NO CIGAR

Dive Deep with New Album Under the Surface

Interview: Daniel Gray

Aotearoa indie-rock outfit NO CIGAR return in full force with the announcement of their third studio album Under the Surface, due out July 30. Teased by the cruisy yet punchy new single Clean, the release marks a bold new chapter for the five-piece as they explore darker textures, sharpened songwriting, and the chemistry forged on the road. With a headline AU/NZ tour locked in for October and November, the band is ready to share their most dynamic and personal work to date—balancing laid-back charm with newfound sonic grit.

Your last single best behaviour talks about the experience of meeting your new partner's parents for the first time, where did the inspiration for that song come from?

Willy wrote that one a while ago. He had some experiences with his ex-partner, meeting her parents and realizing that you could never really be perfect, and often there is a lot of expectation and nervousness trying to be the best form of yourself. Often the parents have a preconceived idea of what a partner should be or shouldn’t be. So yeah the song really is about trying to be true to yourself and be on your best behaviour, trying to make the best impression possible.

You’ve just come off a massive sold out tour around New Zealand and beyond, has all that touring influenced how you think about or write new music?

Yeah, touring is definitely one of the pinnacles of the process, the hardest part is probably the recording because you are slamming away at the coalface it seems like, for quite a while, in contrast the writing and touring process is super rewarding, creating new material and then hearing it live. But yeah I think touring definitely feeds the creativity as well, we get super tight together and the chemistry is firing on all cylinders, that certainly helps when you park up somewhere, like we were in France that time and we were able to feed of the chemistry created through being so tight for the shows, so touring definitely helps.

Video Clip: Cactus Face ‘Those Hot Summer Night’

Yeah, crazy things happen when you all get in a room together, when people collaborate like that things happen really naturally.

Yeah 100%, that time we had in France in Chantilly was super special, we had a lot of inspiration to draw from being in Europe in this new place and this beautiful house. We had just come off the back of our Parisian show and we had our biggest show to date coming up in London, so we were super excited about that and it was just a super exciting time to be a part of the band, being with your mates in a house completely focused on writing music. That's where the idea of chantilly came from originally with the lyrics “400 bottles better solve something quick” representing the fact we were drinking beers, and felt a little bit of writer's anxiety around whether we’d be able to convert being in that place into writing great music. It definitely felt like a pressure cooker in some ways and I think chantilly was the first song we came away with feeling really proud, that definitely helped release the pressure we felt. We ended up coming away with a whole bunch of material from that project, so being in the room definitely helped, and when you do release the valve the ideas come thick and fast. We also had our producer with us, Connor and he recorded everything even if we forgot it the next day, so we ended up getting about 30 songs from that writing trip alone.

Yeah for sure, and these news songs I’m assuming they’re part of an album or are you just releasing songs spontaneously?

Haha yeah, I don’t know if we’ve announced it but it is going to be apart of our third album, it’s called Under the Surface, which is one of the song titles which we’ll be releasing on the day of the album, it's looking like it will be out in July. There’s 12 tracks that we are putting up for this one, I think it's definitely our best album yet and the first 3 songs have been doing really well on streaming platforms and also when performing them live. On our recent New Zealand tour about a month ago, Chantilly and Problem were the 2 songs out from this record, and they were received really well. It's nice playing new tunes that people respond to immediately especially chantilly, the way that Willy sings and sort of swings those first few lyrics “400 bottles better solve something quick”, when the crowd started singing that straight off the bat, we were like shit, this song goes hard.

That album title has really got me curious, Under the Surface, can you talk briefly into what it's about?

The title came from the song which you will find out about soon, but I feel like there’s a new flavour of No Cigar that comes with this album that hasn’t really been in the first few tracks, there's a sort of darker, heavier side to this album. There’s probably 3 or 4 tracks that go down a slightly rockier, grungier path, it's a flavour that has been floating under the surface for a little while, that’s how I like to think about this album. There are still the elements of the chill rock that we are known for but it's nice to have the new flavour introduced, simmering under there.

Your sound has grown and evolved since the early days, but you still sound like the signature No Cigar, how do you keep evolving without losing what makes you special?

I suppose, to stay true to ourselves. We are only ever writing music that we enjoy and that we feel we would be proud of releasing. We write from a vibe that we have from being in the room together, which evolves. We are definitely different musicians today compared to 4 or 5 years ago, and we are listening to different music as well, different influences internationally and locally. The music is changing, the way we play is changing but the way we feel when we are in the room together stays the same. We are still connected in the same way and enjoy being in each other's presence. Yeah, we write off the vibe in the room, and if it feels good the music feels good too.

NO CIGAR AUSTRALIA / NZ TOUR DATES

TICKETS

Thursday 23 October Mo’s Desert Clubhouse Gold Coast

Friday 24 October The Brightside Brisbane

Saturday 25 October Lansdowne Hotel Sydney

Sunday 26 October Stag & Hunter Newcastle

Thursday 30 October Amplifier Perth

Saturday 1 November Night Cat Melbourne

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