It’s been a hell of a few years for Between You & Me.
Since the release of their explosive 2021 album ‘Armageddon’, the Aussie pop-punkers have embarked on a month-long US run with State Champs, sold-out a hometown show in Melbourne, and racked up over 15 million global streams. Riding an ever-growing wave of momentum, the five-piece have also kickstarted their 2024 on the road – an environment that now feels like their second home – smashing their first ever headline runs in both the UK and the States.
With such a packed-out schedule, it’s been a while since we’ve heard new music from Between You & Me, but their recent whirlwind of chaos is captured in style on brand new EP, ‘SH!T YEAH’. The band’s first independent release since 2016, across six high-energy songs guided by a newfound freedom they’re serving up a euphoric reminder to embrace fun, no matter what weights may try to drag you down.
At the start of their vibrant new chapter, Rock Sound caught up with vocalist Jake Wilson and bassist James Karagiozis to talk about the future of Between You & Me…
ROCK SOUND: You’ve had a huge start to the year with your debut UK headline tour, as well as your first headline run in the US. How are you holding up?
JAMES: “We’re near the end of this two-month run now, and we’re feeling a bit dishevelled, but also very fulfilled. We were a bit scared at the start of the year, especially coming into the US tour straight after the UK run. The UK shows were insane, and we didn’t expect them to go as well as they did. After that, we didn’t know how the US was going to look, but every show here has been insane too. It’s been a fun time.”
JAKE: “We’ve been away for two months though, and I’m excited to be back in my own bed. I can’t wait to be back in our own country where the bread isn’t full of sugar, and we don’t have to worry about international transaction fees and conversion rates.”
JAMES: “I swear that we’re very stoked to be a touring band though!”
RS: It’s been a few years since ‘Armageddon’, and a lot has changed for this band since then. Your upcoming EP ‘SH!T YEAH’ is your first independent release since 2016…
JAMES: “I’m scared of everyone else having their hands on our stuff, and we don’t trust anyone anymore. We basically said, ‘Fuck everyone else, we’re going to do it ourselves’. If we go down in flames, so be it.”
JAKE: “There was a bit of a public feud going on for a bit where we got a reputation of hating record labels. That’s not true, some labels are nice. We know that they’re just doing their job, we just didn’t particularly like the one that we were with. It’s totally in the past, and business is business. We can keep crying about it, or we can just try and be better. Why not just release music ourselves and see what happens?”
JAMES: “It seems to be the way of the world now. A lot of bands are independent, and a lot are keeping their masters for themselves and making a lot of money from it. It feels like we’ve been an independent band the whole time, to be honest. No one ever told us what we needed to do, or what we can and can’t do. Now, the risk is a bit higher, but the rewards are fruitful.”
RS: Is it harder to get that motivation going when you haven’t got someone telling you what to do?
JAKE: “Oh yeah. We started recording this EP in March 2023, and I didn’t finish the vocals until November.”
RS: Did that play into the decision to focus on putting out an EP rather than setting your sights on album three?
JAKE: “We’ve been busy, and everyone has been doing their own thing. We needed to put out some music, so we just got together to see what happened instead of fully committing to a third record.”
JAMES: “We went into the writing of this EP with the idea that there’s nothing that we shouldn’t try and do. Whatever idea we had in the studio, that’s what we ended up putting down on the songs. We saw it as an experiment to see where it could go into the future. We’ve got these six tracks, and across them is a little bit of everything. There was a hell of a lot of creativity that went into it.”
You worked with Sam Guaiana again on these songs, who produced ‘Armageddon’ too…
JAKE: “I’ll be honest, I don’t really care who we work with as long as I like spending time with them.”
JAMES: “We had blocked out a bit of time to write together, and it just worked out that we could fly Sam to Australia at the same time. The team that we had on ‘Armageddon’ really helped shape that record, so it was cool to get back in the studio together with them. We recorded in a house that we’d rented out, and it was just a case of hanging out and seeing what happened.”
JAKE: “We booked this time to write and record, but it was more like a little therapeutic holiday.”
JAMES: “It was a very relaxing time. We weren’t putting any stress on ourselves; we were just playing golf and being lazy as fuck!”
