TOWNS Keep It Interesting With Punchy New Single, ‘Boring’
{interview by Salomae Haselgrove}
Adelaide’s most wholesome duo TOWNS, made up of besties Aston Valladares and Dan Steinert, are charging into the second half of 2020 with their explosive, short and sweet new track Boring, released Friday August 21.
Boring follows up May release Stardust and a huge year in 2019 when their breakout single Safe to Stay catapulted the band to nearly 400,000 streams on Spotify and a rotation on triple j.
2019 also saw the band win the coveted Unearthed slot for Spin Off Festival alongside acts including Childish Gambino, Catfish and the Bottlemen and Ocean Alley and embark on national tours with Sydney rockers Dear Seattle and Brisbane trio Bugs, as well as performing a sell-out Christmas charity show at the Lion Arts Festival.
Frontman Aston spoke to Warrant Magazine about their new track and what is coming up next.
It has been an interesting year but you have been keeping busy nevertheless, you released your first single for 2020 Stardust earlier in the year and now on Friday it’s time for Boring, which I guess it’s new to the wider world but for loyal fans it’s a bit of a cult classic and staple to your live shows, so how does it feel to have finally be releasing this track and putting it out there?
Oh so good! This song we probably wrote around the same time as Stardust in theory it came together so quick, I remember it was before the Dear Seattle tour we wrote it and we were trying to add songs in because we obviously had the same set for so long and because this one was so quick and me and Dan just fell in love with it really quickly, it was just like cool, this song’s great and we had it down really quickly. Recording it kind of fell by the wayside, we just forgot to record it, genuinely and then one day we were like “hey, we should probably record that” and now it’s Dan’s favourite song to play, he just loves it, I love it too, but he really loves it so I’m happy it’s out for him.
It was always my favourite one to hear funnily enough.
Oh that’s good, it’s fun, it’s real fun to play.
You’ve described it as “a happy accident”, which would make sense when you’ve spoken about forgetting to record it and a bit of nostalgia for simpler times as well.
Yeah.
It’s quite boppy, you and Dan are both quite involved in the vocals. What was the inspiration and the writing process like, was it you and Dan coming together more collaboratively or did you approach him having already formed the basis of it?
I remember just being at home and I think Dan was out for lunch or something, I remember I was just at home at my computer writing and going through some guitar sounds and I found one I really, really liked. I remember just trying stuff for a good hour and I was like “this sucks” as you do and I remember hitting my guitar where I was holding this one note and my ears pricked up and I was like “ooh” and I just kept hitting the guitar really, really hard with my fingers and that’s eventually how we got that sound at the start and from there I was like “ooh, this is a song”. I really quickly put the same drums the whole way through and quickly threw it together with the chords and sent it to Dan and said “listen, tell me what you think” I sent the vocals through and he called me and was like “yeah, yeah, yeah this is sick, send it through” I remember sending it through to him that night and the next day I got it back and he’d put in all these robotic voices and stuff like that as well. I guess I was the pasta and he was the sauce kind of thing which I guess is how we are anyway.
Definitely, you do have a bit of a rep for being Adelaide’s most wholesome duo and you are one of the bands that has been keeping relatively busy during iso and super connected to your fans, holding Instagram live sessions, even taking the time to write a cheeky song with them, have you found it’s been a good time to get more creative and write more music having this spare time?
Yeah, I was so glad we kept active because I think, not that we wanted to ignore what was going on, but I think people really need to know that at the end of it all bands will still be a thing, shows will come back. This can’t last forever, and I think once that clicked in my brain I was like “cool, well let’s just keep on keeping on” and it went really, really well. We definitely have been writing a lot more than we usually do, even before. Its hard for us because we both work and things like that, but once a week Dan will come to my house or I’ll go to his and from 9 to 5 we’ll sit in our studio or at our computers and just write and we kind of just force ourselves to do that just to get ourselves out of our comfort zone and make sure we’re both at least being productive at a time where we’re lucky enough that we can be.
As bad as it sounds, we had a really productive iso, I know that it’s really bad for some people so it feels bad to say that I got productivity out of it but just we’ll keep trying to see the light side of life for people.
It’s a good way of looking at it, just because it hasn’t been productive for some, it doesn’t mean it can’t be in other areas.
Yeah, totally.
But you have been solidly releasing music together since I Don’t Mind came out in 2017 and then of course there was the success story that was Safe to Stay in 2019. With all the extra writing happening in iso are there whispers of an EP?
