With the release of 2020’s full-length debut Beseech Me, the Melbourne-based punk outfit CLAMM — Jack Summers (vocals, guitar), Maisie Everett (bass, backing vocals) and Miles Harding (drums, backing vocals) — quickly exploded into national and international punk scenes. Originally released by the band on cassette, the album received airplay and praise from Aussie radio stations 3RRR and FBi. Reissued by UK-based label Meat Machine last year, the album earned best punk nods from the likes of Spin, Bandcamp Daily and KEXP.
Adding to a growing profile, the band has played with Wolf Alice, Civic, Amyl & The Sniffers, The Chats, Vintage Crop, and The Murlocs — and they’ve made their way across the Aussie festival circuit with stops at Boogie Festival, Melbourne Music Week, and Meadow.
The rising Aussie punk rock band’s sophomore album Care was released last week through Chapter Music globally — with the exception of the UK, Europe and Asia, where it was released by Meat Machine.
Recorded during any free moment they had last year in one of the most locked down cities in the world, the band’s sophomore album was tracked at Rolling Stock Recording Rooms and Sound Park Studios with Nao Anzai. The album also features Anzai playing synth — and he has joined the band on stage at recent shows. Mangelwurzel‘s Anna Gordon (sax) contributes sax on a number of the album’s songs.
Care, much like its predecessor sees the band exploring the confusion — and perhaps seeming hopelessness — of being a young person trying to live an honorable life in a fucked-up, mad world. Thematically, their songs are frequently about trying to navigate systems of power and oppression while retaining a healthy sense of self and mental health. Community, creativity and catharsis are what they hope to achieve through their work.
Care‘s third and latest single “Something New” is an urgent, mosh pit friendly ripper centered around enormous power chords and thunderous drumming, propulsive basslines paired with rousingly cathartic hooks and choruses, Summers’ urgent, yearning delivery and some sax wailing from Anna Gordon. The song manages to capture and evoke youthful impatience, the subtle and creeping recognition of mortality just over your shoulder, and the yearning desire for meaning and peace in such a mad, fucked up world in a visceral way — so visceral that it hurts, because we’ve all been there. Or maybe we’re still there despite age and perceived wisdom.
“‘Something New’ is a song about searching or yearning,” CLAMM’s Jack Saunders explains. “It is about impatience and time, and its title refers to the process of facing seemingly new stimuli throughout life.”
Frequent visual collaborator Oscar O’Shea directed the accompanying video for “Something New.” Shot on Kodak film, the video follows the members of CLAMM storming around Melbourne and its surroundings, starting with a house near the train line, a lakefront, an abandoned warehouse and the beach with the city just over the horizon.
