Timothy Nelson is a multi-WAM Award-winning, Western Australia-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and bedroom pop producer, whose solo recording project Indoor Fins has received attention nationally with two collaboration with Drapht “The Come Down Was Real,” and “Summer They Say,” which was released earlier this year and has received frequent airplay on Australia’s Triple J Radio. And although both of those tracks were much more hip-hop leaning, Nelson’s Indoor Fins project is self-described “super pop,” as the Western Australian singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer’s work draws from a variety of things including classic 70s prog rock and French electro pop.
However, lyrically Nelson says in press notes, his work comes from a much darker place. “A few years back my old band, and my relationship at the time, both fell apart within about a month of each other,” Nelson recalls. “I was in a rut personally. Then, shortly after all that, someone in my family, very close to me, got seriously ill. It wasn’t the greatest time at all. I felt like I’d been on one kind of path from the moment I left high school, and suddenly found myself in a place where I wasn’t sure where I was heading at all. I did a bit of soul searching, there was a lot going on in my head I’d not addressed for a long time and I think it all just collided in one go. In the midst of all that, I did a tonne of writing. I was questioning so much about who I was, that I think I started digging a lot deeper lyrically.”
During what was arguably one of the more difficult times in his life emotionally, Nelson spent his days holed up in his home studio — his childhood bedroom. “I had my guitar, my computer, and a keyboard. I had all these sounds at my fingertips. I think musically, the direction it took, came from a feeling of, ‘Fuck it, do whatever feels right’, and also not wanting to be so down-in-the-dumps about everything. Music, to me, is always the antidote.”
Nelson’s debut Indoor Fins single “Here It Goes” is a rousingly anthemic, breakneck pop track, centered around layers of arpeggiated synths, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, slashing power chords and layers of Nelson’s plaintive falsetto. Sonically the incredibly infectious song seems to recall Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky,” and Oracular Spectacular-era MGMT, complete with an overwhelmingly positive message at its core. “I remember waking up and having the guitar riff in my head, but no idea where the song
could go. Something didn’t feel right and I nearly abandoned it altogether, but this voice inmy head was telling me to push through, and I spent all day just trying every possible ideathat could make the song work,” the Western Australian artist recalls about the song’s creative process. “At some point I turned a corner and it all made sense. It
was very much a journey writing it. That’s what I mean by ‘Put me on the road to rhythm
and light’, you know? My subconcious was saying ‘pull yourself together, and get on with it.”