Yeah, we’re definitely planning to record an EP this year. We have songs ready to go, we’re going to hit the studio. Our plan fell apart a bit, we did plan to do these songs all with Jon Grace again who did Stardust and we were going to go to Melbourne for it but that plan fell apart pretty quickly over the last few months just with the state of everything so we’ve actually organised to jump ahead and record with a bunch of different producers in Adelaide. One of the things about the new EP is that every song is immensely different, we made sure of that when we were writing everything that every song is its own, complete, original idea, there’s no lingering similarities between the songs. They all have our voices on there and they all sound like TOWNS but they’re all very different which makes me excited and I think that’s why it’s a big step up from Television. Television was really, really fun and great but a lot of it came through from the same influence, so this is a lot more broad in that sense.
Yeah and do you think that recording with several different producers will really help bring that vision to life of every song being quite different?
Yeah that was a big pull as well, there’s heaps of producers that we’ve worked with already and songs that we haven’t released that we just have because we worked with the producer, but it just wasn’t the right place or time to release it, so it’s exciting to be able to go back to those guys with an idea and be like “cool, we’re going to release this” and then spend a little more time on it. Plus, it just means we can sort of do it at our own pace. Dan and I both have really bad attention spans and that’s why it’s really hard for us to ever get into studios and stuff like that because once you’re in there it’s a bit like alright, I have to sit down and work now, but being able to do it and just spend a few days with one person to do one song and then have a break is really good, it means we won’t get bored of the songs too. As our new song states, we get bored very quickly.
Definitely. Now being, as you know, a loyal “Scooterposter” myself.
Yes, you are.
I know the absolute joy that is a TOWNS live show, there’s always cool costumes, I specifically remember the boilermaker suits at the Stag I think last year.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the ones, we still have them.
Oh, they’re fantastic! And of course the wholesome banter and the famous TV show medley, which is possibly the most iconic thing about a TOWNS show.
Aw, that’s so nice!
Where do these ideas come from and what has been your favourite moment of playing together?
So the TV themes I know definitely where it came from. Dan and I always just spoke about sitcoms and for me, Friends is just one of those shows I have watched it so many times, I know everything about it, I’m so addicted to it. It’s like an antidepressant in media form, it’s so good. I remember at our very, very, very first show to like three people we covered just the Friends theme song and that was sick and really, really fun and we were like “we want to do more” but obviously we’re a band that has our own songs that we need to play, so we were like “how can we concisely play heaps more TV theme songs at once?” So that’s when we chopped it up. We’ve got it to 15 themes now that we play and jam together, it’s not bad, I’m pretty stoked on that.
15, that’s impressive.
Thank you!
All in one go. Is there anything new that you would add to it that you haven’t got in there already?
It’s hard. We spent hours researching TV theme songs trying to find ones we can translate live, there’s so many that just can’t be done. I love the Walking Dead, but I don’t feel like we can play that theme song live, it just won’t work. I know there’s ones we want to add but it’s hard because we’ve done the big ones that everyone knows I think after that it becomes less relatable as an audience member, if you haven’t seen Full House or King and Queens or something it’s hard to be like “yo, I vibe this so much” but we’ll get there, we’ll get it to 20 at least.
Cool! It’s been a bit of a down year for live shows this year obviously, but you’ve been announced for some really, really exciting ones coming next year, Yours & Owls notably, which is hugely exciting.
Yeah!
So what are you most looking forward to about being back out there and performing, especially at these larger festivals?
Oh my god, I personally have been going insane not playing shows, it’s been driving me crazy. It’s good that it’s everywhere in the world and it’s not just me but it’s doing my head in not being able to play shows. I miss that whole culture of a live show and seeing bands, meeting people and having a drink with friends, having that taken away from you sucks, so I’m just excited to have the culture again and I’m excited to see my friends’ bands play again. I wanted to see my friend’s band play the other day in Adelaide but it was sold out, which never happens but its because the capacities are so small now because they’re doing it really safely. I’m excited to just be able to see bands again, it’s been so long and my ears need to readjust to loud music.
For sure, I feel that.
It’s going to be sick when it comes back. As I said, it can’t last forever and as soon as there’s a vaccine or some sort of cure and once that gets the ball rolling everything will sort of come back to a pretty normal lifestyle again.
Yeah and then who knows, TOWNS at an international festival!
TOWNS international, that’d be sick, that sounds scary though. I feel like COVID has kind of tainted my whole international perception. I know about all of the people who got stuck where they were and now I’m like “I never want to leave my country now because I’m scared of being stuck somewhere I don’t know anyone” but I hope so. In about a year or two maybe we can do it.
I’m just excited to play everywhere else in Australia, I’m excited to play in Melbourne, it’s annoying because we’ve actually played Melbourne the least, we’ve only played Melbourne two or three times, we’ve played Brisbane so many times and Sydney a few times as well but Melbourne is really low on there, I think we forget about it because it’s so close to Adelaide we just assume that they don’t want it, but I do want to get back there.
Stream ‘Boring’ here.