Movements & Boston Manor To Rock Adelaide Tomorrow Night…
There’s movement at the manor and all signs are pointing down under, with Southern Californian quartet Movements and British rockers Boston Manor are in the country and ready to rock Lion Arts Factory in Adelaide tomorrow night, their first time back to Australia since 2018!
Reflecting personal changes from a whirlwind five years, Movements realise the full scope of their storytelling, musicianship and vision on their 2020 second full-length album, No Good Left To Give that’s already had over 15 million total global streams. Not only does the music address the emotional push-and-pull of relationships, but it also explores loss, love, mental health, and even sex through a prism of newfound clarity sound-tracked by post-punk grit, alternative expanse, heartfelt spoken word, expansive rock, and subtle pop ambition.
Following the 2016 EP Outgrown Things, the group cemented a singular sound on their 2017 full-length debut, Feel Something. Eclipsing 100 million total global streams by 2021, it immediately connected by way of Daylilly (over 36 million Spotify streams), Full Circle (over 16 million Spotify streams), and Colorblind [over 12 million Spotify streams]. In 2021, Movements released their B-sides 7” which included two new tracks extending the Movements universe organically from songs recorded during the recording sessions for No Good Left To Give.
Movements continue to pack out shows worldwide, closing out 2022 with appearances alongside A Day To Remember, The Used, Magnolia Park and many more. Patrick Miranda (vocals) talks to Hi Fi Way about the Australian tour and the new album out later this year.
You must be feeling really excited about this Australian tour that is happening?
Yeah, super exciting, we can’t wait to be coming back., It has been far to long!
Do those long haul flights get any easier?
Never! It is the one thing that I’m not looking forward to. I hate those long flights, if I am being truly honest I’m dreading the flight the flight for the last month or so. It has only just set in that I would be sitting on flight for about eighteen hours and I’m not looking forward to it. I know it will be worth it in the end and I know we have it better than Boston Manor as their flight is even longer coming from the UK. I can’;t complain to much as I get to hang out in an awesome place and play some great shows. The flight will be a little rough.
Does the friendship with Boston Manor go back a long way and have you toured with them before?
It does, they are truly some of our best friends from music. We met them on Warped tour 2017 here in the States. We were on the smaller stage with all the up and coming bands, emo/ alternative/ punk scene, it was us, Boston Manor, Trophy Eyes, Knocked Loose, Creeper, all these smaller up and coming bands and we met them through that becoming very close. They joined us on our first US major headliner, they were our direct support and that was in 2018 or early 2019. Last year, we joined them for their most recent UK headline tour and we were direct support for them. We had so much fun on both of those tours that we decided that we would have to do this again. It makes to much sense for this group of people to tour together so we decided to do some overseas stuff like this co-headliner in Australia. We could not be more excited for it, it will be great.
Do you flip a coin or arm wrestle to decide who goes on in what order?
We’ll split it fifty-fifty, that’s the thing that Boston Manor have grown consistently so similarly together there is no quote unquote saying who the bigger band is. At the end of the day we have certain strengths, weaknesses and whatever we’re all pretty neck and neck. We always try and do it fair and switch off each night, there’s no ego or weird shit like that. We’re totally happy to share that headlining spot with them as both bands deserve it.
The take away message is to get there early so you don’t miss either band.
Absolutely, make sure you get there early.
Are you looking at playing both albums in full on this tour?
Prior to the tour I wasn’t sure we had totally worked out our set list but I’m assuming it will be most of the bangers from both of our records so far. Obviously we’ll play all of our hits that people will want to hear, there will be some deep cuts, there won’t be any new music this time around because our new record does not come out until later this year. We don’t want to give away anything to soon. It will be the hits for sure, expect the hits, everything you want, nothing you don’t!
What is it that you love most about touring Australia?
We have been in the dead of winter here in Los Angeles, nothing but cold and rain for the last three weeks, there’s snow all over the mountains here, which is pretty uncommon for Los Angeles. I’m looking forward to being in some sunny, warm climate and hopefully be able to go to the beach. Last time we were there in Australia it was winter so the beach was not an option. I’m very much looking forward to it being an option this time. On top of that as well we have a lot of friends in Australia that I’m looking forward to seeing, we had a lot of great food last time over there, we’re just going to enjoy our time and treat it like a mini-vacation.
Is there an element of making up for lost time with all the touring this year and getting reacquainted with fans again?
Absolutely, yeah! That was a concern of ours going in to it that we had not been to Australia in such a long time. Are people still going to care? Do we still have a buzz? Do we still have a little hype surrounding our name out there? Will people want to come out to these shows? Post-covid touring, the climate of the music scene and everything in general has been so different. It is pretty unpredictable and hard to say what it is going to be like. So far, we’ve been very excited and happy with the ticket sales we have been seeing on this tour has been great. We’re just excited to just be out there in Australia again and be able to connect with those fans. Hopefully we don;t have to wait another five years before the next time we come back.
Is the new album coming out later this year the silver lining for the band coming out of covid?
What’s funny is that we didn’t spend any of our covid time writing music at all. Our thing was that we took 2019 off, pretty much the entire year, we did one tour in 2019 and spent that year writing our recent record No Good Left To Give with the intention being in Spring 2020 of dropping that album and being out on the road non-stop. Obviously that didn’t happen, it was a little bit of a set back for us because if we had been able to tour that record we would be a little further along in our career right now but who is to say. It was a bummer but we had all this down time and we had already taken so much down time and now we are being forced to take more down time. The record we are putting out this year, what inspired it was seeing that post-covid touring climate, understanding what songs off our latest record were working and what songs weren’t necessarily working from a crowd perspective and applying that to how we wrote and recorded the new record. We spent a total of three months last year writing and recording in Pennsylvania. We wrote the record from the ground up in the studio and focused on high energy, in your face, fun, catchy music that would do really well in a live setting while still having the emotion that has always been typical of Movements tracks. I’d say that was the inspiration more than lock down itself but more so what came afterwards.
Does anything inspire that or do you put it down to being better musicians and song writers?
I would say both, that is a big part of it, we’re constantly growing and evolving, our tastes are always changing musically even from what we consume on a daily basis. Applying that to as we grow, our own band’s music has been more transformative more than anything because we are doing so many new things that we wouldn’t have thought to do or being capable of doing in the past. I think one of the things we tried to stay away from this time around was writing music specifically for the intention of it connecting with someone on some deep emotional level. I think there were songs on the last record that we wrote specifically for that heavy factor that was going to pull on heart strings and be a relatable thing and be about mental health, relationships or whatever.
I think one of our big things was to stop pandering to that side of what we do from this record and really start focusing more on the sonic experience and the songs themselves, letting them speak for themselves for what they are instead of being a thing where the content of what the song is saying is what’s driving it. That’s not to say though that these songs aren’t rich with content that is, in my opinion, relatable to people. When I’m sitting there writing songs and saying we should write about this because it is going to get an impact or be impactful, that was very much a no-no for us on this record. We wrote what we wanted to write and whatever the song tells us it is going to be about is what is going to be about.
Is it hard to keep a lid on the excitement for this new record?
Oh my god, it is so hard! I’ve never been more excited about a record ever. I think by far it is our best work, sonically and song writing wise there is so much energy and so much fun on the record, there’s so much to look forward to. I just want it to be out right now and want everybody to be able to hear it. Forcing ourselves to be patient has been frustrating for sure but at the end of the day we are super excited and can’t wait for people to hear it.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch Movements and Boston Manor in Adelaide tomorrow night at Lion Arts Factory, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
