Stand Atlantic, the Australian pop-punk outfit known for their energetic live shows and relentless work ethic, today release their latest album, Was Here. The 15-track record marks a notable shift in the band’s approach to songwriting and collaboration, embracing a darker, more experimental tone.
The band also brought in a diverse range of guest artists, including PVRIS, Mexican alt-pop artist Bruses, and platinum-selling rapper Sueco, showcasing their willingness to experiment across genres.
Stand Atlantic’s evolution has been anything but predictable. Following the success of their 2022 album, f.e.a.r. (fuck everything and run), which accumulated approximately 80 million streams; the band seemed poised to continue down a familiar path. However, Was Here signals a departure from their previous work, with the band focusing less on meeting expectations and more on pushing their own creative limits.
While Was Here might surprise some longtime fans, it’s clear that Stand Atlantic is less concerned with fitting into a particular genre or narrative. Instead, they’re focused on exploring new sonic territories and confronting their own vulnerabilities through music. The album reflects a band that is unafraid to take risks, even if it means leaving their comfort zone behind.
We caught up with Bonnie to chat about the album, therapy, vulnerability and how they always “try to go against the grain.”
Montreal Rocks: How has Stand Atlantic changed since we last spoke?
Bonnie: That’s a huge question. I don’t even know how to answer that. I feel like we’ve just gotten to know ourselves again and who we are as a band. I say reconnected, but we’ve never really been disconnected from each other. But I think we’ve definitely grown in the sense of really acknowledging who we are as a band, what we’re good at, and what we like to offer the world. So yeah, I would say we’ve grown a lot and gotten to know ourselves better.
Montreal Rocks: What do you think you offer the world?
Bonnie: I don’t know. I knew you were going to ask that as soon as I said it. I feel like, as a band, we’ve always just wanted to keep it real. There’s no bullshit with us. That’s who we are as people—down to earth and personable. We try to portray that as much as possible, without it being a branding thing, just the way we project ourselves into the world. I’m proud of that. It’s easy to fall into the headspace of comparison between other artists, especially with social media. That’s a very real thing everyone goes through, not just artists. I think we like to keep it real and not let anyone expect anything of us other than that we’re just here to prove you can be as dumb as us and still make things work. Best of luck to everyone.
Montreal Rocks: That’s a good message for the world. I think a lot of people need to hear that.
Bonnie: We’re just here to have fun, and it ain’t that serious. It really isn’t. Just do your thing.
Montreal Rocks: Last time we spoke, it was about the album FEAR. You were excited about it. I was excited because I could see the potential in it, but people hadn’t really heard it. But now everybody’s heard it, and things went well, I think it’s fair to say.
Bonnie: Yeah, definitely.
Montreal Rocks: Did it take you by surprise, or did you know it would take you to the next level?
Bonnie: No, I think you always hope that, but you never expect it. The reception from that album was beyond anything we expected. We were stoked. But then my brain goes, “Oh great, now there’s another bar we have to set for ourselves and try to beat again.” I feel like the only person I’m ever competitive with is myself. So yeah, I feel like just making sure the bar stayed the same with this album, nothing got overlooked. We just want to make sure fans and anyone who listens to our music can always expect good songs, whatever form that may be. We put our whole effort into everything we do.
Montreal Rocks: So the person you want to impress the most is yourself? I think that’s an artist syndrome, right? All good artists have that feeling.
Bonnie: Oh yeah, for sure. Imposter syndrome is something I constantly deal with, and I know I’m not alone in that. I don’t really know what the answer is to beat it other than just continuing to strive to be better all the time.
Montreal Rocks: Do you think that if you beat it, it would be a bad thing in a lot of ways?
Bonnie: Yes, exactly. It’s like a finger trap. If I get over it, maybe I won’t be the artist I am and have the skills I have anymore because I don’t care anymore. It’s super confusing. I kind of talk a little about that in our song Criminal. It’s also reflective of that whole tortured artist thing. You always want to be in a place of hurt or have something bad going on so you have stuff to write about, and it can come from a real place with vulnerability. It can seem cyclical and toxic, but then you’re like, “Well, if I ain’t got this art, then I ain’t got nothing.” So it’s a weird thing.
