Sydney five-piece The Sunday Estate have today released their latest EP, When You Get Home.
The band has the knack of writing cracking rock songs with strong melodies, great guitars and catchy choruses. They tend to be written about themes and topics to which we can all relate, making them readily accessible.
Of the tracks on the album lead vocalist Conor O’Reilly says “A lot of the lyrical content and themes of the songs here deal with distance from friends, loved ones, or family. ‘Home’ in this title represents the places we want to be, and the idealism behind the destination we thought we would have reached. The Journey might not be over, but when we get there, we’ll make sure to let the people we care about know we made it”
To celebrate the release of the EP, The Sunday Estate have written a track-by-track breakdown for us. So do hit play and discover the inspiration and background to each of the tracks.
When You Get Home – Track By Track
“Fight Me”
Fight Me is about desperately trying to keep relationships alive in the most dire parts of them; something we all probably relate to on some level, or in some circumstance. The song is trying to capture that sense of giving everything you’ve got to a relationship — with a friend, partner, family or anyone.
“Bike Thief”
This was a really fun song to do and I think you can hear it in the recording. It all seemed to come together pretty naturally and we actually felt confident about using lots of guitars. Lyrically I’m trying to balance the hyper-drama of when you have a fight with a friend with the mundane-ness of those situations. So we ended up with this lone-star country vibe or something like that but also with some lyrics about tension at a café over coffee.
“Pray For Rain”
Pray for Rain is kind of both optimism and nihilism. I was trying to capture a conflicting feeling — kind of both being resigned to all the ways in which the world is falling apart but also the way that it’s somehow invigorating and can kind of light a fire under you. It also takes a few lyrics from a couple of lyrics from other songs (not naming names) and flips them on their head to capture that feeling.
“Monday”
Monday is a straight-up love song with the twist of it being about routine and minutiae in a relationship: falling asleep whilst watching TV, cooking breakfast and having inconsequential arguments. I definitely believe more and more that good relationships are good because you put work into them and in a way this song is about those day to day realities.
“We Were Kids”
Another song about the trials of getting older! Growing apart from close friends is an interesting thing because often there’s no real big break, more just a kind of murky feeling of slowly drifting apart, which to me is more difficult — it feels more avoidable but also more unrevertable. With We Were Kids I wanted to really lean into those bittersweet feelings that come with past love/friendship.
“When You Get Home”
The title of the EP comes from a lyric in “Monday”. A lot of the songs have a bit of a liminal kind of vibe to them and if there’s any real theme that emerges it’s being between places – hence the road in the artwork. A lot of the lyrics are about distance from friends, and also trying to cover that distance by thinking about them in a kind of nostalgic way though that doesn’t ever really bridge that gap. The ‘home’ in the title represents things we want, but most of the lyrics are also set in homes, which came from a lot of us getting older and now renting houses and dealing with a lot of associated stresses that can make homes really tense: expensive bills, stuff not working properly, and always bouncing between competing commitments.
You can keep up to date with The Sunday Estate on Facebook, Bandcamp and Instagram
Header image credit: Maclay Heriot
