PLTS have been cutting deep into the heart of the human experience for nearly 4 years now. Honing their melancholic yet energetic along the breezy Byron Bay shoreline, the band are making a case for the dominance of rock that ultimately offers a glimmering ray of hope. Their lyrics fly head first into a flurry of emotion whilst their instrumentals strike the perfect balance between swelling chaos and hook-laden sweetness.
“Sometimes you’ve got to bring up things that you don’t want to think about and you’ve got to recite it. It’s quite hard to get to that stage and write about it.
“Sharing that stuff in the first stage and then trying to figure out exactly what you’re trying to say and mean because I struggle to speak exactly what I’m thinking about,” says frontman Kit Bray whilst speaking about the songwriting process that ensued whilst writing their latest single, ‘Maelstrom’.
‘Maelstrom’ is a jangly-yet-distorted take on the very Australian brand of grunge-punk-revival that’s dominated the airwaves for sometime now. It revels in a bittersweet nostalgia and comfort – all wrapped up in a luscious metaphor.
“It kind of takes me away, it’s like the line ‘pull me under water’ kind of symbolises letting yourself go into a situation where that’s okay, whether it’s a relationship or something that you’re really holding back and then just letting yourself go.
“Sometimes you’ve got to bring up things that you don’t want to think about and you’ve got to recite it. It’s quite hard to get to that stage and write about it.
“The water symbolises the situation of letting yourself fall into that, falling into a kind of water and kind of wash yourself and surround yourself with it, immerse yourself in that situation.”
“Most of my songs go quite deep in that area with emotive lyrics and I try and express – when I’m singing, I guess I try and express that emotion and convey it.”
For PLTS, recording the track didn’t come easy – with money, personal health and frustration permeating the process. Luckily, it was the band’s kinship and unconditional reliance on each other that pulled them through in the end.
“You just kind of have to rely on each other to just stay positive. Sometimes, especially when there’s so much money going around, if things don’t work out in the studio the way you planned, it can be really hard to kind of put that negativeness and try to push forward.”
“If someone is feeling more positive, they can bring everyone else up. So, you’ve kind of just got to fall back on everyone else in the band if you’re feeling like that and talk openly about it. I think that’s the biggest thing.”
“We finished our first Sydney show and I went in the studio to complete song and my voice was super weird. I usually just kind of heal fairly quickly and it’s not a problem for me – so that was really challenging for me, doing all those tests and not coming out with a full result.
“Most of my songs go quite deep in that area with emotive lyrics and I try and express – when I’m singing, I guess I try and express that emotion and convey it.”
You’ve kind of got to push forward and keep looking forward and know that you will succeed if you keep staying positive. But it’s very easy to get stuck in that slump.”
Aside from the physical stresses of recording, Bray elucidated the difficulty of opening up and exploring one’s vulnerabilities in writing lyrics, only to then be dissected by a public forum.
“It’s hard sharing that stuff in the first stage and then trying to figure out exactly what you’re trying to say and mean because I struggle to speak exactly what I’m thinking about.
It’s kind of like that’s the end goal, to get it to a live stage because it’s quite therapeutic, expressing yourself on stage. It kind of lets it all out. You can kind of get that emotion right out there and release it from yourself which is quite cool. But getting it to that point, that’s the hardest thing.”
“I like to write about just experiences and personal interactions between people and then emotional kind of sides of things”
Despite being a New Zealand native, Bray looks to the enchanting beachy surrounds of Byron Bay for lyrical inspiration,
“There’s a lot of young people here and there’s a lot of social interactions, so there’s lots of things to write about. And there’s always something kind of happening. It’s a bit of a hub.”
“I like to write about just experiences and personal interactions between people and then emotional kind of sides of things. So, having that kind of hub and there’s always something happening here, it makes that a bit easier to kind of get experiences and for just content to write about, whether it’s about me or other people.
Musically, PLTS are a product of a diverse upbringing of colours and sounds, culminating in their forest fire of inspiration.
“Guy, Harry and Mike – they’re all from a hardcore background but they’ve all played in groups of three or four hardcore bands. They grew up with that from like 12 years old. Harry was touring in a heavy band when he was 13 or 14.”
But I grew up in an isolated place listening to soul music and very more rootsy styles of music, and lots of older kind of music. I kind of got more into heavy rock and started playing more rock bands, things like Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys and stuff in my later teens and then that kind of exploded.”
“It took us so long to figure out what our sound was because of all our different music tastes. We’re all into completely different stuff.”
At the end of the day, it’s all about finding a happy medium for a band with a rich musical background, ready to unleash their force onto the world.
“I write these kinds of soulful songs on the acoustic guitar and then I bring it to the band and they add their background to that and then it melds together to make this weird genre.
It took us so long to figure out what our sound was because of all our different music tastes. We’re all into completely different stuff.
You’ve got to realise you’re working as a team and it’s not your own – it’s not the Kit Bray Band. You’ve got to let everyone have their own two cents and their own input. And that makes it fun because it all goes in a blender and then it comes out as something completely new.”
Watch PLTS ‘Maelstrom’:
