Pacific Avenue have released their debut album ‘Flowers’.
Speaking of the album, the band said: “To us, this album has defined our sound and encapsulated everything that we have been through from the beginning. Each song has a permanent marker in my memory as it takes me back to a time and place, and I hope that the listener can share this feeling. If there’s anything we want people to take away from the record it’s for you to feel included. That’s really the whole point of Rock and Roll and why we’re a band, so you can go to a show and be in a room full of people you don’t know, yet still feel connected to everyone because you’re all screaming the same words about falling in love, or moving to a new city, or getting caught in the rain, whatever it is. It’s nothing that hasn’t already been done before, but it’s something we’ve wanted to be a part of for a long time.”
To celebrate their album release, Pacific Avenue shared with us 5 tracks that influenced ‘Flowers’.
The Beatles – I Will | Listen via Spotify
I think if you go over the ‘Flowers’ record, you’ll probably find that every song is in some way a love song, some a bit more glaringly obvious than others, but love songs all the same. And if that’s the sort of thing you’re in the mood for it’s hard to find anything as classic as pretty much any Beatles song. This song I particular I think is really beautiful because of how endearing the lyrics are. When we were all going through covid I was in a long distance relationship with a girl from California while I was living here in Australia, I wrote ‘Wake Me Up’ to try and capture a similar feeling to ‘I Will’ because it speaks to being so overwhelmed with how you feel for someone, and even being happy to “wait a lonely lifetime” if they wanted, because nothing else really mattered.
Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run | Listen via Spotify
My dad once told me, that every song Bruce Springsteen ever wrote, was about falling in love and running away to the city. Coming from a small town, the city was something we were always drawn to with the band, and I think ‘Born To Run’ is right at the top of the list of all time “running away” songs. Since we started playing together we’ve always tried to play in front of as many people as we could, so we would get in the car and drive to Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane for shows. When it came to putting the album together we wanted to lean into that idea because it’s just a classic coming of age sort of feeling, and it’s special to try and capture something like that because it’s an idea a lot of people can relate to, wanting to pack your bags and drive through the night to a new town to chase your dreams, there’s something scary about it because you’re not sure what it’s going to really be like, or if it’s even going to work out, but that’s what’s most exciting about it as well.
Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody | Listen via Spotify
Looking up to all the classic rock bands we’ve always been obsessed with Harmonies and ‘gang’ vocals, and made it a priority to get as much of them on the album as possible. Looking back on the recording process, I think that the most fun part, was having all of us in the room singing into a mic on ‘Lay Me Down’, we knew it was going to be the last song and the record and wanted it to feel like a party at a live show so added as many vocal layers as we could. Also for ‘Wake Me Up’ we wanted to have our Queen moment with Ben playing a harmonised guitar solo for the outro, there’s something so grand and epic about it and he kind of just made it happen really effortlessly, so listening back to the songs I’m always waiting for that bit.
Primal Scream – Loaded | Listen via Spotify
For Track 4 I was tossing up between ‘Loaded’ and ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ by The Rolling Stones. They both feel so alive and have that classic rock and roll sound that we’re in love with, they’ve got long intros with great percussion loops and hard hitting bass riffs, we tried to reflect this sound in some of the tracks like ‘Give It Up For Yourself’, ‘Easy Love’ and ‘Get You Off’. It’s the first time we’ve experimented with drum and percussion loops and it has a way of making the songs feel like a party, so that’s something we’re looking forward to bringing to the live shows for the upcoming album tour.
Jet – Look What You’ve Done | Listen via Spotify
This top 5 inspirational songs list wouldn’t be complete without adding Jet somewhere to it. Their album is in all of our all time favourite records list and has been something we’ve been definitely influenced by growing up. For the first time on our album ‘Flowers’ we’ve released a couple of Piano Ballads in ‘Wake Me Up’ and ‘Someone’s Asking’ which we have been really excited to do for a long time, ‘Look What You’ve Done’ is a great example of a timeless sounding classic song, that stands up next to ballads from The Beatles or Oasis, and is a sound that we’ve wanted to attempt to achieve.
You can listen to Pacific Avenue ‘Flowers’ via Spotify below: