A. Swayze & the Ghosts are bursting onto your afternoon radar.
The Hobart-based rockers have announced their second studio album, Let’s Live a Life Better Than This, set to release on October 25th, alongside a new single.
“He Is Dead” is a spirited punk anthem that grapples with themes of false idols, consumerism, fear of the future, and questioning past ideals.
Frontman Andrew Swayze explains the song’s genesis:
“The lyrics for ‘He Is Dead’ came to me like a bolt from the heavens. I was playing around with a loop I made from one of Ben’s demos that had a guitar progression on top of a LinnDrum groove. I hit record and the entire first verse came out immediately – that’s often how I write lyrics: ad-lib and allow whatever melodies and words bubble out of my subconscious.
“It’s only recently that I’ve allowed myself to keep them rather than overthink it. Interestingly, I’ve found that the meaning of these ramblings often becomes apparent later on in the process. There’s something mystical about that to me.”
The accompanying music video, described as a “best in show meets dystopian Gogglebox episode,” was directed, filmed, and edited by Swayze himself and features Cora the dog.
“We shot the music video in a couple of hours before we had to arrive at a soundcheck. It was still light out, so we had to board up every window in my rental, and Cora kept wandering into the shots as we filmed ourselves watching television,” he reveals.
“The process was actually quite meditative: sitting in silence watching the same nonsense scenes over and over. I suppose that’s exactly what a lot of us spend our time doing throughout our lives, but without the meditation and without noticing.”
Let’s Live a Life Better Than This was written over four years in Melbourne and various secluded spots across Tasmania. Recorded at Sunset Pig Studios, it marks the band’s first self-produced effort and was mixed by Andy Savours (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Rina Sawayama, Arctic Monkeys).
The album features guitar-led, dance-forward tracks infused with unconventional rock elements and explores genres like techno, electro, hardcore, trap, and black metal. The band embraced an ethos of “if it sounds good, don’t question it.”
Across 10 tracks, themes of fear, mental health, trauma, addiction, love, loss, and finding liberation and resolution are explored. Swayze describes the album’s creation as intertwined with a challenging journey of growth.
“We started as a fierce, self-destructive garage-punk band, reeling from their career being derailed by covid, to a thoughtful and artistically liberated group held together by love and respect for one another,” he says.
A. Swayze & the Ghost’s last album, Paid Salvation, was nominated for Best Hard Rock or Heavy Metal Album at the ARIA Awards in 2021.
A. Swayze & the Ghosts’s “He Is Dead” is out now.
