Acres guide us track by track through the creation of their new album ‘The Host’, out now.
Bloodlust
Jack Rogers (bass): “When writing ‘Bloodlust’ we wanted to try and set a mood, something dark, mysterious and that builds tension. It fell out of us pretty easy! As soon as I started writing the lyrics to the instrumentalI knew I wanted it to be the album opener. It sonically encapsulated everything the record was about. Lyrically it obviously mentions the record name and touches on subjects of addiction, letting something bad consume you because you can’t live with out it and being addicted or dependent to the double life you lead when doing something you know is bad for you. I think it highlights the themes and feel of the entire record to come. The album name came to us from that track and fit perfectly! It was a no brainer when re reading that line.”
Not So Different
Jack: “This track is about a conversation I had with a close friend about mental health and how they were feeling for the last few years, it was a shock to me as they vocalised exactly how I was feeling but in a way I could never. It was such an eye opening experience realising that you can suffer in silence and hide behind a smile so easily, you end up doing it so much it become “normal” and hearing someone else explain how I act better than I could was wild. I wrote that song lyrically thinking of that interaction.”
Ben Lumber (vocals): “Out of the entire writing process this song was the only one we had demoed, the main aim of this record was to go into the unknown and really push ourselves creatively. We wrote a bunch of NSD in like 2023 whilst on tour and we knew we wanted to use it for something.”
Staring At The Sun
Ben: “For me this was one of the harder songs on the record to write, we wanted a classic Acres sound but also a song with unexpected turns and twists, we’ve never really written songs with a chorus A and chorus B so this was all about trying something different. Landon has such a good way of building and changing structures in songs so it was super fun to write.”
Steal The Light
Jack: “Steal The Light is a product of a few drinks in the studio and picking up the guitars and just seeing what comes out haha. We started with the chorus and built around that idea. Probably one of my favourite memories I have of the entire studio process was that evening. Lyrically it’s about regret, ghosts of the past and trying to move on from something or someone.”
Built To Bleed
Jack: “Landon approached us with this idea and we fell in love with it straight away, it’s definitely a curve ball for the band but this record was all about us stepping outside of our comfort zone and pushing the boundaries on what acres is. The song is about me learning about the opinion of me I have cast upon myself over most of my life. Never feeling good enough, strong enough and that my existence on this earth was to purely just exist and be nothing more. It was only after starting therapy that I realised how much I have been putting myself down, valuing my life and how easy it is to start to believe those thoughts. It’s definitely the most open I have been about how I personally feel in a song ever.”
Empty Room
Ben: “As much as we always aim to evolve our sound with each record ‘Empty Room’ was definitely an ode to the sound Acres fans know and love, if there’s one thing we do well its the beautiful ambient guitar sounds I’ve always loved about this band so it was super important we had a couple moments on this album.”
Around Again
Ben: “This is a song I absolutely love and it almost didn’t make the album, it’s one of the more pop-sounding songs we’ve ever done and that really excited me, Landon our producer had this song floating around on his laptop and when I heard it for the first time i instantly knew I wanted to work on it, I remember waking up in our Air BnB at 4am and having a verse melody and ended up demoing the whole song until about 8am before our studio session.”
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