Today (November 20), Australian indie rockers Floodlights announce their third album ‘Underneath’, sharing high-spirited new single ‘Cloud Away’ to coincide – check out the song and NME’s interview with them below.
The quintet have announced the album, out March 21, 2025 via [PIAS] Recordings, while in the middle of a UK & European tour in support of 2023’s raw, introspective second album ‘Painting of My Time’. It’s a return trip for Floodlights after a three-month jaunt last year, and has included festival stops at Mutations Fest and Pitchfork Paris, plus a sold-out stop at London’s 100 Club.
Floodlights wrote ‘Underneath’ between home in Melbourne and the road. “All the touring we did last year, all the writing we did on those tours, the different places we played and people we met really influenced these songs. It’s been quite a metamorphic period for all of us,” singer and guitarist Louis Parsons told NME. “A lot of intense stuff happened on that last [UK & Europe] tour.”
That intensity hangs heavy on the forthcoming album’s first single, ‘Can You Feel It’, a sharp-toothed post-punk burner that arrived in October. On today’s new track ‘Cloud Away’, by contrast, there’s a distinct brightness that shines through, with arpeggiated synths flitting over jangly guitars and robust drums, plus vocals from newest member Sarah Hellyer on the chorus. Floodlights are rounded out by Ashlee Kehoe, Archie Shannon and Joe Draffen. Watch the ‘Cloud Away’ video below:
With its flashes of the Go-Betweens, ‘Cloud Away’ is a moment of light that Parsons said is a deliberate counterpoint to some of the darker moments on ‘Underneath’.
“We wanted that song to be different,” he said. “We wanted something that was upbeat and poppy – and could sort of shock you out of some of the other songs [on the record].”
“It’s a song about hope and how even in the lowest times we find a way to navigate our way out of those kinds of feelings,” he explained. “We use projections of the future to lift ourselves up and out of the present.”
Floodlights ‘Underneath’ album artwork. Credit: Press
The tracklist of Floodlights’ ‘Underneath’ is:
1. ‘Alive (I Want To Feel)’
2. ‘Cloud Away’
3. ‘JOY’
4. ‘Buoyant’
5. ‘Horses Will Run’
6. ‘This Island’
7. ‘Can You Feel It’
8. ‘Melancholy Cave’
9. ‘Suburbia’
10. ‘The Light Won’t Shine Forever’
11. ‘5AM’
Both ‘Cloud Away’ and ‘Can You Feel It’ showcase the band’s turn towards more layered, textural songwriting, evolving an impulse they explored on ‘Painting of My Time’ – which NME named one of the best Australian albums of 2023 and earned an Australian Music Prize nomination – while retaining the passionate grit of 2021 debut ‘From a View’.
Developing the atmospheric soundscapes within each song feels like as much a priority for the band as the emotive storytelling that carries them.
“We put a lot of weight on our live show, and it’s hard to translate that to a recorded track, but we tried to get as close as we can with dynamics and different layers, trying to accentuate the emotion in the lyrics,” Parsons explained. “It’s also important to know when to suck everything in and be intimate and vulnerable.”
‘Underneath’ was produced by former Drones guitarist Dan Luscombe, whom Parsons credits for the more expansive soundscapes that appear on the album. While ‘Painting of My Time’ was recorded over three days with engineer Nao Anzai, the band spent more than a week on ‘Underneath’, slowly building up songs from their foundations.
Image: Nicholas Green
“Rather than just doing live recordings like we have in the past, we did a bit of a skeleton track and then started to lay overdubs on top of that. We wanted to try something else, we hadn’t ever really done that before,” Parsons said. “It was layering in a really intricate way, and seeing how detailed we could get with the songs.”
That layered approach suits the expansive subject matter of Floodlights songs. ‘Painting of My Time’ was an unflinching snapshot of the world and history that surrounds the band. With the new album, they continue to apprehend “how we see the world we’re living in and how we process”, Parsons said.
“I feel like, organically, we pushed out these songs that are quite different from each other. But thematically, there’s a lot of connection between them.”
‘Underneath’ is set for release on March 21, 2025 via [PIAS] Recordings and can be pre-ordered here. Check out the remaining dates of Floodlights’ ongoing UK/Europe tour below and find ticket info here.
NOVEMBER
20 – Poznan, Poland, Pod Minoga
21 – Warsaw, Poland, VooDoo
22 – Bratislava, Slovakia, Kacecko
25 – Milan, Italy Arci Bellezza
27 – Rotterdam, Netherlands, Rotown
28 – Brussels, Belgium, Pilar
29 – Amsterdam, Netherlands, Paradiso
30 – Cologne, Germany, MTC
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