Ahead of the release of their brand new single ‘Knots’ on July 10th, we discuss everything you need to know about this hugely ambitious track!
Can you tell us a bit about the back story to ‘Knots’ and how it grew/changed over time?
Knots is a song I have had written for roughly nine or ten years or so. I was really into bands like We Were Promised Jetpacks and There Will Be Fireworks at the time (I still am), so I was playing around with trying to find some chords on the guitar that would sound similar to their jangly-style, happy and upbeat sounds. Once I got started, the overall chord progression and song structure did not take long at all to fall into place, and those aspects have not changed at all since I first started writing the track. However, it took me a long time (probably a couple of years) to finally add some lyrics to it and make it a complete song. I always knew I wanted to have a glockenspiel part in the song (it is a very We Were Promised Jetpacks thing to do), but I didn’t write this melody until about a week before I recorded. I actually had another melody in mind (which was similar to the bassline in the final recording), but when it came to me actually playing it, I was struggling to keep up with the pace of the song, so I tried something a bit simpler which turned out to be way better than what I originally planned! The only other aspects which were added in the studio that were not part of the original plan were the ‘wah’ section at the end of the song, and the layered backing vocals, which LeeLoo (vocalist) came up with while recording the lead vocals. These really ended up making the climax of the song really soar, so were a great little addition from her.
How does the track compare to anything that you’ve put together before it?
This was probably the first time that I had deliberately set out to emulate a certain sound in my own writing and actually achieved it! With the songs I had written before this, often I would either just stumble across something interesting that I liked while just noodling randomly on the guitar, or I would try and emulate something I had heard, but my ear at the time was not good enough to get anywhere close to it. I would find something interesting nonetheless, but it didn’t really resemble what I was aiming for that well. Lyrically, I had started to notice a pattern with my previous songs that I was using a lot of negative language (i.e. phrasing sentences to use words like don’t, won’t, never, etc.), so with Knots I actively tried to rectify that by using more positive language instead. While it was not totally a success (I couldn’t help myself – I had to use the word ‘won’t’ about a million times in the chorus…), I found that by using positive language, even when describing a negative thing, was so much more powerful and made for a better song overall. So, I like to think of Knots as a song that was really a massive turning point in my songwriting journey as it opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me that I was not skilful enough to access before.
‘Knots’ sounds huge, can you tell us about some of your influences, and if there are any in-particular that have really inspired this track?
Firstly – thank you! We put a lot of effort into making it sound as huge as it does, so glad to hear that came across.
As stated in a response to a previous question, this song was really an attempt to mash together my favourite parts of the sounds of We Were Promised Jetpacks and There Will Be Fireworks all into one track. I love the jangly sounds of songs like ‘Ships With Holes Will Sink’ by WWPJ, or ‘South Street’ by TWBF, and I found a way to flick my wrists when strumming the guitar to replicate these sorts of sounds with just my guitar and amp alone, no extra effects. The glockenspiel is definitely an idea borrowed from these bands too – it just goes so well with this type of music and really helps fill out the track with some extra sweetness and richness. I also love the idea of using odd numbers of things where I can and trying to make them sound continuous and natural (a perfect popular example of this is ‘Everlong’ by Foo Fighters, which is a seven-bar riff, but just feels so natural that you would never even notice it’s missing a bar). As such, using a five-bar chord progression for the chorus was something I was very excited about. Having that extra bar to fill in really opened up the space for the chorus lyrics to roll into each other in a unique way, and very much contributed to making it build into that huge, anthemic sound in the middle of the track.
Can you tell us about the lyrical content that threads its way through the track, and elaborate a bit more on the meaning behind the song?
