Slowly Slowly frontman Ben Stewart guides us through the creation of their definitive fifth album, ‘Forgiving Spree’, out January 24 via Nettwerk Music Group.
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Through the darkest days and the longest nights, hope is often what keeps us going. The knowledge that each moment is fleeting no matter how bleak it may seem, it’s important to hold onto the idea that eventually something (or someone) will come along to shine a light.
When that time comes though, it can be difficult to accept that you deserve such happiness, something that Slowly Slowly frontman Ben Stewart knows all too well.
Spending almost a decade forging their place in the scene, 2022’s ‘Daisy Chain’ marked a turning point. Written during the crippling isolation of global lockdowns and debuting at Number 5 on the Australian charts, as the band emerged from their respective homes and prepared to take on the world once more – a lot had changed.
“We ended up playing the album in full every night on that Australian tour… We were so excited about it,” the singer-guitarist remembers fondly.
“We stepped outside the box of what we usually do on that record, and it paid off. There were people singing every word and getting tattoos of the lyrics. The attention that it garnered from people was something we hadn’t experienced before.”
Heading home with a renewed sense of pride and validation, as Ben sat down to work on new music he felt a release. A reflective, emotional songwriter with a knack for capturing life’s tragedy and tumult in all their complexity, he began to reconsider the ways in which his story could be told.
“I’d had a strange couple of years with deaths, marriages, births and miscarriages. It felt like a lot of life had happened,” he explains.
“A lot of my past work centered around grudges that I held against myself and others, and I was holding on to so much. I found forgiveness for myself and for others, and I started letting go of those grudges. I needed to work on being softer in my approach, and softer on myself.”
Nine songs centered on giving yourself permission to be happy, that’s where the story of ‘Forgiving Spree’ begins. A bold, all-killer-no-filler rock record overflowing with vulnerability and appreciation for the people in our lives who lighten the load, Rock Sound sat down with Ben to explore how the Aussie band’s fifth album came to be.
THE SOUND
From day one, Ben and his bandmates had one simple goal in mind for ‘Forgiving Spree’. Energised after playing their biggest headline shows to date, they wanted each and every song on album five to have its own moment in the spotlight. With ‘Daisy Chain’ expanding their options and exploring the possibility of what their band could become, it was time to make a statement.
“I grew up obsessed with albums like ‘Californication’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I’ve always wanted to write a record that felt like hit after hit,” Ben nods.
“We’ve done all the groundwork, and we’re confident in what we do now, so none of it felt laboured. We were able to exercise everything we’ve learned in a really comfortable way, and because of that this album feels like such a natural evolution.”
Cinematic yet intimate, darting across genres, sounds, and styles in effortless style, from the moment the title track’s anthemic chorus kicks in the intent is impossible to ignore. Explosive melodies that kick you in the teeth paired with blisteringly heartfelt lyrics, ‘Forgiving Spree’ strikes a joyous balance between sensitivity and sheer rock ‘n’ roll bombast.
“I wrote so many songs for the record, but I focused on trying to create anthems out of things that I felt really strongly about,” Ben explains.
“When I first started watching bands at 14 years old, I remember feeling drunk whilst watching them locked-in onstage. Thankfully, I’ve never lost the lust for that. Being part of that little telepathic pod where you’re completely locked-in, looking out to the audience and knowing that someone is feeling what you’re feeling… That’s the best drug.”
“Because of that, it wasn’t so much about creating earworms, it was more about creating things for the stage. When I get onstage and get into that mindset, I need the songs to be able to speak to me. I kept writing songs until I had found a batch that lived in that overlap. I needed to feel a real resonance with them, but they also had to be really tight and catchy.”
The writing process taking place between Melbourne and LA, a large part of the album’s raw quality stems from Ben’s insistence on using his demo vocals in the final mix. Preserving the emotion of the first take, no matter how much they lean into their love of infectious pop melodies, there’s not a single moment on ‘Forgiving Spree’ that isn’t overflowing with feeling.
“I think it stemmed from self-hatred and laziness at the start, but trying to reconnect and re-track a song’s vocal later down the track never felt right for me,” he shrugs.
“It always felt like I was trying to create a caricature of the emotion that I was feeling at the time because as time goes on you remember things differently. If there’s a song that gives the impression that it had a pained delivery, that’s because it actually felt pained. If you revisit it months later, you might over exaggerate the pain, and it can have a contrived quality to it. I’ve always erred towards the demo vocal… It’s always the most honest.”
THE LYRICS
Written during a period of his life filled with both elation and heartbreak, there’s a distinct push and pull momentum that defines ‘Forgiving Spree’. From bouncy ode to eternal love ‘All Time’ to the gut-wrenching memorial of closer ‘Born Free’, each song is a snapshot of Ben’s memories, both the joyous and the tragic.
“As much as I wanted to pull things into a light-hearted, dancier space on this album, there was a lot of heavy stuff swimming around,” he explains.
That sentiment is expressed most poignantly on the stunning ‘Hurricane’, a track that recalls Ben’s joy at finding out that he and his wife were expecting their first child, only to suffer a miscarriage four months into the term. Pieced together with Australian producer Lucky West in LA, the duo worked together to ensure that the reality of the emotion was captured in its purest form.
“For a while, I didn’t really want to write about it. Every time I broached the topic, I felt like I was cheapening the experience by trying to house it into a pop song,” he says.
