This month, The Pretty Littles are hitting the road with their new album Soft Rock For The Anxious – as their third release, the record is raucous and euphoric. Singles we had heard prior to its release already indicated that the Melbourne group were headed onwards and upwards, but the full record comes together flawlessly.
Speaking with frontman Jack Parsons just prior to the album’s release, he’s already looking ahead to the next. With the band set to take Songs For The Anxious down the east coast through October and November, those shows are most definitely the priority.
“It’s exciting because there’s always new stuff you can start thinking about,” he admits, noting that the album’s original release date had been pushed back. “For whatever reason, it just is the way it is. For a band like us, with no people telling us how to do things or when to release things, it’s still a really long process. Not really long, this one was actually quite short, I think we started recording at the start of the year. It feels like forever, though.”
“I haven’t listened to it for a long time,” he says. “You lose all perspective. It’s cool to be at the end of it because people have really responded to the bits we’d put out so far. We’ve sold tickets to the tour [early] too, which is mental. People have bought stuff!”
Having become a solid favourite on Melbourne’s live scene, The Pretty Littles have continued to extend their reach with live crowds around the country. This upcoming tour will be giving the band the opportunity to further explore territory they haven’t spent much time in, while reconnecting with mates in others.
“Sometimes people come and sometimes they don’t,” Parsons says. “That’s the way it goes. We’ve probably been to Adelaide, say, five times now and that’s pretty cool; Adelaide’s been pretty good to us and the best thing about it is that we’ve got some really nice friends there. It’s always good to hang out with the West Thebarton Brothel Party boys. We’ve never really been to Queensland before, which will be interesting. I suppose we’re going a bit wider and it’ll be interesting to see if people are there for us, who knows? They’re always fun trips anyway, that’s the important thing.”
Making music and being able to develop that into any type of a working career is the dream for any musician, but when you’re in band of mates as tight as The Pretty Littles quite clearly are, those shared experiences have an extra layer of shine to them. Parsons describes the way the band is currently working together and what he’s enjoying most about being on the road.
“I think it’s the same old things,” he says. “It’s really nice playing live and it’s a really good feeling playing those songs well. It’s also a really good feeling having people there who are into it. I think with this record, we’re enjoying playing these songs because we haven’t played them that much and we’re happy with them for the moment.”
“It’s not a huge difference,” he adds. “But there’s definitely been a slight increase in people coming to shows, particularly in Melbourne. We’re enjoying it all at the moment, there’s nothing too outrageous that’s happening and there’s nothing much that has changed but we’re also having great fun as a band.”
An important factor of the band’s continued strive for keeping the creative wheels turning and going through the process time and time again, for Parsons, is the fact that they’ve all got each other to fall back on regardless of what the band is doing.
“I know it sounds silly or whatever,” he says. “We’re all friends first before the band; we’ve noticed lots of bands that started out around the same time as us have started finishing up, which is a shame. That’s fine though, people do move on and it is hard to maintain a band at that level for this long; we just bum around and take what we can get, that’s cool. We get to spend time together, which is sick.”
“I reckon we’ll be able to play gigs forever,” he laughs. “I don’t know in what capacity, but maybe when we all get old we could just play a gig once a year, that’d be fun as. That actually would probably be more fun than what we’re doing now!”
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Soft Rock For The Anxious is out now.
THE PRETTY LITTLES AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
October 22nd | Kennedys Creek Music Festival, VIC
October 28th | Karova Lounge, BALLARAT
October 29th | Northcote Social Club, MELBOURNE
November 3rd | Rad Bar, WOLLONGONG
November 4th | Moonshine, MANLY
November 5th | Brighton Up Bar, SYDNEY
November 11th | Cats @ Rocket Bar, ADELAIDE
November 12th | The Loft, WARRNAMBOOL
November 18th | The Northern, BYRON BAY
November 19th | The Bearded Lady, BRISBANE
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