These New South Whales on Godspeed

Captured by Imogen Thomas

Jamie Timony and Todd Andrews have long been a mainstay in Australia’s indie music scene, first and foremost together they’re half of punk-rock band These New South Whales, and one whole of their podcast What A Great Punk, where they sat down to interview just about every band in the country. I spoke to Jamie and Todd about their latest release Godspeed, which sees the band exploring a wide range of genres working alongside the albums producer Ben Greenberg, of Brooklyn band Show Me The Body, and how it felt to wrap up their podcast on a solid 500 episodes.

The band begins their Godspeed Aus Tour this Thursday, kicking things off on the Sunshine Coast and work their way around the country, playing Sydney and Wollongong with our friends Stirr in April!

Jamie: Hey Amber, nice to meet you.

Todd: Nice to meet you!

Hey guys, lovely to meet you too. How are you guys going?

Jamie: Going good!

So, you released your album Godspeed a little bit ago and finished up the final episodes of your podcast and about to start your tour. The album prior to Godspeed, TSNW was released in 2022, and not to say that you guys had a break, but it seems like everything’s coming in this big chunk at the moment. Has it been something that you've been working towards for a while?

J: I guess, yeah. We wrote the songs over a year ago, then we recorded, mixed, et cetera for a few months. After that, you're working out the videos and the art and planning touring and all sorts of things that go into it. So yeah, it does come out in big chungus moments.

T: I guess when you do the math, it was like the last album came out, then we did a year of touring, then we did a year of writing and recording and getting it ready. So yeah. Big chungus.

Yeah big chungus. What about this year then? If you're doing like yearly chunguses, what's next?

J: Next is touring chungus.

T: Yeah, It'll be chungus tour.

J: A big year of touring this year, but hopefully we are gonna try and write simultaneously cause we usually just go: tour chungus, writing chungus, but we would like to blend them together. We just wanna keep writing, that's a really fun part of the process. So is touring but it'd be good to keep both kettles burning, if we can. But it's tiring stuff as well.

Yeah, I bet. So the new album 'Godspeed' is out, reading up on it, it seems as though this album has brought a new sense of clarity, maturity, and empowerment for you guys. I feel like I can hear it within the sound and the lyrics. What has encouraged these themes to come out?

J: Well, music or the creation of art, of any sort, generally is some sort of release or dealing with something inside yourself, even if you don't know what that is. So I think this album is just a culmination of where we are all at, as broad as that sounds. Personally, when we get in the room together and make music, I think we're all expressing ourselves the best way we know how at the time and going through growth, and learning while doing it. I think the themes and the lyrics on the record are reflective of change and growth in our own lives, but really specifically mine in a lot of ways, just because I'm the one that writes the lyrics. But it's the same with the instruments, they dictate a lot of the emotional content of the music as well.

Totally. I feel like [the album] has a very broad spectrum of genres, it almost seems like a "I don't care what kind of genre I'm meant to mould this into", plus you're exploring a bunch of other sounds. Is that how you see it?

J: Yeah, I think the last two records we've been like that. Less prescriptive with what we're trying to sound like and more exploratory. Sometimes that means a little bit from this sounds good and feels right to u, then a song that's more like this feels right to us as well, and allowing those songs to live in the same universe as opposed to going, oh! It needs to sound more like that.

T: We wrote a lot of songs and more didn't make the record than did. When we're creating the record, even though they span a wide spectrum of genres, we chose those songs cause we felt like they fit quite well together. I don't know whether it was lyrically, with the themes or even just stylistically, there's some kind of link between them still.

A hundred percent. I was gonna say, I am an album listener, I feel like I have to start and finish the album. This album is an album album, if that makes sense. You have to listen to it the whole way through, you go through the journey and I think it's a really nice experience.

J: Oh, that's Great. I think it was important to us to create some sort of a journey in this record and not just 10 punk songs that all sound the same we’ve squashed together and put out. We like the fact that the songs were sounding so different because then you get these different moments and spaces on the album. Generally when you're making a record, each song usually has a sibling song. Like, track two is kind of similar to track nine, and you make these little pairings when you're putting the track listing together, and you start to put it into a rough order that has a nice flow to it. I think it was important for us that they didn't all sound too homogenous or the same, we wanted to keep it moving and keep it growing.

You worked with producer Ben Greenberg and looking through his catalog, it seems like he has a habit of changing genres. What kind of influence did Ben have on this record?

T: Like you said, [Ben]’s worked with a wide spectrum of artists even just in punk and heavy genres. He had a lot of influence in terms of how the album sounds and what we did with the songs. It's quite a multi-dimensional sounding record. The songs would span a bunch of genres, but I think Ben's influence was in really servicing each song and how it should sound rather than making everything sound the same.

