It’s been a long time coming, but this week finally sees Sydney’s The Electorate releasing their debut single, ‘If I Knew’, with its picturesque video arriving today.
If you’ve had your eyes firmly fixed upon the Sydney live scene over the years, then The Electorate won’t exactly be new to you. Having started life back in the day as The Templebears, the group recorded a handful releases in the early ’90s before splitting up after a few years together.
Its members soon went on to perform in a number of well-known bands over the coming years, including the likes of Big Heavy Stuff, The Apartments, Knievel, Atticus, Reality Instructors, and Imperial Broads. Following a one-off reunion in 2010, this reformation appeared to stick, and the group continued playing sporadically until 2019, when they played their last show under the Templebears name.
Emerging from the ashes as The Electorate, the trio of Eliot Fish, Nick Kennedy, and Josh Morris have been hard at work on their debut album, with You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost set for release in the near future.
To give fans a taster of what to expect, the group are set to share ‘If I Knew’ as the first single from the record this week, with its accompanying music video ready for a sneak peek.
“If I Knew was the last song recorded for the album – something we’d waited a long time to do,” Morris explains.
“We’d ripped the song apart the week before we recorded it, so it was still fresh, and frantic when we did. Each take got us closer to the song being right, but the end of the three of us recording our debut. Do we keep getting it wrong so we can keep having fun?”
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Recorded with former Knievel member Tim Kevin at his Tempe River Studios, the track lyrically references the likes of Fugazi and Built To Spill, while its video helps to put the whole thing into context.
While Morris is himself a photographer outside of the band, he decided to use this era of COVID-19 downtime to accumulate some new abilities, learning some video editing skills and combining footage of a south coast beachside holiday and footage shot from the window of a Mexican bus ride to create to the clip for ‘If I Knew’.
“A few years ago I was getting around Mexico on a bus, and the landscapes outside my window were blowing my brain,” Morris explains. “I started to photograph them with an old Canon camera that had a a shutter as loud as a hammer on an anvil.
“I was asked to stop taking stills, so I started shooting video instead – something I’d always steered clear of. As the bus got closer to our destination – Oaxaca – a beautiful city in a picturesque valley, I just must marvelled at all the changes in texture, light and colour, and knew that at some point I’d have to do something with the footage.”
A mesmerising taster of what is to come for the group, The Electorate’s ‘If I Knew’ is officially out on Friday, May 15th, but you can give it a preview below.
Check out ‘If I Knew’ by The Electorate:
