When Death Bells jumped from an Australian sextet to an Angeleno duo prior to their last album, their sound took a shift into brighter passages and greener pastures. Collecting themselves over the course of the brunt of the pandemic and beginning to familiarize themselves with the new terrain, the group got to explore all corners of that environment on their new album, Between Here & Everywhere, out July 29 via Dais Records. That new and creatively stimulating environment had finally given them a place to flourish.
“Life in L.A. has been great. Obviously, COVID threw a huge spanner in the works, but it allowed us a very deliberate period where we could get acquainted with the city itself. We spent a lot of lockdown crafting this new record. The main difference coming from Australia is just how many more people there are doing the same as us. Lots of like-minded people makes for an environment with less friction. Pursuing music feels more natural here.”
Through the tumult of the last couple of years, they began work on the album. This record explores the nightlife and overlapping stories of the Los Angeles metropolis and displays a broader range of emotion in the music as well. Tackling a narrative structure in the lush 34-minutes of the album is an impressive feat that the duo handles with grace, crafting something that is bold and captivating the entire time and pulling influence from a few different source materials.
“It was certainly more of an organic process than a conscious decision. I always look at lyrics last, that frees up the mental space to jump in on songwriting with Remy and make sure that the skeletons of everything we’re writing have decent potential… Last year, my friend Luke lent me a book that he had really enjoyed, called Everything Now by Rosecrans Baldwin. I can’t recommend it enough. It does a really fantastic job of weaving together different vignettes that reflect life in L.A. I drew a lot of inspiration from that, as well as a book of conspiracy theories called Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon by David McGowan, and John Lurie’s autobiography.”
Accompanied by a few artists from other notable acts such as STRFKR, Feels, Object Of Affection, and Froth, Death Bells have made an expansive cityscape of character analyses. Between Here & Everywhere makes good use of a more maximalist sound. It feels fitting considering the size and scope of an ode to all the inhabitants of the heaven and hell that is Los Angeles.
Watch the video for “Lifespring” here:
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Photo courtesy of Senny Mau
