RAAVE TAPES have announced the upcoming release of their debut album later this year.
The album, set to drop on May 24th, marks a new direction for the Newcastle duo, made up of Joab Eastley and Lindsay O’Connell.
They’ve also shared the album’s third single, “I Just Wanna Be Alone”, an alt-pop track that reveals a softer side to the band’s usual sound. With O’Connell’s sparkling vocals leading the way, the introspective song is all about finding your own bliss, no strings attached.
“There’s not much that the title doesn’t address with ‘I Just Want to be Alone’,” says O’Connell,. It’s a song born out of the cycle of mid-20s dating, figuring out how to spend time by yourself and most of all, being comfortable in your own skin.
“There is something quite special about a pop anthem you can sing in the mirror to reaffirm all of the self improvement beliefs, from ‘You never wrote back/I didn’t mind at all’ to ‘I don’t want to be something that I’m not’.”
“I Just Wanna Be Alone” follows the album’s explosive second single “k hi“, released earlier this year.
The album was produced, recorded and co-written by Fletcher Matthews (Dear Seattle, Trophy Eyes, The Buoys), who has worked closely with the band for a number of years.
“We went into this album with a completely blank slate, and no preconceived notions of what it was going to sound like,” says Eastley.
“We wanted to create a body of work that fully captured the new direction we’ve been edging toward for the last few years. We’ve been working with our producer Fletch for so long now that we didn’t really need to fully discuss the direction of the record or a game plan, we just went to work in the time we had.
“We had our workflow down and a shared vision – which made bouncing ideas around so much easier when you’re all pulling in the same direction from the get go. Like a well oiled machine, except the oil was caffeine and very very late nights.”
RAAVE TAPES have had a busy start to the year with recent appearances at BIGSOUND, SXSW, Laneway Festival, and Brisbane’s Mountain Goat Valley Crawl. They’re keeping the momentum going with upcoming shows supporting STUMPS alongside The Tullamarines next month (full tour info here).
RAAVE TAPES’s “I Just Wanna Be Alone” is out now.
