CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 089: PACIFIC AVENUE
Pacific Avenue are back with some new music, releasing their new single ‘Leaving for London’ in late August off the back of performing a successful tour supporting One Direction alumni Louis Tomlinson. The band are also preparing to launch their first full-length album soon with their new label BMG. Patrick spoke with Harry O’Brien and Dom Littrich of the band to discuss their recent tour and their new music!
FMM: I’m a big fan of the new song ‘Leaving for London’ but I’m not the only one. After a week it’s already achieved over 40,000 streams on Spotify. This must be pretty exciting to see.
Harry: It’s lovely, it’s good to be putting more music out again.
FMM: When a new song of yours comes out, are you a little nervous about what the reaction might be? Especially when obviously you want it to be a success.
Dom: Yeah I guess a lot of the songs – especially the whole process of releasing a song – it is such a process and you spend time on it and you’re playing it over and over again. You start to question – is this actually any good? But when you actually get it out there and see the reaction it’s pretty insane. It feels so nice to have something you’re proud of, then other people react to it as well. With this last release it’s just been nuts, just how well it’s been received by everyone. It’s cool because on the Spotify artist app you see the plays go up so yeah super stoked.
FMM: Do you take Spotify numbers literally – in terms of an actual success meter for your music, or do you not pay attention to the numbers as much?
Harry: We don’t think about it too much. It could just be mum and dad listening to it a lot of times. So yeah it’s not necessarily always 40,000 people but maybe a couple people just really like it.
FMM: With the song ‘Leaving for London,’ is there a small influence by The Beatles lyrically – of course talking about London and the saying ‘ticket to ride’
Harry: Yeah with the ‘ticket to ride’ bit very much so – maybe not the same meaning as they had but we definitely borrowed that from The Beatles.
FMM: Where’s the idea of the song come from?
Harry: It’s a bit of a love song trope but it’s about loving someone and wanting to be in a relationship with them but at the same time making sure you’re understanding what’s best for them as well. If an opportunity came up for them and that meant going overseas or being somewhere else, it’s about supporting someone through and what can make them the happiest they can be. Even though you might want to stay with them, it’s making sure you put someone before your own wants or needs.
FMM: Your music has a lot of sounds of nostalgia and melancholy. What is it that you’ve done to mould your sound to become like this where you get your listeners to feel a certain way. That’s a goal of music right…to make people feel something?
Dom: I guess with a lot our influences...we love old school rock and roll, ballad-y things. (We like having) a sing-along chorus where people in a room, in a live setting can sing along and feel something in that sense. Harry’s dad listens to a lot of Bruce Springsteen so he drew some inspiration from the Boss. (It’s about) creating something catchy but that also has a lot of meaning to it as well. The lyrics are pretty broad so you can take it for your own purposes and hopefully it latches onto someone’s heartstrings I guess.
FMM: When you talk about your inspirations, do you like to look at some of your favourite artists in terms of how you want your own music to sound?
Harry: Lately I’ve been digging the classic UK Brit-rock sound like the Stones, Oasis. It’s definitely like taking bits and pieces from your favourite people and try to mold that into what you want your music to sound like without being too on-the-nose or stealing anything.
Dom: Working with Chris Collins as a producer, I think he’s had a really good input in creating something that does touch on a lot of those inspirations but keeps creating something that’s our own. (We) recorded on old gear to give it that old school aesthetic.
FMM: You had the chance to recently tour with Louis Tomlinson. What was the experience like, performing shows for his tour?
Harry: Yeah he was really cool. We didn’t get to hang out too much with the first couple of shows because he was flat out with press and running around with interviews. He took us out after the last night on tour and we had a few drinks. It was really nice to get to know him and his team. We were almost scared of the team at the start because they’ve got that real UK kind of banter. But yeah it was really cool, they were all really sweet. It’s something to look up to, to see how professional the shows were. Just start to finish the whole set up was amazing.
FMM: How did the opportunity arise to tour with him?
Harry: He’s good mates with the DMA’s guys and they (suggested) “Oh you should get Pacific Avenue to support if you’re looking for that thing.” He got his managers to hit us up and then we were like ‘yeah for sure, we’d love to be a part of it.’
FMM: You got to play in bigger venues regularly too. It must’ve been unreal playing to these larger audiences.
Dom: Yeah it was insane. Margaret Court (Arena) – it was two nights in a row and the first night was like 7000 people. There was a few moments in the set where I was lost where I was in the songs because I was like ‘holy crap.’ During the song ‘Sally,’ we didn’t tell them to but they all got their phone lights out and they were just waving it. They’re there right from the start because they’ve camped out overnight too so it was chockers. It was the first kind of experience where we’re like ‘holy crap this must be what a real rock star feels like.’ It’s such a responsive crowd where you can do anything (and they’ll scream). I felt so lucky to be a part of that and feel that love and energy on the stage.
FMM: When you’re putting your body of work out you’re obviously proud of it, and you still get a lot of people loving it. But do you sometimes get frustrated if it doesn’t get the attention you feel it deserves?
Harry: Not really. Obviously this is what we want to be doing so we’re going to be sticking to it. Having anyone respond to it is lovely. If there was no one in the crowd we’d still be playing music just to amuse ourselves. I was just saying the other day to the boys that it’s so cool how we can go around the country playing shows and there’s people who you’ve never met before and they’re singing along to songs you wrote in your bedroom. Regardless of how many people are there it’s still pretty amazing to see people want to come out and even be a part of it, it’s lovely. If more people want to come to shows then we’ll just do bigger shows.
FMM: The release of your music is a success alone because it’s all your hard work cultivated into one thing but you also have to look forward as to what comes next. Is this a daunting task as to where your next ideas come from?
Harry: Yeah not really that daunting in terms of what’s coming up. Lately, I’ll kinda start off with a demo idea and bring it to the boys and we’ll take that into the studio with our producer Chris and go from there. It’s never really (daunting), it just kinda happens – we never do anything else anyway.
FMM: Well what did the band get up to during lockdowns?
Dom: We were out of the Sydney area so we hung out at Ben’s place and tried to capitalise on it so we did a 30 day challenge where we did a cover every day for 30 days. It went really well, it boosted socials, we doubled our following on Instagram. I think that was awesome. We actually pulled our finger out and went forward. It was a positive side to a shitty situation.
FMM: You signed with BMG earlier in the year. Has this taken some pressure off when it comes to recording and releasing yourselves?
Harry: Yeah I think so. It used to be that we’d tour and off the back of that if we’d have enough profit we could hopefully go in and try to record another single but yeah they’ve got amazing facilities. We’ve been lucky enough to use their studio a bunch. The business end of this record at the moment we’re doing in there and even just having a bit more creative input as well is really cool. It’s a lovely team.
Dom: Yeah having that cash come through in advance takes a bit of pressure off and you can accelerate your progress so quickly because you have your money there instead of waiting around. It’s been a massive help to be able to take us to that next step and to be able to record this whole album so yeah pretty stoked and happy to be a part of it.
FMM: This is the first full-length album the band is making and under the contract you’ve signed on to make another one as well. You must have a lot of work you’re ready to show the world?
Harry: The first album is pretty much ready to go now, we’re just in the last stages of mixing but I think we’re pretty settled on all the tracks that are gonna be in there. Haven’t got too much in the works on album two yet, we’ll just get this one done first but already excited to get back in the studio and keep it going as soon as we get the other music out.
FMM: Any headline shows coming up soon?
Dom: I don’t think we have any headline ones but it’s more so festival shows heading into the end of the year. We’re doing Lost Paradise New Year’s Eve on the hill and a couple others.