Anyone who needs to let some energy out should listen to pop punk, but everyone, regardless of whether they listen to pop punk or not, should listen to Stand Atlantic. Tying threads between genre, metal elements, and alt-pop, the Sydney, AUS-based act hasn’t been shy about taking risks in their sound over the years they’ve been a band. With vocalist Bonnie Fraser fronting the group, additionally made up of guitarist David Potter, bassist Miki Rich, and drummer Jonno Panichi, the four decided that with their fifth full-length studio album, they would try to revisit elements of their first record, only with the experience and hindsight that one could only acquire through the years of grit and dedication it took to get them to the point they’re at now. All that knowledge led them to GODBREATH: a hint of their debut Skinny Dipping, with Fraser’s more uplifting messaging, made for everyone, not just pop-punk fans. Hit Parader got the chance to chat with Fraser about their new LP, set to be released on 10/23, everything that went into it, and how feeling free to write whatever she wanted led the band to their most freeing project to date.
Hit Parader: So congrats on GODBREATH coming out!
Bonnie Fraser: Thank you!
HP: I read that you said you went into this album knowing that you were happy and having a great time. So you were going to lean into that instead of trying to manufacture some other feelings. I’d love for you to take me through that mindset shift and how that changed the way you approached lyricism on the record.
BF: Basically, I think the reason that it feels more poignant in this record that I lent into happier feelings is just based on the fact that with Was Here, I was feeling nothing, and I was really not in a good place at all. That really hindered my ability and my love for writing, and that was really scary for me because, obviously, if I can’t write, then this whole thing just doesn’t exist. So that was really scary and eye-opening, and it made me really get rid of these things in my life that were causing me to feel this numbness and whatever, and just get myself back, basically. And so, going into this record, I had cured my writer’s block. I felt like I was on fire, and I felt like I was so back, and I was just really invigorated by the whole thing, and I was just really genuinely excited. It felt like it was our first record all over again, and I was just super stoked to be doing the thing that I’ve always loved doing. And it felt like I had my mojo back. So instead of trying to force something that is not what I’m feeling, really, and yes, I had experiences in that time that were sad or whatever, and obviously I’ve pulled from those as well in certain songs. But I mean, that’s what I’ve always done, anyways. But in terms of the whole landscape of my brain, I feel like I’m not even a different person, but I’m the old me again. So I wanted to embrace that, and if I was feeling happy, I’m like, “Fuck it, I’m not gonna force anything.” I think I need to just lean into it and stop being afraid to write love songs or songs that are just genuinely feel-good. And I wanted the whole record to just feel like, obviously, the world is a crazy place right now. There are a lot of things going on that are really shitty, and I want this record to be something that people can just put on in their fucking car, go down the highway or the freeway, whatever you guys call it, and drive into the sunset and listen to this record and just be like, “You know what? These are so bad at the moment.” And that’s, yeah. I feel like it all just stems from the fact that instead of denying happy and positive feelings, I’m just trying to embrace them, I guess.
HP: And it would be doing yourself a sense of disservice to try and conform to a preconceived notion of what you thought you should have written about, rather than just being true to yourself in that sense.
BF: Yeah, and I feel like I’ve felt the real impact of trying to force something and it just not working. It just doesn’t work. At least for me, I don’t like it. And yeah, I feel like I’ve really tried to practice what I preach with this band, which is that we’re always just going to be real, and we’re just going to keep it real. Not going to try and force anything that doesn’t feel genuine to us, and I feel like fans and an audience can sniff that out in a second if you’re trying to be something crazy and not you. So it’s just easier if you just stick to what you are good at and what you really are feeling.
HP: And then you don’t have to have any guard up. You don’t have to think about what you’re doing or anything. It just makes it easier.
BF: Yeah, dude. Even interviews just make it easier. I can literally just tell the truth. It’s pretty crazy.
HP: With the record being, in your words, more honest even than previous records, what does being honest in a standalone song mean to you now? And has that evolved in any way in your mind?
BF: I wouldn’t say it’s more honest, because I feel like I’ve always tried to be honest in what I’m writing. But I use this analogy for this record that it feels like, when we did this record, it feels like the equivalent of if you could go back and do high school all over again, but with the brain you have now, and you’d be like, “I’m not even getting bullied. This is crazy. I can just show anyone up. I literally don’t care about anything.” It feels the same way. It’s like you’re doing something that is still the same thing you’ve always done, but you’re looking at it through a lens of growth and experience, and I feel like I’ve personally grown so much as a songwriter, and doing this just felt so natural. And yeah, I don’t know. It felt like I was being honest in a different kind of way. And I think my lyrics have also evolved since then as well. I used to wrap everything in a metaphor. Every single line would be a metaphor, and I’m like, “Man, how does anyone even actually relate to this? I don’t actually know, but it’s sick that they do.” And I think since then, I’ve realized that I was still hiding in those, I think, and now I feel like I can just be a bit more straightforward and brutal, and still try to be clever in the lyrics and stuff. But overall, I just think it’s a more honest version in the sense that I think other people are gonna figure out what the hell I’m actually singing about and can relate to it more easily, I think.
