escobar, and have now become naturalised to their environment, may not be widely known information.

“Escobar, at the height of his powers, wanted to have an African safari on his property in Colombia,” Harry says. “He ordered three hippos from Africa, probably paid for in cash, and he had them on his property. They took to the climate and landscape naturally and now there is about 150 or so naturalized hippos in Colombia throughout the river systems.

So why the unlikely inspiration?

“It all comes down to a conversation I had up on the Gold Coast on a family holiday,” says Harry. “There was this guy that came into the sauna I was in, fully tatted up, really solid in his build, kind of like a professional wrestler looking dude. I asked him what he did, and he was really frank. He was a Comanchero guy who is involved in the cocaine importation business.”

Harry’s influences remain rather unique. Irrespective of whether you love or loathe his new single, Harry Hook Is Real is a devotee to story-telling.

“People will either connect with it or hate it,” says Harry. “Either way I want to make something you can’t ignore, that is my philosophy. I spent a lot of time and effort crafting this song and I get that it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t want to make it something that is ignorable.”

Yet despite Harry spending great lengths of energy and time moulding this new single, he’s honest and true to his approach, maintaining an instinctive and intuitive drive to write music, all the while understanding that the meaning of a song may not reveal itself until a significant amount of time has elapsed.

“Sometimes the meaning of songs come to me at certain gigs,” says Harry. “Sometimes there is a gestation period to certain songs. I knew it had to be a certain way at a time - which comes down to intuition - but playing songs again and again, the meaning reveals itself more.”

Harry likens this experience to what may be involved with the processing of a dream, a drawn-out period that requires integration.

“You have a dream,” says Harry. “Then over time and with enough distance, they’re easy enough to decipher, but the morning after they can be a complete enigma.”

Relating to songwriting in an intuitive way has meant that his upcoming album has needed time to develop.

“I’ve always wanted to make a proper acoustic album,” says Harry. “I’ve gigged more acoustically than anything else so I really wanted to capture that in a record, but I wanted to wait until I had the material that was good enough to carry that.”

Allowing time to construct the writing of the songs for the forthcoming album has also allowed Harry to sculpt the album into an LP or record that is traditional rather than simply a collection of songs.

“I know that making an album is a bit of a dying art nowadays,” says Harry. “But I still believe in the form and I think that you can really get to know an artist by listening to a whole album. I want this to be a definite album project as all these songs were recorded in the same place at a similar time, kind of like a record in that traditional sense.”

You can listen to Cocaine Hippos and watch the music video created by Rachel Lucas, who also directed the clip for Jackie by Blue Zone on all major streaming services.

Harry Hook Is Real is playing the Wesley Anne on Friday May 12, the day the album is set to be released. This article was made in partnership with Harry Hook.

Pale Waves

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The beauty in all of these seismic shifts is that Pale Waves have always sounded exactly like Pale Waves. Something that Baron-Gracie claims is front of mind during the band’s creative process.

“Half of our creative process is strategic, but the other half is us embracing the sounds we want to explore more and more. You learn what feels right and good, and that influences the next record.” focus music, but since I was a teenager, I feel like I’ve had a lot of pop-punk influences that have grown into me; it’s just naturally there.”

Unwanted is Pale Wave’s heaviest record to date, something Heather claims is a lot more fun in a live setting for both the band and the audience.

Heather and her crew are currently preparing for their second Australian visit after their first in 2018, which begins on March 18th at the Super Fun Day festival in Brisbane. From there, they play in Adelaide on the 19th, Perth on the 21st, and then they will make their way down to Melbourne for a show at Max Watts on March 23rd. They will finish their Australain tour with a show on March 24th at Sydney’s Metro Theatre.

“Australia is such a long way away, we’ve only been once, so we really want to put on the best shows we possibly can,” says Heather.

The Australian tour also happens to be the very first live appearance for Pale Waves in 2023, and the band will be bringing locals Teenage Joans and Selfish Sons along for the ride. Post-Australian tour, the group will spend the rest of the year on the festival circuit in Europe before getting back to the studio for album number four.

“We have a very busy summer, but hopefully, we’ll be releasing new music this year. It will probably be singles, maybe even an album; it depends on how fast it goes.”

Despite being born in 1995, Pale Waves frontwoman Heather Baron-Gracie has the unique skill of being able to capture the sound of a specific era while giving it a modern sheen. When the band, filled out by guitarist Hugo Silvani, bassist Charlie Wood and drummer Ciara Doran, released their first single, There’s a Honey, in 2017, they quickly gained a legion of fans who loved their modern take on the sound of the ’80s.

This sound continued through the Manchester group’s debut EP All the Things I Never Said and first full-length album, My Mind Makes Noises, before they switched things up and moved forward a decade to the ’90s with their second release, Who Am I?

Now, with the brand-new record Unwanted, the shift has moved another ten years to Y2K pop-punk reminiscent of an early Avril Lavigne.

“We really had fun with the heaviness of the last album, so that will carry over to our next record because we know that it works. We also know that we need to keep some aspects of what Pale Waves have always had; we couldn’t just release an acoustic folk record. It might not go down very well, so we try to keep certain things that have always been prominent in our world.”

Heather discusses the process of capturing the sound of an era so well. For the first two records, the Pale Waves stereo was filled with albums from the 80s and 90s to capture and instil the feel of those periods in the band’s minds. However, the latest record didn’t require as much research.

“I was actually listening to a lot of

It’s too early for the sound of the era of this album to be revealed, and there aren’t too many places left to go if the band are working chronologically. I jokingly suggest they possibly try 50s swing music?

“Haha, let’s really shock them,” laughs Heather, “I’ll start digging out some old records right now.” Based on their track record, Pale Waves would probably nail this ridiculous concept if they did attempt it.

Pale Waves are playing Max Watt’s on Thursday, March 23.