With two critically acclaimed albums, a fistful of EPs and a whole lot of passport stamps behind them, The Boat People are a band that have a come a long way since they started playing together as high school friends in a little town two hours outside of Brisbane, Australia. With the release of their third album, Dear Darkly, the band have cast aside all the rules to deliver their most diverse work to date.
They’ve played The Great Escape UK, CMJ Music Marathon NYC, toured the UK twice and the US three times including shows at SXSW, The Viper Room, Spaceland, Pianos and a live set on Morning Becomes Eclectic KCRW as well as rotation on over 20 radio stations across the US and a bunch of TV syncs to boot. They’ve also nabbed slots at some of Australia’s biggest festivals and supported David Byrne, The Shins and Midlake.
Those three acts are a good place to start to describe the band’s sound – expansive, unconventional pop with a blush of wry optimism and romance. While Australia is probably best known O/S for meat-and-potatoes rock ‘n’ roll a-la AC/DC, The Boat People represent a perhaps lesser known part of the country’s musical landscape, more in the spirit of Brisbane legends The Go Betweens.
In the UK their second album Chandeliers was given 4 stars by Uncut Magazine and picked by Planet Sounds as one of the top 50 albums of 2008, while Australia’s Mess + Noise said “A genuinely great Australian pop album…as good as anything you will hear in the genre this year”. US tastemaker Nic Harcourt called them “My favourite Australian band”.
While Chandeliers was three years in the making, the band changed their approach for new album Dear Darkly, opting to work quickly and with a wider palette. Produced by John Castle (Washington) in Melbourne where half the band now resides, it is perhaps at risk of being deemed ‘eclectic’ by those who never set their iPods to shuffle. In truth it is the sound of a band no longer asking who they are but simply being it. The album ranges through inky-soul and Triffids-inspired surf guitar, fey garage rock, absurdest lyrics, programmed beats, Asperges mantras and the odd bedroom recording of a nervous breakdown, not to mention the essentials – love, loss, escape and despair. On Dear Darkly, all of these things float together above the ground, well inland from the East Coast of the National consciousness. It is music made after reaching out across the world for the first time. It is what you bring back from there and knowing where you belong.
Dear Darkly will be released on Friday, July 2 and includes the singles ‘Echo Stick Guitars’, ‘Soporific’ and ‘Under The Ocean’.
“They have hoisted their anchor, ventured into uncharted waters and discovered their own home. And my, it is a good place to be.”
- The Courier Mail, ‘Soporific’ single review
“The Boat People show a whole lot of realised potential”
- thescene.com.au, ‘Soporific’ single review
Dear Darkly
Available in-stores and via iTunes Friday, July 2
THE BOAT PEOPLE
DEAR DARKLY ALBUM TOUR
Friday July 02 | New York Hotel, Launceston
Saturday July 03 | Republic Bar, Hobart
Thursday, July 15 | The Harpe, Wollongong
Friday July 16 | Spectrum, Sydney
Thursday July 22 | Bon Amici, Toowoomba
Friday July 23 | The Sound Lounge, Gold Coast
Saturday July 24 | The Troubadour, Brisbane
Sunday July 25 | Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
Friday July 30 | Workers Club, Melbourne
Saturday July 31 | Barwon Club Hotel, Geelong
