After the success of Backyard, Floodlights (Louis Parsons, Ashlee Kehoe, Joe Draffen and Archie Shannon) headed to Head Gap Studios in Melbourne with Nao Anzai to record their debut full-length, From a View. Again released with Spunk! Records, the album takes the successful Backyard formula and expands it across eleven tracks, giving Floodlights license to delve a little deeper into their favourite topics. The result is a record with a focus on both the national and personal, grappling with historical violence and abuses of political power, as well as the importance of self-expression and having the conviction and bravery to be yourself.

But From a View is never as heavy as that might sound. Although never straying into the knowingly numb-skulled pub rock of some Aussie contemporaries, Floodlights still know how to rock out, even when dealing out difficult home truths. Poisonous irony oozes from every pore of ‘Tropical Fun’, which details entitled Australians unleashed on the streets of Indonesia. “Pampered like royalty, and why shouldn’t we be?” Parsons sings. “They should be thanking us for fuelling their economy,” part of an Aussie tide “Boozing through the sun, polluting the air / with a mongrelised ‘thank you’ in the mother tongue.”

Another example is ‘Don’t Pick That Scratch’, which confronts Australia’s blinkered view of its colonialist past and present. “[It’s] a look at the amnesia of certain aspects of Australian history,” Kehoe tells Pilerats. “Reflecting upon cycles of fear, feelings of entitlement and the racist beliefs that can sit hidden in the underbelly of both individuals and a national culture as a whole.” ‘Matter of Time’ is similarly scathing, a song about politicians and people of power and how the richest countries in the world seem intent on speeding headlong into ruin.

They’re all howling
But it’s all just a matter of time for you
It’s all broken
But it’s all just a matter of time for you

Other songs have an even more personal focus. In what feels like a follow up to Backyard‘s ‘Nullarbor’, opener ‘Water’s Edge’ is inspired by a trip Parsons and Kehoe took across Western Australia, focusing on the wisdom accrued along the way. It begins laid back and contemplative, harmonica adding to the “Australiana” vibes, but builds a sense of forward motion as it advances, ending on a note of evocative feeling as Parsons sings the repeated final line.

‘Thanks For Understanding’ sees two people growing apart (“Something deep within my boot itches / but it can’t be scratched by you”), while closer ‘Happiness’ stresses the importance of having conviction in what you want to do, how you want to live your life. In a similar vein, ‘Proud and Well’ feels like a defiant statement of legitimacy, something that feels particularly important in our society that defines success in the absurd and arbitrary measurement of capital rather than personal contentment. As Parsons puts it to Pilerats, “Regardless of how late you discover your passions or how long it takes you to get there, you should find confidence and pride in being yourself. ”

Indecision, what fad today?
Condescending peers who’ve long found their way
There’s no shame in that, and I never said there was
So you can fuck off right off, and I’ll stay right here
‘Cause I’m happy with my life, and I’m proud of what I do
And I’ll keep not knowing, ’cause that what keeps me true
Yeah, that’s what keeps me true

From a View is out now via Spunk Records in Australia and New Zealand. If you live in the UK/EU, you can pre-order via Rough Trade or Resident Music. Of course, the album is also available from the Floodlights Bandcamp page.

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The EP opens with a short monologue by musician and activist Bunna Lawrie, a Mirning Elder and Whale Dreamer of the Nullarbor coast, a large area of arid country in southern Australia. He talks about the land’s healing qualities, particularly in regards to the sounds of nature there. The Mirning have a word for this nature sound—Mirrdinjar. “Everything that makes a noise from nature,” Lawrie describes,”the sound of the birds, the sound of the whales, the sound of the dingoes barkin’—it’s all Mirrdinjar, and it’s all healing.”

This segues into lead single ‘Nullarbor’, which follows a journey Floodlights lead Louis Parsons took across this plain, packing in his day job and travelling from Melbourne to Kimberley in search of some epiphanic moment. “If I trek a little further, into the dust, into the bush,” Parsons sings, “I’m stuck, but it’s something I will feel in my guts and in my blood.” The triumphant final section draws upon the patience of the wide open spaces, the sense of palliative perspective, the Mirrdinjar that Bunna Lawrie talks about at the beginning.

Nowhere to be
And I got time to kill

‘Small Town Pub’ is what Floodlights describe as “reflection on culture and conflicting ideas of national identity,” placing short shorts and Shane Warne next to the “ghosts of the gums” on stolen Aboriginal lands. The result is a country-shaded punk rock song, all squealing guitar and cantering percussion, that confronts difficult questions of national identity in a land of cultural genocide.

This historical awareness is a central pillar across Backyard, and separates Floodlights from many of the other Aussie punks and indie rockers. “Floodlights would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that this EP was recorded on,” the band state in their notes. “The Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders, past present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded.”

The closing title track is at once the EP’s brightest and most tender moment, what Floodlights call “a song about the network of support created by different people in your life.” It opens with grandfatherly wisdom, and carries that affirming momentum forward in a celebration of family and community in whatever shape it takes. “I am nothing without the wind behind my back,” Parsons sings, “but it’s the wind that blows that keeps me on my track.” Whether metaphorical or metaphysical, this idea of wind once more harks back to the healing force of Mirrdinjar, and ends an EP of complex emotions on a note of something like hope.

But where this wind comes from
Is not like a sea breeze
It flows constantly
From those close to me

Backyard is out on Spunk Records on 21st February and it’s available from the Floodlights Bandcamp page.

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The song is the sort of lushly beautiful folk that we’ve come to expect from Tiny Ruins. Its about drifting minds, inspired by a friend who grew up so close to a beach that the ocean was always calling, especially when stuck in a high school classroom.

“Always a dream wave
drawing you off track,
a dream wave
a coast calls you back”

The b-side is an instrumental version of the song, a track that somehow manages to resonate with even more poetry than the original, despite its wordless nature.

You can get ‘Dream Wave’ now on 7″ vinyl from Bella Union (worldwide), Flying Nun (NZ) and Spunk! Records (Aus). You can also read Lynch interviewing Fullbrook over at Faster Louder.

Photo credit: Georgie Craw

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