Australian Indie Rock band Atlas Genius are currently in the United States touring alongside Robert DeLong, and continuing to tour throughout September and October in support of their September album release, End of the Tunnel. The album’s title couldn’t be more apt for the band’s experiences waiting years to release the music, and also hoping to finally return to touring after the global pandemic. The band, consisting of Keith Jeffery (lead vocals, guitar), Michael Jeffery (drums), Steven Jeffery (synths/keys), and Dave Green (guitar) have the immense relief of finally bringing the music to fans live, but a number of singles leading up to the album’s arrival have also introduced the new collection to audiences.
The band describes the album’s themes as “Lost love, guilt, passion, a dash of social commentary, existential crises, reckless abandon, and honest self-criticism.” The added secret sauce is probably the ability to assess the state of the world and still find glimmers of hope, particularly via the human spirit itself. Combined with the arrival of End of the Tunnel, Atlas Genius are also celebrating the 11-year anniversary of their debut album, When It Was Now, featuring hit singles “Trojans” and “If So”, which is receiving a special vinyl reissue. I spoke with Keith Jeffery shortly before a show in Pittsburg about the many emotions we find on End of the Tunnel and what still makes him hopeful about the world at large and about the world of music.
It must be a nice feeling that the album has finally come out just a few days ago. Particularly for this album.
Yes, it was a long time coming. I never anticipated it would take four and a half years to finish a record effectively and then finally get it out.
I didn’t realize that it had been completed for so long. Does that create any difference for you, when you approach the songs to play them live on this tour? Do you feel that your perspective has changed over time?
So much! There’s a change in perspective and a change in the way that you feel about the songs. For this one song on the record, called “Don’t Let Love Be a Stranger,” that song was written pre-pandemic, then we went through the pandemic, then so much happened geopolitically, socially, and in my personal life. It makes more sense to me now than when it was written. That’s a weird thing. Often, when you look back on a song, you might feel, “I don’t really relate to that song anymore. I’m in a different place.” But with that song, it was even more poignant and more relevant than when we wrote it.
Absolutely. And that’s not the only song that feels that way. Maybe it has to do with the time in your musical trajectory that you were reaching, or just the time in your lives as people, but there’s a lot of questioning about how society functions and why it’s heading the direction it’s heading in. I feel like everyone has been forced to ask these questions, now.
It opened everyone’s eyes in a way that we didn’t anticipate. I think we’re still probably coming to terms with some of the stuff that happened, as well. You forget how much trauma we went through as a society, and with trauma, it’s not always apparent until decades later how that might affect you. I don’t want to equate it with the World Wars, but it was a disruption on that level.
But it is such a relief to have the record out. People ask, “Are you excited to have it out?” Excited would have been in 2020. It’s a relief. There have been periods where we weren’t even sure it was going to be released because we were in a contractual, musical purgatory.
That’s horrifying.
I heard about it happening to different musicians growing up, and to find ourselves in a situation like that, to not know when it would come out, was mentally difficult. The success of the song “Trojans” allowed us to tour the world and make music that we love, and then the pandemic happened, where we couldn’t tour, and then we couldn’t even put the record out. All your identity is pulled away from you. That’s how I felt, and I think the boys felt the same way.
That’s creatively quite crushing. Creativity requires a modicum of hope and a bit of positivity. I feel that the songs on End of the Tunnel offer notes of positivity, even when they question things.
The topics often might be dark, but artistically, I like to try to marry that with something that brings relief in the music. That’s what I’m drawn to, often, when I listen to music, something that offers hope. I think it was Chris Isaak who said to always leave a little bit of hope in a song, even if it’s a dark song. You might be going through a tough time, like a breakup, and you need that. I went through a really, really tough breakup during the pandemic, but I don’t want anyone to listen to purely depressing music.
There’s also a quality to these songs which relates, which is that they are quite danceable. They have a lot of rhythm and movement, and people seemed really attracted to that right now.
I hear what you’re saying. It’s a sense of distraction, or positivity, after what’s been a dark time. Sadly, I think we’re trending in the wrong direction as a society. There’s a lot of divide, and I don’t see that disappearing anytime soon. More than I think there was ten years ago. But that doesn’t make you want endless, dark music!
In the song, “On a Wave”, you make the admission that “nobody’s got a solution.” But I think it’s nevertheless saying, “Don’t freeze up. Stay in motion in some way. Maybe that will lead to opportunities.” That’s a kind of solution.