HP: I feel like the more transparency in the lyricism and the way that you’re phrasing things is also a testament to learning throughout the last couple of records and understanding where honesty is needed and just growing from that as a whole, I guess.
BF: Yeah, 100%. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I love that.
HP: I’m such a fan of almost brutally honest lyricism.
BF: Yeah. Dude, bands like Modern Baseball and shit like that, I’m just like, “You are literally just saying it how it is.” And I grew up on that kind of thing too. Sometimes the shortest, most basic fucking line is the one that hits the hardest, just because it’s so fucking raw, and you’re like, “Bro.”
HP: Go to the recording process and the writing process. What were some of the easier songs on the record that you wrote, and some of the ones that were harder? And where did the album title fit in?
BF: Oh, the album title always feels like just a whole separate fucking kettle of fish every time someone upstairs changes album titles for our records. But it’s never really that much of a story because it’s always just something that just comes to my head, and then I’m like, “Oh yeah,” and I chuck it away for a bit, and then I always come back to it. And I feel like usually I have the title before most of the songs are written, which is crazy. “Favorite Flavor” was the one that pretty much had; we had to rewrite the chorus because I never even liked that, anyways. But that’s pretty much a whole song I just had. It was the one that got me out of my writer’s block, basically. I wrote it, and I was like, “Where the fuck did that come from? So sick. Thank you, Lord.” And I didn’t really think that much of it. I just felt it was a monumental little moment for myself, and I felt really proud that I finally got out of my writer’s block. So I’d say that one came first, technically. But if you want to actually be super technical, “Finger” was a voice memo I wrote in 2018 or something, and I had always held onto it because I was like, “I know there’s something in this, but I don’t feel like we’re ready to write this song yet.” And I whipped it out for this record because I was like, “I feel like this is the one that we’ll actually know what to do with it this time.” And yeah, that one, it’s crazy. I don’t know. I feel like I wrote that in an RV when we were on Sad Summer for the first time ever. I think it was one of our first big US tours, and yeah, I just wrote it on the RV. So I don’t know. It has a little special place in my heart.
HP: It’s got to be an interesting conversation with yourself to revisit something so long after, though, right?
BF: Yeah, it is. But it’s just crazy. I just feel like it’s always come to my head. It’s just one of those voice notes I just never forgot about, and I think there’s something in that, always. I’ll never deny that, and so, yeah, it always made me want to go back to it. But I held onto the reins a little bit. I was like, “I’m not going to show anyone until we’re ready to run.” And it just so happened that I was at a time in my life when those lyrics really, really actually meant something to me. And I was like, “Fuck. Okay, I can actually extend on this and turn this into something that I’m feeling.” So it was really cool in that sense. And the ones that came later, I’m trying to think of one. I think all the ones we kept on the record were the ones that all just came pretty easily because I think we’ve done this enough times that we know if we’re trying to sit on or rewrite a chorus 100 different times, it just makes you hate the song. So this time, I think we just took what we were given in the sense of whatever was feeling good and flowing well and was coming easily; that’s what we ran with. So yeah, I actually don’t think there was a particularly challenging song to write on this record, which is also crazy to think about because I feel like we’ve always had that one song.
HP: It’s a fantastic feeling to have, coming out of a record and being like, “Everything flowed so naturally,” right?
BF: Yeah, but then there’s also that part of me that’s like, “Did we work hard enough, then? What the fuck? What the hell?”
HP: I mean, it shouldn’t be a symbol of whether you worked hard enough. A testament to just how streamlined your writing process was at the time.
BF: I feel like we had more of a vision this time and a direction, and we knew what we wanted out of the song. So if they weren’t fitting that, then we’d move on. But yeah.
HP: Yeah. And I read that you tracked the record live, and I read a quote that you felt like rock was getting boring, in a sense, which I thought was interesting. I don’t want to hold you to anything, but…
BF: No, no, it’s fine. I just feel like our press people brought that up, and they were like, “Maybe you could rephrase it as something else.” And I was like, “Okay, cool. I’ll think of how to rephrase that.” And now it’s just been brought up; that exact quote has just been brought up every single time.
HP: I apologize.