For a lot of my life, but especially around the time I wrote this song, I struggled with the feeling that I was doing all the right things to achieve the successes I was looking for, only to always fall short at the last hurdle. It didn’t seem to matter what part of my life it was – sport, music, study, work, relationships etc. – I would be trying my best reach the end goal, but just never quite got the job done. I fell a couple of marks short of first-class honours in my university degree. I failed job interviews. I got to the point of recording some tunes with a great singer after a couple of years working together, only to be booted off the project after the first recording session. To this day, I have played in about a dozen grand finals with various sporting teams and still never won a single one! They say it is best to write songs about what you know, so I decided to write a song about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory – one of my few areas of expertise! Being a rock song after all, it seemed obvious to write it about girls (that’s the rules, I only follow them). I loosely based the narrative on a boy chasing a girl in a club, thinking he’s doing well and the girl is into him, only to be rejected at the end of the night. This seemed like a relatable situation to a lot of people, so it felt like a good angle to present my thoughts and feelings from. At the time, I had not long got back from a trip to the UK, and the last club I had been to was an alt rock/emo club called Phlebas in Nottingham, so this ended up rubbing off on the lyrics as well (‘streets of cobblestone’), which was cool to give it a personal touch of nostalgia.
What was the most rewarding part about putting ‘Knots’ together for yourself, and why?
Just hearing from the very first moment of recording that the vision of the song was going to come together perfectly. Knots is one of thirteen songs on the album, Arrows, and of all the songs this was the one which seemed to gel straight away. All the parts just seemed to suit the styles of the musicians playing them seamlessly, and everything sounded spot on and just seemed to work without forcing anything into place. It was the first song we mixed in the studio, and it is still my favourite mix off the whole album – a couple of minor tweaks here and there at the end, but practically nothing significant really changed from that first mix, even after all the lessons we learned while mixing the remaining twelve songs. When I first sent the finished album back to LeeLoo for her to hear the final product, her first remark was ‘Knots is sick’. Hearing that honestly felt like I’d won a gold medal at the Olympics (kind of ironic given what the song is about).
As you’re the brains of the operation, we’re curious to know how long a song like ‘Knots’ takes to record, and put together for yourself? As you do most of it yourself right?
Along with all the other songs on the album, I worked on recording Knots part time for roughly a year at Zen Studios in Sydney, with Geoffrey Lee as the studio engineer helping me out with the technical side of things. I hired a session drummer for three days to come and smash out the drum parts to all the songs first (with just me on guitar as a guide). From there, I recorded all the other instruments myself over the course of a few 4-6 hour sessions to create the full backing track. For Knots, this went super quickly as the parts are relatively simple and I knew them like the back of my hand given I had been playing it in my bedroom for the best part of ten years already. With the exception of the bass, which took a few takes as the song was a bit quicker than I was used to playing that instrument, all the parts went down in one or two takes. From there, the backing track (along with a scratch track of me singing some guide vocals) was sent to LeeLoo, who is based abroad, for her to record the lead vocals in her own time at a studio near her. She sent back the raw vocal files to me, and I then took them back to the studio to input back into the main song file. A couple of mixing sessions with the studio engineer later, the song was done! Once all recording and mixing time was added up, it worked out that I had spent roughly 10 hours per song on average (not including LeeLoo’s time on vocals), however I strongly suspect Knots was a bit less than average as it just seemed to come together a bit easier than some of the other songs.
What do you want ‘Knots’ to do for the representation of My Pet Rhino?
I would love Knots to represent My Pet Rhino’s ability to write fun, catchy, pop-oriented tunes in unconventional ways. There is still so much unexplored territory in popular music styles, yet it seems like a lot of artists seem to stick to a lot of the same rules, conventions and influences that have been popular for many years already. Why does a pop song have to go ‘verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus’ every time to be catchy? Why can’t it go ‘verse, chorus, verse’? Why does the chorus always have to come in louder than the verse? Why can’t it start softer and then build to become louder? I think Knots is a great representation of how to break some of these rules and conventions and still get a good, catchy tune as an end result. Anyone who digs a little deeper into our catalogue from here will find it is littered with other songs that break all sorts of these rules and conventions in their own unique ways. It is a great starting point to explore the diversity of tunes we offer.
What else do you have coming up in 2025?
I would love to head back to the studio to record one more track to release as a single before the end of the year. So, I will be working on a demo for that soon and then hopefully putting it all together not long after that. Watch this space!
Pre-save ‘Knots’!
Instagram
YouTube
