OCEAN GROVE - A Nu Level
Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Monday 25 April 2022
Photo by: Michelle Grace Hunder
One of the better things to come out of a clusterfuck of a year, Flip Phone Fantasy, the sophomore album from Melbourne’s OCEAN GROVE, was a heart-starting slab of nu metal revivalism that would have set mosh pits ablaze if it hadn’t been released in March of 2020. Now, O.G. have unleashed their follow-up, the hook-laden Up in the Air Forever, and are finally set to unleash their party anthems on our stages. SENSE spoke to frontman Dale Tanner…
I feel like, in OCEAN GROVE’s sound, there’s a lot of nostalgia for that kind of early-2000s vibe, even down to the logo, using, I believe, one of the same fonts that was used in Grand Theft Auto … that’s what it reminds me of.
That’s a good point, yeah. I’d never even thought about that … When we created it, my mind went to Converse. That, to me, seemed like the most obvious rip. But, at the end of the day, everyone’s ripping each other. We landed on that and thought, “Yeah, that looks cool – let’s roll with it!” But nah, Grand Theft Auto, that didn’t even come to mind. I’m going to go back and look at it now and see how bang-on-the-money you are.
Congratulations – you’re never not going to be able to see that now. You’re welcome.
[Laughs] Yeah.
I feel like nostalgia for the early 2000s is part of your sound. Am I talking out of my arse here?
No, 100%. When we pretty much set out to, not just write this record, but every album that we’ve put out, it’s been with this idea of acknowledging the fact that we grew up in a very specific time, where I think the world was (and it still is) moving at such a pace that everything was getting exponentially rinsed and disposed of, and waiting for the next thing. And we’re sort of seeing that … attention spans and genres are sort of getting splintered and splintered, and having to go through these changes, just to retain someone’s interest, so quickly now, compared to back in the day. I guess, for us, it not only feels most natural to sort of dip into those influences, but it felt like it deserved to be reintroduced to a brand new generation, and a brand new set of eyes and ears. There was just so much gold there, with the coming of the new millennium, and so much was changing with the technological revolution, unless you were there to experience it … once it was gone, it was like, “is this ever going to get the light of day again?” There’s so much gold there, that it deserves to sort of live on. I think we’re seeing that in ways, with the revival of the pop-punk kind of realm … the YUNGBLUDs and all that, that are reviving these themes and these sounds of the early 2000s and things like that. It is 100% intentional that we do tap into these sounds, but it’s always with the understanding that, the way that we found that we could be experimental, was to take all these elements that we are so familiar with because of our own upbringing and our own childhood and the music that we grew up on and loved, but then combine it with modern-age production, modern-age understanding of where the scene was going. That’s not necessarily to follow it, but maybe to provide an antithesis to where it was heading. To get a thrill out of doing something that went against the grain of everything else. For an album like The Rhapsody Tapes, that was taking a lot of elements from the 90s and 2000s and putting a spin on it that meant that no one else at that time had really thought about those sounds for a while. It didn’t even really occur to us that what we were doing was necessarily that new or different. It was just that you could take these elements and create a new combination that felt good to you, and felt inherently original because you had done it, and that set us in stone with how we would approach future releases. Same thing with Flip Phone Fantasy, and now with this release. It felt so good to tap into those elements of nostalgia, and we’ve got that feedback from people who seem to believe that we can do that well. It really feels rewarding to bring [it to] a whole new audience, especially a younger audience, who have maybe never been exposed to a lot of these sounds, and bring it back to life.
Up in the Air Forever is a much less extreme sound than, for example, Black Label. It almost sounds like two different bands. To what extent would you agree with this? Was it intentional, or something that happened organically?
We set out to write this album with the goal in mind that it would be a super-succinct, very punch-in-the-face, no filler all killer [record] – that was the intention. That was one thing we set out to do. It was like, “OK, we want this to be, front-to-back, no messing around,” because, in the past, we have probably fallen short in trying to fit so many things in, that there has been no [single] intention for the album. And that’s been great, because it has offered so many different flavours of what we’ve been able to do, and people have enjoyed it for that fact, but I think with this album, it was like, OK, we want to present something that’s super-positive, super-inspiring. Positive mental attitude is so central and core to the messaging behind this album, because we wrote it in the midst of the pandemic, and we wanted to write something that would lift us out of this depression that we were feeling … I think it really reflects that real yearning, and scraping ourselves out of the abyss of what we were going through, to create something that was super-positive on the other side of that. It felt really, really good. That’s something that I want to be so clear to our fans and our listeners. This record might not be as heavy-hitting or as extreme, but I think it’s a lot more mature and honed-in when it comes to lyrics and an overall sonic direction and the production and everything. I think there is a lot more clarity and intention with this record than there has been with anything else that we’ve released up until this point. That is something that I’m super excited about and super proud of, because it’s not to say that we can’t ever tap back into those older sounds ever again. This was just our first chance to really give one idea its full time of day. I think we’ve been able to execute that with this album. I know that it will hopefully provide inspiration to others who listen to it to, and they can walk away thinking, “I can put this on, and no matter what the circumstance … it can change my whole outlook on my day, on my week, on my life,” and that’s massive for OCEAN GROVE.
I really agree with that. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to quote myself from the review I did, but I described the opening Flava and pretty much the entire album as “the world’s heaviest sunny day.” It’s these massive riffs but these tinkling synths and stuff, and it just reminds me of being at the beach or being at a party … I can seriously imagine someone cutting together motocross videos to this. You remember Crusty Demons of Dirt?
Oh man, yeah! We’ve been copping that for years. I don’t say “copping that” in a negative sense … In my mind, when I think, “What have people put OCEAN GROVE’s music to the most?” I would think motocross videos. For some reason, it just matches up – that high-octane energy that we can’t wait to translate into a live sense, because that’s what these songs are really built for … I think anyone who caught on and started using it in their motorbike videos, I’m like, “Yeah, they get it!”
If you could put together a dream tour of Australian bands, who would it be, and why?
It’s pretty far-fetched, but if we were to somehow tour with KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD … and then … maybe AMYL & THE SNIFFERS? I’m just thinking what could potentially happen. We’ve done this song with DUNE RATS [Bored], and I’m excited for the day when we could tour with those guys. I think a DUNE RATS/OCEAN GROVE tour in and of itself would be so much fun. That’s such a hard question though. Even when it comes to our own headliners, selecting supports, there’s like so many complicating factors that go into it, you just go around in circles. Honestly, KING GIZ have been one of my favourite bands for years now, and they’re just killing it, and I think that would be such an extraordinary band to go on tour with. AMYL are just smashing it as well. I think that would be pretty good.
OCEAN GROVE’s national tour starts in May. Tickets available here.
Up in the Air Forever is out now on UNFD.
Pictured: OCEAN GROVE L-R Dale Tanner, Sam Bassal + Twiggy Hunter
Photo by: Michelle Grace Hunder