Inside Story

"We're lucky enough,” Jeremy Fowler begins after chuckling about how he's “all over” New Empire's third album, In A Breath. “I own my own studio so we decided to do most of the record there. That's kind of my background – I have a degree in audio engineering and music production, so it kind of made sense to do everything in-house. It was a big job,” he admits with another chuckle, “a lot to think about when you're doing so many different roles as the one person, but I'm really happy with it in the end.”

Even the olds have heard at least one song from the Cronulla foursome: One Heart/Million Voices, courtesy its selection for the 2012 Summer Olympics on Australian television. The rest of us have been hearing New Empire tracks on triple j since they released their single, The Summer Sky, in early 2010 – they'd released a album, Come With Me Tonight, in 2008, three years after forming at high school – which was followed by another nine singles, the latest, 2013's Say It Like You Mean It, the teaser off the just-released In A Breath.

“Because the songs [for In A Breath] were written over a two-year period,” Fowler explains, “you go through different seasons in life in that time, as a band and individually as well. We went through some pretty difficult trials, and just growing up and trying to find out who you are and finding out how to love basically. So it really does feel like the album's a tapestry that shows that journey over the last two years for us.”

The album opens with a track titled Tale Of Jonah, and Jeremy sees some small parallel between the biblical story of Jonah and the whale in being “in the belly”, so to speak, of a band rising in the music business. “That's always been a story I've been intrigued with and loved the imagery that comes with it, and I guess there are some similarities in Jonah's life and in my life, so we really wanted to take a modern twist on something that's one of the oldest stories ever told in human history.

“You can feel like you're surrounded by the unknown a lot when you're in a band. For us, you have to get used to not knowing what's around the corner, what opportunities are coming next – you don't know what country you're going to be in in the next two months – so in many ways it can feel like you're in the belly of a whale,” Fowler admits with another chuckle.

Actually, there's no mystery about what's next. First there's an east coast tour to launch the album and then it's off to the US for their third tour. The only unknown is if they then head for Europe.