Montreal Rocks: But you need to look after yourself.
Bonnie: Of course, and I am. Mentally, at least.
Montreal Rocks: You’re on the road at the moment, right? How do you look after yourself on the road? How do you keep yourself in check?
Bonnie: Basically, I try to eat healthy and make sure I get enough sleep. If I feel tired in the middle of the day, I take a nap. I think having everyone in our touring camp as close friends and feeling like family is the most important thing. We lean on each other for personal things we’re going through, and that’s the biggest thing for me. If I can’t confide in someone about what’s going on in my life, then I got nothing. So yeah, I definitely do that. I do therapy every two weeks as well. It’s about constantly trying to ground myself and making sure I’m not just running away from my problems by being on the road and that I’m genuinely enjoying the time I’m here for.
Montreal Rocks: It sounds like you’ve got it all pretty sorted. We spoke about therapy the first time I spoke to you.
Bonnie: Oh, really?
Montreal Rocks: Yeah, I think maybe you had just started going more regularly last time we spoke.
Bonnie: Okay, that makes sense. When I’m away, I do therapy via Zoom. When I’m in Australia or Sydney, I go in person. But I’m moving to LA this year, so I’ll probably keep doing it via Zoom. Once you find a therapist you click with, it’s hard to find another one. I have one now that I really like, and I’ve seen her for quite a while. I don’t want to stop, so I’ll just do it via Zoom. It’ll be sweet.
Montreal Rocks: Cool. Good for you.
Bonnie: Thanks.
Montreal Rocks: You have a new album, Was Here—such a cool title. Who came up with that?
Bonnie: Me, because I’m a genius. [Laughter] No, it’s the same thing as every album—I had the title before the songs were written. I don’t hold on to the title like, “This has to be the name,” and wait until the end to choose it. It’s always just in my back pocket, something I’ve thought about and kept going back to. It always ends up fitting the lyrical content and conceptually fitting the songs. I don’t know how that happens. I think someone is looking out for me somewhere. But yeah, it was the same thing. I got inspired by seeing our names written on the walls of venues we’d toured before, like “Stand Atlantic was here.” It got me thinking, “If we died tomorrow, that would be our legacy, just written on a brick.” As more songs were written, it evolved more conceptually. Sonically, this album is very different for us. We’re taking a lot of risks. It’s a cool way to say, “Forget everything you knew about us and what we sound like.” It’s kind of a reinvention of ourselves.
Montreal Rocks: So yeah, that’s interesting because you mentioned the word “conceptually” a couple of times recently. And the last album was kind of an anti-concept.
Bonnie: Yes.
Montreal Rocks: So do you feel like this is different in that way? I mean, it definitely sounds different.
Bonnie: I wouldn’t say I’ve ever written an album where every song is related to one concept or anything like that. I’m not smart enough to do that. But I definitely noticed trends in the lyrics and the content I was writing about. Even though we wrote it across, like, a year and a half, I still noticed myself writing about similar things. They were all kind of relating to each other because I was going through this thing. That was just a big part of how I was feeling, and I essentially lost three years or so where I numbed myself from feeling a lot of things due to personal issues.
Upon writing this album, I realized that, and it’s a very scary thing to confront, especially when you don’t know what you don’t know. I didn’t realize that was happening, and I didn’t know why I was feeling so isolated from everyone, why I was feeling so disconnected from myself, the world, and my friends. Facing that was a huge thing, and facing the reason for that was another big thing. There was a moment when we were writing this record where I broke down to our producer and my co-writer Stevie because he was like, “Dude, what is going on? You’re not on form. You’re not writing the way you normally do.”