So, it was just a case of taking it easy, spending time with one another, and letting the creative juices flow whenever they came…
JAKE: “When we got to the house, we picked the room that looked like the best to set up our music gear in. Once that was done, we knew where we were going to record when we were ready, but we headed straight to the golf course. That’s what we focused on, so there was no pressure.”
JAMES: “So much of our writing process is catered around how much fun we can have, but the writing happens eventually.”
JAKE: “Musically, those ideas came quite quickly, but the pressure was on me to write lyrics. I was feeling lazy and uninspired.”
JAMES: “We recorded all the music, then gave Jake six months to finish the lyrics. To be honest, going into the process we were all quite empty of ideas. We had one or two pieces that we wanted to work on, so we just went from there. The vocals were left up to whatever popped into Jake’s mind, or whoever’s life he wanted to live vicariously through at the time. I feel like people might want to take some meaning from this EP, but we just wanted to have fun with it.”
RS: ’SH!T YEAH’ is obviously a continuation of the band you were on ‘Armageddon’, but it also feels like the start of something completely new. You’ve got that pop-punk sound down now, but these songs dive into sonic territories you’ve never had a chance to explore before…
JAKE: “Musically, now we can do whatever sound feels right on the day. When we’ve recorded stuff before, we were encouraged to be more pop-punk. Now though, pop-punk is probably the last thing we’d all listen to in our spare time. This EP steers away from that, and I think that’s the direction record three and record four will take too.”
JAMES: “We’re still going to play pop-punk songs, but we want to mix it in with some other stuff. We want our live show to be as much of a journey as possible, and sticking in one lane isn’t going to help us achieve that. We all love different types of music, so we decided to take the risk on this one and put in some weird stuff. It’s different from what we’ve put out before, but it’s still fucking rock and roll.”
That freedom has led to six of the biggest songs you’ve ever written. How did it feel to listen back to the mixes for the first time?
JAKE: “Amazing, because we know what we do best now. We’re at our peak when we’re writing songs like ‘Nevermind’ that are full of fun and energy, and we love writing stuff like that. We write songs with our live show in mind, and every time we’re working on a track, we’re focused on making it sound as big as possible.”
JAMES: “We are all album people, but doing an EP was interesting. We weren’t going into this process trying to beat ‘Armageddon’, and that helped us. I didn’t think we’d ever go back to EPs, but it’s given us a new lease to move in any direction going forward. We tested everything out, and now we can go and write a record that takes us wherever we want.”
RS: Knuckle Puck’s Joe Taylor also makes a guest appearance on ‘Kill My Vibe’. You guys toured together last year, so did that feel like a natural collaboration?
JAMES: “We’ve talked about doing features on previous releases, but everyone we thought of we didn’t really know. From the moment we clicked with Joe, we knew we wanted to get him on a song. As soon as we had ‘Kill My Vibe’, we sent him a DM and he was down.”
JAKE: “It’s nice, because typically in music people will agree to do features as your friends, but then behind the scenes they’ll be expecting $20,000.”
JAMES: “One thing that we’ve noticed whilst touring is that some musicians are in this because they really love music, but some are fakes. We clicked with Knuckle Puck instantly because they’re here to have fun, and that’s what music is for us too. Of course, you have to make money so that you can keep doing it, but ultimately we’re here because we love music. We don’t put a lot of emphasis on anything except us having a good time.”
RS: Having had the chance to embrace different influences and push the limits of Between You & Me’s sound, are you coming out of this EP as a more confident band?
JAKE: “When we played ‘In The Middle’ at our London show, it was insane how many people were singing along. It took me nine months to finish that song but knowing that people love it makes it all worth it. We know what we’re good at now, and we know what people like to hear from us. It’s got me thinking about record three, and I’m feeling so inspired after watching live music every day for two months. I’m ready for an album now, so maybe next year.”
JAMES: “Hopefully next year, but I hope that everyone enjoys this EP in the meantime. We’re very much an upbeat party vibe band, and we’ve achieved that on these songs better than we ever have before.”
‘SH!T YEAH’ is out now.
