What's next for Sinclaire?
Hey Sinclaire! Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. How’re things?
Hello AMS 👋. Things are pretty bloody good all things considered. 2020 has certainly been a hell of a year but life seems to be a little bit more normal these days and releasing our new single has definitely brightened up the second half of the year for us.
Congrats on the release of your new single ‘I Needed You’! Can you walk us through the new direction you’ve taken on this release? Can we expect more like this in future?
For sure! To be honest, this one is definitely a step away from our EP. It’s more pop orientated and definitely has a stronger synth element than anything we’ve done before. Our old guitarist and songwriter stepped down a while ago and Jake, our synth player really took it upon him to pick up the slack. Hence we lost a lot of guitar elements and began to head in this direction. So yeah, to answer your second question; our other singles which are coming out this year are also deviating from the EP. Some lean closer to a Dua Lipa/The Weeknd vibe (more pop), some are a bit more Triple J sounding… (Big festival banger vibes) and some have a 1975 sound to them. I think we have done something different on every single we have in the back and I’m really excited to see how everyone reacts to them. I’d say I needed you is the transition track between the EP and phase 2 of Sinclaire.
What do you all have on your playlists at the moment? Has any of it shaped the “anti-pop” vibe on your new music?
The whole anti-pop movement has 100% shaped our new songs. Like I said, The Weeknd, Dua Lipa & The 1975 are all artists we draw inspo from which probably lean more towards the pop side of things but you can check out this really neat anti-pop playlist on spotify to get your head around the genre and our inspirations. There’s some Joji, Oliver Tree, Glass Animals and a bunch more which really encapsulate the direction we are headed in. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWWqNV5cS50j6?si=La5un9l7TgC35_FAyo3niA
We hear there’s a synth-maker in the band! We’d love to hear more about that.
Jake has been fooling around with electronics for as long as we have known him. We found him in a dark room, surrounded by wires and oscilloscopes, splicing tape loops and frankensteining audio equipment together. For one of his courses at uni he had to invent something… so he built a strange analogue synth. His latest endeavor is trying to recreate polyphonic FM synthesizer out of a Sega Genesis console. We don’t know what half of that means either… but let’s just run with a “wow, that’s sick!” - it’s what I usually do ;)
The lyrics of ’I Needed You’ are, as you mentioned, about alcoholism. However, they’re cleverly masked as being about a toxic relationship between two people. Was this an intentional decision? Can you run us through some of the lyrics and their meanings?
It was definitely an intentional decision. One of the main things I wanted to have in the lyrics was that “I Needed You” hook you hear throughout the song. It was something I did when I was drafting melodies and it really stuck with me. But rather than writing about needing a person which felt a bit cliché I wanted to spin the story so this person was chasing after a vice. I ended up running with alcohol because it held relevance to me I guess. Not that I’m saying I am an alcoholic but when I write I like to take aspects of my life and really blow them out of proportion to create a fictional story that still retains some truth to experiences I have. Last year I led a bit of a party boy lifestyle which was probably due to me being single for the first time in ages and missing out on a large portion of that teenage party phase that most people get. I was drinking 3-4 nights a week and really let any healthy habits I had go straight out the window.Another lyric that I really wanted to include was the call and response section in the bridge. “My hands around your throat, I say you’ve got to go. Your hands around my throat, I say you’ve got to go” It’s not actually referring to someone's hands around a person’s neck. It’s referring to holding the neck of a bottle and vice versa, the alcohol’s metaphorical grasp around that person. When I first sang it our producer - Nat Sherwood - was a bit taken back as he didn’t really know the full story behind the song. But honestly, that is the reaction I wanted. I wanted the shock factor and for the listener to really question the lyrics of the song at this point and this felt like an intense way to pique someone’s interest about the real meaning behind the song.
Your press photos and cover artwork for this release are beautifully cohesive and really intriguing, visually. What was the inspiration behind the asset creation?
Thank you! The photos were taken by our talented friend Brandon Lung (@brandonlung if you want someone new to follow on IG) and we were styled by Maddy Ziper who also helped direct the shoot. All of the edits on the photos and the single artwork were actually done by me though! I’m a designer/content creator full-time which really comes in handy when you need assets that fit your bands sound. The inspiration was kind of like a 90’s nu-metal vibe mixed with the whole boyband look and aesthetic. It’s kind of a visual representation of the song when you think about it. There’s some darker, edgier tones to it but it still holds that sweet, dreamy sound at it’s core. Really though, it isn’t super deep… I just put on some headphones and had a drink one night at my laptop and tried to come up with something that I really liked.
And finally, what can you tell us about the next few months for Sinclaire?
Singles, singles, singles… In a world of short attention spans and Tik Tok we want to put out all this music we’ve been working on behind the scenes for the last year or so now and really blow people's expectations of us out of the water. We’re leaning away from music videos, EPs and albums for now until we get some real demand and hype brewing!