J: Yeah, we just had a chat with him this morning actually. He's also just so confident, but very relaxed so he's easy to trust. He's a really good leader and, as he said in his own words, he leads from the back, which is the job of a producer. You don't wanna be dictating what's going on but you wanna be there for creative support. When there are decisions that have to be made stylistically or whatever, we just trusted so much in his experience and breadth of knowledge around music and his confidence. He's so definitive about how he thinks things should be. We just innately trusted him. 

How did it come about getting to work with each other?

T: Well, Jamie had the idea of working with Ben because he's done a bunch of records that we really like and has worked with a lot of bands that we are inspired by… So we just DM'ed him, not knowing if he'd even write back, but straight away, he was like, Cool. Send me some stuff, let's get on a call.

J: We had already booked dates in the studio as well. Then he asked, "When do you wanna do it?" and we told him the dates and he was like, “oh, I'm actually in Australia that weekend playing a show. If you guys want me to stay and do it, I can do it in that exact window” Haha. So it was sort of a miracle and quite fortuitous. He just stayed an extra week in Australia and that was that.

I love when that stuff happens. I wanted to ask about the piano ballad "Nobody Listens" because I feel like that is somewhat of an unexpected move for you guys. How did that song come about?

J: We were on a writing trip in the Otways in Victoria, which is beautiful rainforest Country, we spent four nights in this house there. Someone was playing a kind of bluesy riff on the guitar, just mucking around, and I started singing that vocal line, originally as a bit of a piss take. Then we were like, oh, there's actually something in this. But we decided in the studio we didn't wanna make it a band song, with drums and bass and all that. So, with the help of Ben, we sort of rearranged it and tried something with piano and strings instead. We just committed to it, it was kind of scary cause it's not really something we would ever do, but we were like “Fuck it, that's the song and we're connected to it right now and it's going on the album”.

T: Yeah, exactly. We thought about not putting it on but it went on because we like it, basically.

That ties into the theme of empowerment and confidence in yourselves to be like, "If we like it, we like it and let's run with it".

J: On the album as well, contextually, It's the most quiet and emotional low point, which I think is a nice balance to the rest.

T: Speaking of album structures too, it's quite a traditional thing to do in rock and roll as well—to chuck a ballad at track five or six—in the middle of the record, end of Side A. So that's exactly where it went haha.

I remember hearing that and then the next track is super punk and fast, right?

J: It goes straight into Bird Brain, yeah, which is probably the hardest, heaviest sounding song on the record. So it's just fun, those moments.

I love it. So change of pace, how was it coming to the decision of wrapping all of that up?

J: It’s something that happened quite naturally, I think. We've been doing it for five and a half years, two episodes a week. We've had the most incredible experience. We've gotten to know ourselves and each other better, but we've also made so many new friends all around the world. So many fun Friday nights on blind dates with people in other bands that we barely know, drinking beers and having a laugh and forming friendships and communities. Not to mention the relationship that we've developed with our listeners as well. We're very connected to our listeners and fan base in general. We like hearing from people, we like chatting to people at shows. We see them as much of a part of the band as we are. So it's been a really important period in our lives. But, we do a lot of things, and we've only got so much time in the week. I think it was getting close to episode 500 and we just started discussing it... We don't want to end this pod on episode 567 or something like that. If we're gonna end it, it's gonna be on episode 500 or episode 600, and I don't think either of us had another hundred episodes in us.

T: Not without a break anyway.

J:Yeah, exactly. So it just felt like it reached its natural conclusion. It's really bittersweet but mainly feelings of just happiness really. It was so great celebrating something that's been really important to us and to a lot of the listeners as well. 

It's one of those things that, as you've done it for so long, I bet it feels weird for you guys maybe, how are you gonna fill that hole of time? Do you guys have anything planned or are you just gonna chill?

T: Go to the movies.

J: Probably just a big Carlton Draught shaped hole ahah.

T: Yeah, which isn't too dissimilar from the pod anyway haha. Well, I guess I'll hardly see you now, Jamie.

J: Yeah, maybe some roller skating or something on a Friday night... Or some songwriting, that would be nice. Get together and do some songwriting, you know, definitely more time for that.

Turn two albums out this year?

J: Exactly.

You guys writing again already?

J: Yeah, we're on.

That's exciting, I'm making some badges and I wanted to ask you guys, cause I feel like you would probably have some fun ideas, what's some slogans I can put on a badge? Do you guys have any that comes to mind?

J: Well, Todd has..

T: Big Chungus

this is a fake big chungas pin, sorry… should we make it real?????