“Late in the album writing process though, I had a day with Lucky. I was a long way from home, and a hurricane was supposed to hit LA. There was an impending shutdown of the city, everyone was sandbagging their homes, and I was stuck in my accommodation alone. I began to think of grief as standing in the eye of a hurricane. It’s very still, you’re watching all of these things move around you, and there’s a numbness.”
“Going through miscarriage is a strange grief, and it’s something that often gets swept under the rug. I feel really proud that I get to talk about it and help anyone else that’s dealing with grief and those dissociating feelings.”
Even in its most painful moments though, ‘Forgiving Spree’ ultimately feels hopeful. A celebration of how Ben’s relationship with his wife has allowed him to overcome things that once would have felt impossible, it’s a record centered on the growth that comes with finding unconditional love.
“Sometimes I listen back to old songs and my mind seems like it was someone else’s. I hardly recognise myself these days, which to be honest, is so nice,” Ben smiles.
“I always used to gravitate towards writing about how much I fell short as a human, or all of the things I didn’t like about myself. The ripple effect of finding someone that you can share all of yourself with is that you can begin to love yourself. That’s something to be celebrated, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that’s the purpose of it all.”
THE COLLABORATORS
After spending months writing, recording and producing at home in Melbourne, Ben reached a point where some new inspiration was needed. The likes of ‘All Time’, ‘How Are You Mine?’ and ‘Born Free’ already penned, he called up the band’s manager to request a trip to LA.
Spending some time in the city’s competitive, fast-paced environment, it presented an opportunity for the frontman to shake things up and pick the brains of some other creatives. Writing the album’s title track with Suzy Shinn (Panic! At The Disco, Weezer, Fall Out Boy) in just three hours and working with Courtney Ballard (5 Seconds of Summer, Waterparks, State Champs) on ‘Gimme The Wrench’ and ‘Love Letters’, some time away from home became the push he needed to finalise the album’s direction.
“I’ve produced records for other artists here in Melbourne, so I know how important it can be to bounce off other people and have someone gently guide you,” Ben says.
“At the same time though, I am quite stubborn. I need to come up with all of the ideas for Slowly Slowly, because it’s my baby, so as much as other people can be an amazing sounding board – it all needs to stem from something honest in me.”
“For this project, songwriting is not a big Kumbaya. It needs to come from me, but the way that everyone helped shape those ideas allowed them to be shown in their best light. It helps to have someone there to keep me honest and to keep me true throughout the process.”
THE TITLE & THE ARTWORK
Working to a strict deadline, when Ben scrawled out the words to the title track’s chorus on that trip, he knew that they were important. A phrase that poured out of him with little effort, ‘Forgiving Spree’ came to be the perfect summation of the last few years of his life.
“It was late in the process of creating the record, but I remember thinking of those two words, and it all clicked into place,” he nods.
“I’d written all of these songs for the record, but I never set out with a concept at the start of an album. It’s this mosaic that fits together in retrospect, and there’s always one song that makes it all make sense. There’s one that gives it guidance, and ‘Forgiving Spree’ became that cornerstone. That’s the phrase that brings it all together.”
Deciding on the record’s visuals came as more of a challenge though, with Ben obsessing over the subliminal impact artwork has on the way a listener consumes music. Drawn towards a clean, classic design following the busier aesthetics of both ‘Daisy Chain’ and 2020’s ‘Race Car Blues’, the four-piece enlisted the help of old friend Connor Dewhurst.
“Connor has helped us with a bunch of tour posters and merch in the past, and he just got it,” Ben says.
“He had an old book filled with the best album covers of all-time, and he used that as inspiration. He sent through this black-and-white photograph of the band with our faces cut out paired with this sprawling red text, and it was perfect. It was clean-cut, macho, but also very sensitive. To me, that’s what the record is.”
THE FUTURE
In terms of how ‘Forgiving Spree’ sets Ben and his bandmates up for whatever comes next, there’s perhaps no better declaration of intent than the defiant ‘Gimme The Wrench’. Freshly signed to a new label and more determined than ever to make their mark on the world, the track’s no-nonsense title comes from an iconic scene in the 1997 film ‘Good Will Hunting’.
“When we wrote that song, I was spinning a lot of plates. We had a lot of touring plans, I was grieving the loss of my stepmom, we’d had a miscarriage, and then we were expecting our daughter, Stella,” Ben recalls.
“I was trying to juggle being creative with being a good dad, a good husband, and a good friend to the others in the band. I knew it was going to be tricky, and I knew I needed to have a pump-up song. I had just watched ‘Good Will Hunting’, and at one point the protagonist recounts an instance where he had to choose between three implements that were going to be used to punish him – a belt, a stick, or a wrench. He chooses the wrench, and it’s a metaphor for choosing the path of least leniency.”
Refusing to take any shortcuts to get to where they are, no matter how personal these songs may be to Ben, there’s no doubt that ‘Forgiving Spree’ is an album made to bring people together. A reminder to let go of anything that’s dragging you down and embrace all that allows you to grow, as Slowly Slowly prepare to share their latest chapter with the world, all they hope is that everyone can take whatever they may need from it.
“There are a lot of avenues in this record. From a top level, there are a lot of hooks, but it’s a little bit of a choose of your own adventure in terms of how deep you want to take it,” Ben finishes.
“There are songs on here that celebrate love, some about growing up and letting go, and others that feel like a complete existential crisis. When that all comes together though, it’s a celebration of moving forward, being excited about the future, and being a little bit more kind to yourself. I hope people connect with it, and I can’t wait to look out from the stage and see people singing these lyrics like they truly mean it.”