Hailing from Melbourne, Aussie rockers Slowly Slowly have been making waves in the music scene for almost ten years. They’ve played a multitude of festivals, supported titans like Red Hot Chilli Peppers and have charted twice on Triple J’s Hottest 100, with their 2019 single “Jellyfish” coming in at #57. Today, they release their fifth studio album Forgiving Spree – another massive achievement and surely a milestone in the bands’ history. Forgiving Spree is Slowly Slowly as you know and love them, but with a slightly more classic-rock approach, and with five of the nine tracks on the album being released prior it dropping, it’s clear that listeners are loving it already. Catching up via zoom with lead vocalist Ben Stewart is always a pleasure, and this time we got to delve deep into the album and the inspirations behind it.
Reflecting on their 2022 record Daisy Chain and the journey from then to now, Stewart says, “We were trying on a lot of different musical hats and trying to find some new sonic territory that felt like us… We tried heaps of stuff on Daisy Chain and got a lot more confident, and then Forgiving Spree was a very natural record in how it came to be. It’s a bit more confident and comfortable in our skin. Everything’s ben quite effortless, from the recording to the video clips. We’re just a bit less concerned with what other people think.”
“With Daisy Chain, we were maybe trying to run away from being conventional in every aspect” Stewart shares on the sound evolution between Daisy Chain and Forgiving Spree, “but this felt a bit- I don’t know, we were able to lean into the concept of being a four-piece rock band and it wasn’t something we shied away from this time around. It definitely is probably more of a rock record, I think. Even though we have traversed different sonic territories, we have that same sort of rock aggression when we play and because this album was really built for playing live it fell into that bracket a little more.”
While Slowly Slowly have been busy making their best record yet and touring, Stewart also had a huge year releasing his debut solo album Pushing Daylight, which also saw him play a one-off intimate headline show at The Forum. He also released a poetry book featuring lyrics and poems from both released and unreleased tracks. Discussing how his solo creative work influenced Forgiving Spree, Stewart shared, “I really wanted this next Slowly record to be no fat and just straight to the point, and so being able to do all that other stuff just meant that I could really retain a sense of being well-rounded. Art comes in all shapes and forms and I kind of like celebrating all the ugly warts and all parts of music too where you’re not writing songs that are hits or for the radio, and you’re just writing for the sake of writing. Having this solo project is so lovely because I get to just show everything, but it gave me more space for Slowly to just be able to concentrate and to cut songs as well. I was brutal, I wrote so many songs and was able to just kill them.”
Listening to the record, “Hurricane” is a track that stood out to me immediately. It’s so open and honest, and gives us such a deeply personal look into the singer’s life and relationship with his wife, sharing about the joy of finding out they were pregnant to the devastating grief of pregnancy loss. “For a long time, I didn’t want to write about the topic because I didn’t want to cheapen it.” Stewart opens up on the subject, sharing, “when you have these artist projects that are semi-autobiographical there’s this little voice that’s like, ‘oh, maybe you should write about it, it’ll make you feel better’, but with some of the really weighted things that have happened in my life I really just don’t want to. I fight it for so long, and with that I swam away from it for so long. It was really late in the album process and I needed a concept or something to round it out. I couldn’t put into words what I was feeling, but I was stuck in LA and there was this giant hurricane which was shutting down the whole city, and everyone was freaking out. I was stuck in this tiny little accomodation away from everyone and everything. I had a writing session with an Aussie guy named Lucky West who I clicked with right away, and I think working with Lucky and hearing that Aussie accent, being so far from home, we were like ‘what are we writing about?’ And I just picked up the guitar and went ‘alright, we’re writing about this today’.”
That concept of the hurricane, and feeling still inside while everything is moving so fast around you is one that Stewart is familiar with in more ways than one. Speaking particularly on their experience with miscarriage, Stewart opened up, saying, “I never felt any hesitancy to speak about it, because if anybody has been through miscarriage with a partner you’re really thrust into this crazy series of events where there’s all sorts of weird, strange emotions and grieving things that never existed. The idea that a silly little song that I wrote might help someone in that situation seems like- for the little bit of uncomfortability in having to relay my thoughts and feelings, it’s worth so much more. That’s what art is all about, and I always try to remind myself of that.”
And while there’s been grief, there’s also been joy as Ben and his wife welcomed their daughter into the world last year. “Your work just shrinks when you have a little one. It’s like you’re getting these new experiences all over again because you’re seeing life through the eyes of this little person, and all of a sudden you have a new lease on things, especially with how you perceive things. Their naive curiosity really rubs off on you and you start looking at things the way you did when you were a kid. There’s that, which is really healthy for creativity but at the same time you’re their hero and you want to do whats right by yourself as a guide for them. There’s no room for self-deprecation or wallowing anymore. I just want to be the best version of me for them.”
The closing track on the record, “Born Free” ends with a candid voice memo of an exchange between Stewart and his wife. When asked about the context of the clip, he shared, “That song happened very fast, we were just at home watching television and I was like, ‘I just need to go in the other room’. I went and wrote the song in, like, fifteen minutes and I came back and asked if I could play her the song, and I was going to record it for the sake of having it as a demo and I had my phone in front of me and was about to press record. I played the song and she is often my muse with these things and I can gauge if it’s hitting a nerve with her then it’s on the right track. So I played the song and as I finished I realised I hadn’t pressed record. I pressed it because I thought I was stopping it, but when I looked at her she was bawling and she was like, ‘I went to record you while you were playing it but I couldn’t bring myself to because I didn’t want to wreck it.’ And just by chance I hadn’t recorded it either but I just captured this little moment at the end, the aftermath of it. Sometimes those little moments where you play a demo for the first time can be so magical when you get these little happy accidents. At least this way it remains always magical because it was never captured. It’s almost a mirror to the concept of the song, being a clean slate and coming into the world the same way that you leave it. It just felt so fitting to have this little excerpt at the end and it always just makes me wonder what came before it.”
Chatting with Ben, it’s so clear that Slowly Slowly’s passion for their art runs deep, and this record is one that they are deeply proud of. Forgiving Spree is fun, reflective, happy and sad all at once. It’s Slowly Slowly as you know and love them, but even more so, and it’s out everywhere today.
Forgiving Spree from Slowly Slowly is out now. Grab a copy HERE. You can read Sarah’s review of the album HERE.