BF: No, no, it’s not your frigging fault. I said it. But no, I am gonna stand on my own fucking business. I do think there’s a lot of boring things in the alternative space right now, and that’s not to say that they’re bad or that people are untalented or anything like that. And there is still really cool music happening in the alternative space. But I think it was more so on a production level, not so much on a songwriting level. But you see technology just taking over, and AI is in here now, and that’s a whole separate conversation. But I think my personal standpoint, instead of creating this political discussion, is that I always just want to go, “Okay, well, we’re a band, and I write songs, and I’m always going to talk about what I feel like. But what’s a more creative way that we can stand up to this instead of just talking about it and rinsing people for using AI or something like that?” There’s got to be a way where we can actually do something productive and help other people feel what we’re feeling, kind of thing. And we just thought, “Let’s go back to just live tracking it,” and it felt like a super ambitious task at the start. We were just like, “Is this going to work? We don’t know, but we may as well try it.” And yeah, it all just came from the fact that I’m just sick of hearing the same drums, and everything is so perfect, and it’s like, this is rock music, and it’s supposed to be angsty. And yes, I’m writing about love songs now, so it doesn’t really make sense in my opinion. But the attitude of rock and alternative music itself is to stand up to bullshit in the world. And how are you going to do that if you’re just suckling on the teat of the computer? I don’t know.
And it’s crazy because we went into this and live-tracked it, obviously, and then you’re thinking, “Oh yeah, we still play to the click, so it’s not even going to be that crazy.” But when you listen to the songs, I feel like you can actually feel something, and you don’t really know what it is, and you can’t really put your finger on it. You can’t point to it and say, “Yeah, that’s why it’s live tracked.” It’s just a feeling, and that’s what I want. I just wanted to bring some feeling back into this genre that is so overcrowded, and it’s a sick genre. It deserves to be kept alive, and I think the only way you can do that is to just keep evolving it. And sometimes you have to look back to do that. And I was putting on old Korn shows and Slipknot and the Blink-182 Big Day Out shows. I was just having them on my TV in the house just to be surrounded by older shit that we all grew up with, and yeah, just immerse myself in that kind of thing. It’s just the first Limp Bizkit. Was it a demo EP or something? And I was like, “This sounds like ass, and I fucking love it.” It’s not produced well. There are no bells and whistles. It’s just straight-up fucking crazy rock or whatever the fuck you want to call it. I don’t know. But yeah, there’s something real about it, and that’s what I was drawn to.
HP: There’s something to latch on to about imperfection and just that human aspect of it. In the world of over-quantized drums and just being able to run whatever you want to call it in a DAW.
BF: I’m glad you agree. Yeah, I think even if people don’t realize they’re feeling like that, I think they will start to very soon. I do think it’s something intrinsic that we have in us, that we’re always going to want human connection. And I think the further away we get with that in music, the less substance we’ll have in it. I don’t know.
HP: To start to wrap up, when listening to the finished product of GODBREATH for the first time, what feels the most similar, either personally, sonically, or anything, to the band that made Skinny Dipping? And what feels, in contrast, the most different, where you don’t really recognize it?
BF: It’s such a weird concept, isn’t it? But I feel the most connected to that person who was writing Skinny Dipping, in the sense that she was so free to just write whatever and didn’t really have any inhibitions in that sense. But me now writing GODBREATH, I felt similarly in the sense that I felt like I was back again because I felt like I lost myself for ages, and then I was almost revisiting that kid that was writing Skinny Dipping. But again, it was like doing high school all over again, where I have the brain I have now. But yeah, I don’t know. That’s a really tough question, but I’d say sonically we’re the closest to Skinny Dipping that we’ve ever been, and it feels like full circle, if anything.
HP: Yeah, you’re getting closer sonically while having the hindsight and knowledge of all that you’ve gone through throughout the entire, I love that.
BF: Yeah, and I feel like a lot of bands or artists do that thing where, maybe not so much these days because I feel like genre is a lot more fluid now. But at least when we were coming up or growing up, you had to stick to your lane, right? And then if you were a pop-punk band or anything, and then you started to go pop, the fans got angry, and then you came back, and you did the revival record of what fans originally loved about you. But I feel like we did that without going anywhere. I feel like we’ve always just been so genre-fluid, anyways, that it didn’t even feel like a back step or anything. It just felt super natural, and it was just our choice. And it wasn’t like we were forced to do this because “If you don’t do this, you won’t sell any records,” or anything like that. I feel like we were and are still in a really good place, and we just naturally decided to go back to our roots. And I think, yeah, that, and then technology and everything also, it all just felt like the stars aligned, and that’s what the fuck we were doing.
HP: Heck yeah, love that. Just to close, how do you want people to experience the record?
BF: It’s going to be the best if you put it on in your car. That’s literally what it was written for, and if you drive with the windows down, with your best friend, your partner, your dog, whatever, in the car, and just drive towards the fucking sun.
Stand Atlantic’s GODBREATH is out 10/23
Presave/stream here.
