Lonelyspeck is one of those musicians that's impossibly hard to pigeonhole. From the dark pop-meets-Golden Features-meets Linkin Park sound of songs like Drown, the Adelaide-based musician and visual artist has just dropped their new EP, Abyssal Body, today and it's as varied as it is instantly memorable.
They admit to being equally as inspired by Charli XCX as they are inspired by early 2000s nu-metal, so we had Lonelyspeck sit down and pull out 10 songs that inspired the making of Abyssal Body.
Lonelyspeck explains of the EP, "Each song represents a stage in this journey, from moments of despair to mantras of self-reassurance and self-validation, taking place from the past into the indefinite future. In line with the central theme of creating one’s own space of belonging outside of established narratives, I wanted to freely bring together musical influences from various stages of my life – from the 2000s alternative rock that soundtracked my youth to the futuristic pop inspiring me now – regardless of whether there was a precedent for the sounds it would result in."
The list is full of dualities - Ariana Grande and My Chemical Romance, Charli XCX and Deftones - but such is the genre-agnostic nature of our generation.
Check out the list below.
Linkin Park – Points of Authority
Linkin Park was the first band I really fell in love with and their early sound was a big influence throughout the writing of the EP. I think Points Of Authority best encapsulates what was inspiring me – the crisp doubled vocals, the boom bap bounce, the snare that sounds like an industrial steel forging machine, the melodies that low key wouldn’t be out of place in a Britney Spears track. RIP Chester
SOPHIE – Immaterial
This song is incredible in so many ways but the vocals in the bridge really blow my mind. I love how it feels like a totally loose, visceral vocal performance that’s just been locked into pitch by autotune. I thought about that a lot while recording vocals for the EP.
Charli XCX – Unlock It
My Angel Goes Before Me took ages to get right. It started off as this emo dancehall-ish beat and went through so many different iterations but it always felt clunky to me. At one point I was basically like ‘what would Charli and AG Cook do’, listened to Unlock It and ended up stripping back the beat a whole lot and just letting it glide along, which is just what it needed.
Deftones – Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)
I was obsessed with this song for ages and it was a big tone-setter when I was starting to work on the EP. Everything is so raw and messy but it’s so beautiful and evocative at the same time, and the breakdown riff with the blown out guitars and Chino’s absolutely alien screeches is so cathartic.
Switchfoot – Meant To Live
I think post-grunge isn’t remembered very fondly, but as someone who was 12 in 2004 I have such a big soft spot for this kind of slick pop rock with heavy grunge guitars. I always loved the way Switchfoot made these heavy riffs so melodic and I think that’s still a big influence on the way I write guitar parts (for example in Brine), and even other things like basslines.
Arca – Desafío
Arca is one of my favourite artists ever and has had a huge impact on me in the last several years since I discovered her music. I think her vocal parts here are so interesting – the melodies are strange and dramatic in a way that I find very emotional, and I wanted to try and explore my own version of that.
TWICE – TT
The vocal melodies in this song are so playful and fun to the point of having this strangely ASMR quality to me which, similarly to Immaterial and Desafío, made me want to explore ways of singing that help me connect more to the song and also to my body. The way all the weird percussive vocal accents in TT are still part of the melodies really inspired the way I ended up singing Drown.
Ariana Grande – Into You
Dangerous Woman has been a continual reference point for me since it was released, I just think it’s such a perfectly produced album. The bridge in Brine was inspired by the bridge in Into You – I wanted to create that kind of huge moment where the beat drops away and there’s just these big cymbal hits.
Mitski – Your Best American Girl
This song was a big influence on What If You Don’t, which is probably really obvious once you know although the sonic similarity wasn’t entirely intentional. What If You Don’t also relates to issues stemming from having a diasporic background. It’s a different story from Your Best American Girl but I think the rawness of Mitski’s lyrics gave me courage to write about those feelings in that way.
My Chemical Romance – Famous Last Words
I have to include My Chemical Romance here – the way Gerard Way seems to approach album writing like world-building and it's been a huge influence on how I approached this EP. Especially on The Black Parade, everything is so grand and melodramatic, it’s full of theatrical characters and cheeky references, but ultimately it all feels really sincere and personal. Famous Last Words as the climactic moment of that album is still so powerful to me.