Yes, ultimately, if we choose to be here, we need to recognize that. We’re here for a limited time on earth, and it’s a gift to be here. Songs like “On a Wave” talk about how all this stuff is out of your control, but as soon as you can stop trying to get control over all these parts of your life, the easier and happier your life is probably going to be. I’m saying this to myself as much as to anybody.
I came out of the womb as a worried kid. I’m a stresser. [Laughs] But the more that you can let go, the more things will open up for you. A lot of things are going to happen, whether you stress about them or not. “On a Wave” is talking about that, but also the idea that nobody’s got a solution.
I think that, right now, we’re looking to the wrong people. I think in politics, in general, it’s become like wrestling, WWF wrestling. You get these larger-than-life characters, and often it’s like wrestlers, who are throwing each other around the ring, but it’s all for show. They aren’t really there for you, and that’s the big mistake. They are often really ineffectual and will tell you what you want to hear. And then not much changes, and that’s worrying. Politicians should be there to represent the people.
It’s similar to the way that people tend to worship celebrities. That’s blending together with politics.
That’s even more worrying, looking to a celebrity for your moral guidance and the truth in all things. I think that’s a mistake. I don’t know how we got here!
It’s a kind of medieval hero-worship that we haven’t grown out of.
Yes, I think you’re right. I’m not religious at this point in my life, but my family were religious. But once you take that away, the dollar is now in that place. If someone has lots of dollars, they are worthy of worship.
I often notice that here in the USA, having a lot of money is equated with being a good person. It’s very strange.
Right, you must be smarter and more virtuous if you have more money. It’s patently false, but it’s operating that way. We’re so in love with that idea.
The song “Nobody Loves Like You” was an earlier release, and that’s a little different from the questioning songs that we’ve been talking about. It’s very vulnerable.
I enjoy playing it and love listening to it, and from a musical point of view, it has some interesting shifts that make it harmonically interesting. But that song was written pre-pandemic about a relationship that I was in that, sadly, ended during the pandemic. That was the hardest thing I’ve been through. Singing the song now, about a relationship that I was in, means something different now because it’s a different me singing that song.
That’s an example of how the passage of time changes the way that you feel about a song. It’s wonderful that you still released it despite the emotion involved.
It was too good a song to not put out. There’s some honesty about a long-distance relationship. It talks about the divide between being asleep and awake at different times. It feels almost like a dance song, and it’s satisfying.
The song really captures the feeling of being transported by a relationship to a different mental state. We want to be in that state. It’s a very pleasant thing. It’s not just a happy, but a hopeful state. For some people, it could be a job, or a place, not just a relationship.
Right, it could be a dog or cat.
It’s whatever makes you feel that way. I think people can relate to that need and that fragility.
We all have a limited time, and the same ends. There’s beauty in that, because everything is fleeting, but it’s hard to grapple with.
You never know how a song like that might continue to impact someone. And then there’s the fact that you’re actually able to be on tour now, playing live. People go to shows, and I think that often has an even bigger impact on them, hearing honest and emotional music live.
That’s one thing where I think we’re heading in a good direction. As AI becomes a problem, creating cookie-cutter music, that’s shit. But what is unique is that three, four, five people, can stand up on stage and play and sing, in all the beautiful perfection that is a Rock band. It’s not a hyper-produced product from a laptop, but a real human expression. When you’re standing up and giving your innately human performance, that is way more unique and powerful than any other musical forms, for me. If you see an orchestra live, why is it so powerful? Because it’s still imperfect, even though it is so powerful.
AI, and Pro Tools, and those programs can make things perfect, but that takes away any uniqueness. What about Elvis, and Miles Davis, and Sammy Davis Junior? All those classic musicians, and even Amy Winehouse or Curt Cobain, they aren’t perfectly in tune. Someone on their laptop can autotune something, but you wouldn’t dream of doing that to Frank Sinatra. You wouldn’t dream of doing that to Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole. In a nutshell, I think we’re on the cusp of something good with live music.
Well, the idiosyncrasies of those musicians have made them just as memorable as their virtuosity. That stays with people. The other thing about the live aspect is that there is a counter-reaction against over-produced music. The human element is the thing.
That’s what’s exciting because we haven’t had that in popular music, really, since the 90s. When you think about Grunge music, before it got commercialized, that was the last movement of successful, big, popular, but also artistically amazing stuff. I’m generalizing, but there’s been a lot of over-produced music since then. I’m optimistic about music, and you’ve just got to be.
