Track By Track: The Grogans on their New LP 'Find Me A Cloud'

Melbourne/Naarm garage-pop and roots rock outfit The Grogans have released their fourth album, Find Me A Cloud. It follows last year’s Which Way Is Out, and is again released via local indie label Cousin Will Records. Band members Quin Grunden, Jordan Lewis and Angus Vasic worked on the album with engineer Jasper Jolley at Big Fridge Recordings on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula.

The Grogans will launch Find Me A Cloud with a comprehensive UK and European tour throughout October and November – learn more here. To coincide with its release, The Grogans tell Music Feeds about the album’s creation and why it’s their favourite release to date.

The Grogans: Find Me A Cloud

The Grogans: Find Me A Cloud is an album that has felt a little different to other albums we’ve written in the sense that we had an idea of where we wanted to take it. Other times it has been whatever tracks we had ready to go. No concepts or themes but more of an auditive aesthetic that we dive into headfirst. It feels a little truer to ourselves and nostalgic than previous albums. We wanted to draw inspiration from the past whilst never trying to recreate it.

We decided to go and record all the drums and guitars live down with our great friend Jasper at Big Fridge Recordings. I think this is where we really found the sound for the album. Big Fridge is a beautiful one-room, rustic studio, which has been converted from an old coolroom on an apple farm in Ocean Grove. It really felt like home for us. We then took the tracks back to our studio to build upon the foundations.

The album is filled with honest and relatable lyrics, although some may come across as cryptic. Some tracks are heavier rock’n’roll and others slow and perpetual. Hopefully something for everyone.

1. Hey Ma’am

The Grogans: This track came about really naturally and we pretty much had the structure after the first time mucking around with it. We tried getting a couple of classic guitar tones and just making it a bit of an old school rock-n-roll track. Short and sweet.

The lyrics are describing a bad relationship where the man is expecting his partner to do things for him that he’s perfectly capable of doing himself. And although the lyrics don’t get that far, the story goes that she boots him out the door and lives her best life without him.

2. Overheat

The Grogans: This is a track about our cars and driving them on really hot days. We started out with the music before the lyrics. We were just sitting on the chords and went through a few different variations before we liked the sound and changes. “Summer heat” were the first lyrics that came out and we stopped and said we should write it about our Kingswoods.

The rest of the lyrics came pretty naturally as they were just drawn from memories of driving the old thing through 40-plus degree days. I like how the music complements the vocals and vice versa. They are both pretty drivey and punchy through the verses then quite melodic and drawn out through the chorus.

3. I Cannot Read Your Mind

The Grogans: This track started as an instrumental jam and the lyrics slowly developed over time whilst playing it live. It felt so high-powered and I guess that’s where the line, “I cannot read your mind,” came from – that pure frustration in not being able to understand someone when they aren’t communicating with you in an argument or in general life.

4. Layback

The Grogans: Sometimes the best thing about a weekend is sitting back, chucking on a record and having a few drinks. I can picture the person in this song getting swallowed by their couch with eyes barely open and bottle in hand. We all need to lay back and take it in once in a while.

5. Heads In The Sand

The Grogans: This track has the best of both worlds with its fuzz-heavy, riff-based choruses and its tremolo-rich and open verses. We’d been sitting on the melody for a while before we sat down together and figured out the track as a whole and added a little bridge and some outro vocals. The track is essentially about being fed up with people you don’t necessarily need, who have a negative impact on you and knowing that you’ll be better off without them.

6. Can’t Stand

The Grogans: I went down a little bit more of a personal route with this track lyrically. I sometimes find myself being the person I want to be in my head but when it comes to a situation or conversation, I’m not able to convey the side of myself that I want to show. It also dives into the pressures that can be put on a person’s shoulders purely just for existing. Musically, it feels a lot more mature for us and we really enjoyed trying out new sounds for this one.

7. I Need You

The Grogans: This whole track was based around a time when my partner was away for about six months and we spent a fair bit of time talking on the phone rather than texting. I was on a night out seeing some music in Melbourne and ended up in an alley way fairly intoxicated and waiting for a mate. I ended up chatting to my partner, beer in hand and having a ball. It’s basically a song about missing someone but they are still just right there.

8. Nowhere To Be

The Grogans: Ever had nothing to do but still have endless tasks to achieve? Ever had nowhere to be and yet you’re still late for something? Ever been cut in front of in a line or snaked out in the surf? You couldn’t decide to leave or to stay? ‘Nowhere To Be’ is a track rooted in the frustration of day-to-day nothingness and the associated agitation and mental and physical restlessness.

9. Stay High

The Grogans: This song steps into a bit of a fresh genre for us. I really like how raw it came out. We didn’t try to do anything too fancy. The overall feel comes from the music and vocals as a whole rather than a fancy guitar line or drum fills.

Recording at Big Fridge felt really nice on this one. We asked our good friend Jasper to play some pedal steel guitar and I think it adds a really special sound to the track. Lyrically, this song is about getting back in touch and reconnecting with an old friend after being too busy. It’s also about wanting to make a conscious effort to maintain that friendship.

10. I’m Not Sure

The Grogans: This is a simple track about some common struggles surrounding everyday life that I believe all age groups and all people feel. Uncertainty is okay and in some cases, it leads to great things. You just have to step back and let it happen.

11. Day Dreamed

The Grogans: This was the last song we wrote for the album. We were looking for another track with nothing in particular in mind. After sitting down with the guitars and going through a bunch of ideas, we started playing the chord progression for this and got stuck playing it for ages.

We wanted to do something a bit different and just drag it out and experiment with layers to add on throughout the track. Jasper played some more pedal steel on this and we added some organs and synths to sit in the background.

Writing the lyrics for this was pretty cool. Quin and Gus had a verse each and neither knew what the other had written about. Turns out we wrote about similar things and it fit together really nicely. It’s about being away a lot of the time and missing your loved ones back home.