Safety First To Launch Their Debut EP ‘Why Is Being Successful So Hard?’

Making a splash in 2023 with their unquenchable thirst for creating dream-pop driven earworms, Eora/ Sydney sweethearts, Safety First release their debut EP Why Is Being Successful So Hard?, alongside focus track Drinks. Lifted from one of the band’s most tongue-in-cheek lyrics, the five-track EP is a dazzling display of the unique personalities that make up Safety First – combining tangled guitar lines with heart-swelling melodies and the searing wit of singer Lexi Green.

Including the hilariously charming, Haircut, the romantic satire of Office Romance and the more sombre natured focus track, Drinks, Safety First are radiant across their debut, showcasing a dynamic blend of confidence and vulnerability. Drawing inspiration from unattainable work crushes to the simplicities of rose-coloured fame and fortune, Lexi seems to have a sitcom-style setting for every situation, complete with an eccentric cast of characters to deliver the dialogue. The band give Hi Fi Way greater insight to their new EP.

Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the title Why Is Being Successful So Hard?
We took it from the main lyric in Haircut, and it was also the first lyric I wrote for that song. It kinda came out of nowhere, and we thought it was pretty funny, like we were pretending to be famous or something, but it’s the kind of fame you would buy from Kmart. And later when we needed a title for the EP something about that line really felt like it tied all the songs together.

What were the biggest hurdles with writing and recording?
I think for this EP the hardest part was having no idea what we were doing when we started recording. Our first session was in 2020, and at that time I could barely sing and neither me nor Zac had ever produced a song before. So yeah, the EP was made with us learning as we went along. There were so many false starts and dead ends, so much had to be rerecorded and COVID cancelled a lot of our recording days as well. Getting all the tracks finished felt like this distant, fragile dream that could collapse to anything, and at times I was scared to believe it could really happen. But it was SO satisfying when we got that final master for the last song (2 weeks before release lol).

Outside of music, what else served as an inspiration for this EP?
Mostly it’s just the lives of me and my friends, living in sharehouses, going to house parties, trying to figure out how to talk to people and even maybe date them – I imagine I’m like a narrator/protagonist in a teen comedy movie, and I’m just deadplan narrating the plot to whoever happens to be watching. Sometimes I’ll let the internal monologue go somewhere weird, because that can be pretty funny. Other times I’ll dream up another world where I’m someone completely different, like a celebrity (Haircut) or a corporate drone (Office Romance). Some days a random word or phrase will enter my head, or something will come out of a random conversation, and I’ll write it down and try and put it into a song if it fits.

Is there a particular moment / lyric that stands out the most across these six tracks?
“I went out to the garden and it’s fucked”

Is there anything else that inspires your music? (Fashion, art, photography, etc?)
Definitely books and movies, I love comparing the people in my life to different characters, and I will look out for book/TV/movie tropes EVERYWHERE in my daily life. I’ve always done this and it can go anywhere from happy daydreaming to coping mechanism lol. Sometimes I’ll be out somewhere I don’t fit in and I’ll be kinda bored and I’ll just start narrating all the dumb shit that’s going on inside my head. That’s pretty much what “Drinks” is.

What do you all do when you’re not creating music together?
We love going out to see other bands! And going op shopping as well. We aren’t THAT stereotypically Inner West though, I promise. Tom has an office job and makes weird tiktoks that don’t make any sense but I think they’re hilarious. Zac, Lauren and Oscar are all working musicians and play at a lot of corporate gigs and weddings, they play other originals gigs as well and we’ll often end up at each others’ shows. When I’m not doing band stuff I teach piano, and I also like to read, take photos and draw.

Describe a typical Safety First live show.
We will usually have some weird gimmick we come up with a few days before (for one show we got people to put their “real life diary entries” into a box and I read them out on stage). Also we’ll always sign postcards with a photo of us for all our friends who come. There is a LOT of stage banter, this started because we needed to pad out the set since we didn’t have enough songs, but people really enjoy it so we still do it even though we have a full set now. And when we play we do it with as much energy as possible, we all enjoy it so much.

What’s on for the rest of 2023?
We have our EP Launch show (August 23rd at The Vanguard) which we’re sooo keen for. We’ll be playing some supports later in the year as well. Aside from that we’ll be writing and recording some new songs which we’ve been sitting on for a while!

Interview By Dean Valentino

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