That was a big red flag for me. I was like, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m not feeling anything.” I just broke down. It was like, “Damn, this sucks.” Trying to deal with that was a huge thing on this record. To go back to your point, that’s why I feel like a lot of the songs are more vulnerable than I ever thought I could get, given the past couple of years of my life.
Montreal Rocks: It kind of touches on the themes of “Criminal” again. We’ve talked about protecting yourself, looking after yourself in life in general. We talked about therapy, and you’re trying to make these songs that express how you’re feeling, but that makes you vulnerable. Making yourself vulnerable that often in front of people must be tough. I don’t know how you do it, to be honest.
Bonnie: For me, it just depends on what I’m sharing. What I was dealing with involved someone else, so that was a very scary thing. I didn’t want to admit stuff to anyone. I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on. I was protecting that person more than myself, I guess. That just manifested into me being a complete shell of myself. As you said, if I can’t feel anything, I can’t write anything. And if I can’t write anything, we’re out of a job, we don’t have a band, and I’m screwed. It’s a knock-on effect. I had to stop being a coward and actually address this thing, have the courage to get through it instead of constantly putting it off and not dealing with it.
Montreal Rocks: Good for you. Thanks. It’s one thing to get through that barrier and record the song, but then you’ve got to go out for the next year and a half or whatever it is and sing these things every night. Are you able to disconnect in that scenario?
Bonnie: Yeah, luckily, I am. You do it so much that you become desensitized to the feelings you had while writing it. But I’ve noticed that every time we play, I think about the situation that inspired the song, even with old songs. I’m thinking about where I was when I wrote it and how I was feeling, but I’m not in the emotion, if that makes sense. I’m just focusing on making sure no one’s lost a shoe in the crowd, apparently.
Montreal Rocks: Yeah, different kind of problems. So I feel like maybe the success of Fear or just the fact that you pushed things a little more with Fear, I feel like it’s given you more freedom to experiment. Is that fair to say?
Bonnie: Yeah, I’d say so. I’d say so.
Montreal Rocks: So, when you started this record, what was your goal? And did you achieve the goal?
Bonnie: I think we achieved the goal. The goal was to write something that people hadn’t heard before, not just from us, but in general. We listen to so many different genres, and it’s impossible not to put that into what we write because it’s the stuff we want to listen to too. It’s about finding that balance between what we’re really good at, what we know the fans like, and bridging the gap with what we want to listen to. Hopefully, that creates something unique and fresh. We always try to go against the grain. We never try to follow any trends because that’s so dumb, especially since when you’re writing a record, it comes out two years later. If you’re going off a current trend, it’s going to be irrelevant by the time the album is out. So we’d never do that.
The main goal was to create something we’d never done before, to shock people a little more and push the boat out. We wanted to continue doing what we keep talking about, which is not wanting to be put into a box. I hope we’ve done that. I don’t know. People are going to think what they think anyway.
Montreal Rocks: I’ve been listening to the album today. Luckily, I’ve had an advance copy. It’s magnificent, I have to say.
Bonnie: Magnificent, crazy.
Montreal Rocks: My music taste, like yours, is all over the place. I love the fact that you’ve incorporated electronic elements, brought in collaborators on different tracks, and you never quite know what’s going to happen next with you guys, but it always feels right.
Bonnie: Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that a lot.
Montreal Rocks: Which song on the album are you most proud of?
Bonnie: Oh, I’m really proud of “Girls” because I never thought I’d write a song like that. And I did, so I was like, cool, that’s dope as fuck. We got some really cool features on there. “17” was a struggle. Personally, I didn’t want it on the album, but I’m proud that I got that out and got as vulnerable as I did with that one. “Girls Are Gone” as well, or “G.A.G.”—I keep forgetting we called it “G.A.G.” And what else? I think “Wake Up” as well, the intro track. It’s so different for us. I think that one I’m extra proud of because I’m like, damn, we did that. It’s crazy, and we pulled it off, and it’s a good song. I’m proud of all of them in different ways.
“Was Here” is out now on Hopeless Records
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