Much loved Perth band Jebediah have announced they are releasing a new album, their first in 12-years, alongside new a video for new single Rubberman.
The record will be the Perth band’s first new album since 2011’s Kosciuszko. It will arrive on April 12th, 2024.
Jebediah said their sixth album isn’t necessarily “the return of Jebediah“ as they have all been consistently active in the time since their last record, but rather, a snapshot of where the band find themselves in the current era.
Like lead single Gum Up The Bearings, the record was born out of experimentation while in the studio with longtime collaborator – and honorary fifth band member – Dave Parkin.
The result is described as an album which sees Jebediah feeling content with who they are as artists – not attempting to create the energetic hype of their 1997 debut Slightly Odway, but crafting a release which feels representative of modern-day Jebediah.
The band have toured regularly over the last decade, but stayed out of the studio while frontman Kevin Mitchell has found solo success with his Bob Evans project, and while bass player Vanessa Thornton has played in many other bands including Axe Girl and The Tommyhawks.
Rubberman began life when the band first entered Dave’s Blackbird Studios back in 2018 without any indication of what they wanted to create, the band let themselves become influenced by jam sessions and the resulting sounds.
Using effects and loops as the starting point to Rubberman, the group experimented heavily with melody and atmosphere, allowing guitarist and vocalist Kevin Mitchell’s voice to take on a prominent role, sitting atop a luscious and spacious marriage of indie-rock and dream-pop.
The result is a song which equally feels unlike anything Jebediah have ever produced. “This one came about by accident. Whilst setting up a guitar for overdubbing we accidentally recorded the sound of it with really loose strings. This sound was turned into a loop and became the bedrock of a new song; a sort of weird melodic rhythmic loop track. The whole thing was built on top of that. It reflects an experimentalism in the studio that we have not really embraced before and so it sounds different to anything we’ve ever written or recorded before,” recalls Kevin Mitchell Alongside the release of the single, Jebediah have taken an almost full-circle approach to its accompanying visuals, sharing a beautifully-animated clip by Gina Moore.
Having initially worked with the band to craft the video to their 1997 single Harpoon, Moore now works at RMIT teaching 3D animation and visual effects in the Animation and Interactive Media program.
Taking time to once again create a video for the group, Moore took inspiration from the cover illustration to James Bridle’s book Ways Of Being, the paintings of Clarice Beckett, and her own work, and worked with RMIT students Jack Cornish and Eddy Faulkner to produce the final product. “I loved Rubberman as soon as I heard it and listened to it many times while walking my dog. After playing the song over and over for several weeks, I created a storyboard in just a few hours.” Moore said.
“It came easily because my mind was full of imagery that had percolated on repeated walks through Melbourne’s windy parklands. Like the song, I wanted the video to be evocative or experiential and wasn’t concerned with having a definitive meaning or narrative.
“The song lends itself to a journey, a figure walking through a landscape. I wanted the mood to start tranquil and get increasingly chaotic as invisible forces become evident, deforming the landscape and producing colourful ribbons.
“I wanted it to feel Australian and to allude to global concerns including the proliferation of plastics in the environment. Although addressing dark and depressing themes, the clip needed to be visually appealing,” Moore said.
OIP Staff, image: Taj O’Halloran
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