One of Canberra's favourite trios has finally given fans their debut LP. Super Best Friends frontman Johnny Barrington says,"It is a fun album. I've been listening to it for six months and just been hearing the high-quality digital masters and the vinyl version the other day. Usually you are your own harshest critic, [so] I'm hoping other people get into it because we're all pretty happy with what's happened."
Explaining its massive sound as grungy, punky, dirgy guitar rock, the album is "sort of a new sound to what people may have been used to with us, but its definitely one that suits us I think", Barrington says.
Through "epic drumming and distorted bass", this is very much an album that wears the band's political interest and social conscience openly.
"We've gone with calling it Status Updates because I kind of feel it's how a lot of people deal with the world, deal with what's maybe upsetting or funny or silly about the world, with status updates," Barrington says. "I thought that was a cool name for the album and it related to the fact that the lyrics are more politically pointed now, a bit more clear in what they are trying to say."
But it is not all politics and reflections on social media style activism.
"There are also social messages in there from relationships between men and women, to [ste]roided up male culture, to the fact that pubs get a bit lame when they get gentrified," Barrington says. "It's having a crack at everyone really, in the form of 11 status updates."
The album was produced by Shihad's drummer and studio boss Tom Larkin.
"He's a former rock star, but he's also a dad and a really nice guy so he's got the right amount of ego and confidence, and definitely makes you feel like he cares about the project," Barrington says.
Helping them bring Larkin into the project was a grant the band received from artsACT.
"That was like a huge boon," Barrington says. "It helped us go from making something ourselves to working with a producer and working in a studio. We're stoked that artsACT recognised what Super Best Friends had been doing, that we'd been advocating for Canberra for a long time."
Despite early fears his work might get changed in the production process, having the opportunity to work with Larkin yielded positive results.
"Tom is renowned for shaking up songs, maybe even scrapping a few and smashing some of the best bits together. You might loose three songs but get one dynamite one. So that's what I knew was on the cards."
Still, the band took the plunge, gathering up a 14-song demo they had recorded out at Corin Forest to give to Larkin.
"Tom said, 'This is fine, and you could probably release this, but I can hear some more potential in it," Barrington says.
"He was open to ideas, and we got in there and thankfully, I guess I was a little bit fearful that things would get destroyed and I'd feel like I wasn't a good musician or something like that. But he was pretty true to the formula which we gave him, and it was more like, with a certain riff if I was worried I'd feel like a show-off if I repeated too many times, he was like, 'Nah, mate, get your ego on. Repeat that riff three or four times. It's great.' Or we'd move things around. So nothing was really scrapped or thrown out as sub par, which was great."
SUPER BEST FRIENDS
With: Pat Chow, Foam, Release the Hounds
When: April 10, 8pm
Where: Transit Bar, Civic.
Tickets: $10 presale / $15 on the door
