A. Swayze & The Ghosts Dive Deep Into New Album ‘Let's Live A Better Life Than This’

Four years on from their ARIA-nominated debut album, Paid Salvation, Tasmanian rockers A. Swayze & The Ghosts are finally back with their newest record, Let's Live A Life Better Than This.

An album that showcases their eclectic mix of post punk, alternative rock, art rock, and just about everything in between, the nipaluna/Hobart outfit have been hard at work crafting a release which encapsulates the growth they’ve been through as musicians and as people.

“We started as a fierce, self-destructive garage-punk band, reeling from their career being derailed by COVID, to now an intentional and artistically liberated group held together by love and respect for one another,” explains the titular Andrew Swayze.

“The making of Let's Live A Life Better Than This was the anvil upon which we were forged over the past four years of transformation, each song an honest and intimate document of something observed or learned.”

Describing the record as a “cathartic process”, and hoping it resonates with the listener to “draw you closer to an authentic and better life”, it’s an impeccable release and one which has potential to garner more critical acclaim than its predecessor.

Alongside the release of the album, Andrew Swayze has penned a track by track deep dive into the record, looking at each of the tracks which make up this impressive piece of work.

01. Tell You All The Time

Ben (guitar) was really fixating on the synth bass lines of Devo, and how melodic they are. Tell You All The Time song started as an exercise in bringing that energy out into a frenetic, angular guitar line - and ended up forming the base of the whole song. There’s an unmistakable nod to the 70s and 80s sound choices for this song but it still feels fresh and contemporary to us.

02. Anthropology

For a long time, all I felt about the band and our music was defeat. Before 2020, we were riding high – getting congratulated on the street as we prepared to release our debut album, Paid Salvation, and embark on our first world tour. But when the album dropped in 2020, everything changed. We had to cancel our tour and felt like just a blip in a world shaken by COVID-19.

Heartbroken and filled with envy for bands like Amyl And The Sniffers that thrived during this time, I believed our dreams were slipping away. The lyrics for this song poured out as feelings of helplessness and failure consumed me.

03. He Is Dead

Melodies come to me instantly and play constantly in my head. My process for writing vocals is to just sing and let whatever comes out happen. I don’t usually stray too far from the initial idea or words, and in this case, I managed to write almost the entire song in one pass. 

I had found a file for a cool guitar and LinnDrum demo Ben had made and I made a loop with it. I plugged in my microphone, and started singing over it. Most of the words came out straight away, and while I didn’t understand all of them to begin with, they all felt right.

Lyrics can be dynamic, and I think a lyricist can find meaning and messages from their subconscious if they allow it – for me, this song solidified that idea. 

04. Easy Come

For most of my life I have suffered from OCD. My OCD manifests in what is sometimes referred to as ‘magical thinking’. In short, I create superstitious wagers with a higher-power to influence the outcomes of something I am afraid of or desire. The old superstition “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back” does a pretty good job of explaining how difficult it becomes to live with this constant torment.

I’ve now spent a considerable amount of time working on rewiring my brain to remove this from my life, and like many other songs on this record, I used writing Easy Come as an opportunity to speak about it and further process it. 

05. Sick Kinda WRLD

This song is a total party, designed to make you want to dance, with a heavy lean into house music – it's a punk band's take on a dance track. Through mindfulness meditation and psychedelics, I’ve gained insight into my perceptions, emotions, and thought patterns, learning to replace old habits with more harmonious ones.

At times I’ve felt a deep connection to everything and glimpsed a wisdom that feels innate. It’s like I’ve seen the veil hiding reality and caught a glimpse of how to break free from the constraints we face. I wanted to write a song about all this wild experience, so here it is.

06. Cool Cucumber

Cool Cucumber is a statement of transformation and progression.

The song marks an evolution from the musical style AS&TG has conventionally embraced – it was a necessity. We were compelled to reshape our identity from the mold that we and the community had shaped for us. It's a fun composition, devoid of anger or political undertones, providing a refreshing change from years of focussing on negatives and angst. 

07. Others Exist

I wasn’t as afraid of death before I fell in love with my wife, Olivia. I now have something to lose.

“It wasn’t meant to be this way” – I didn’t see myself married and calm when I was younger, but meeting Olivia, and learning to open myself to her love changed everything in my life beyond imagination and showed me I too deserve that. But, with that openness came the realisation of impermanence – the cruel truth that to really love, you must be prepared for loss. 

Musically this was the most difficult song to finish on the record. There were countless iterations demoed with different arrangements and tempos. It’s like we all knew how the song should be and once it clicked it seemed ridiculous that it was so challenging. 

08. Friends

I’d been drinking since I was 13 – and I was good at it. I loved it. I built so much of my life on the foundations of Australia’s open drinking culture that I knew I had a problem but was somehow proud of it.

I quit drinking in November 2019 after letting it slowly and deceitfully poison my life for years. Almost all of my friendships at the time were maintained through social drinking, and once I stopped, I felt alienated.

In that moment of huge change, struggle, and desperation, some of the people I considered my closest friends turned their backs on me. I resent one of them in particular for this. I wrote this song out of anger for his actions.

09. Puppy, Baby

I think it’s clear what this song is about, and I’d rather not share the details that led to the lyrics – believe most people can attach their own stories to it.

The end section is really cool, shifting from a big guitar ballad to something that resembles trap over acoustic. It was Ben's idea to try auto-tuned vocals after we discussed the production merits in trap and hip-hop.

Early in the process of assembling this record, we took writing trips around Tasmania, including one to Murdana, a beautiful coastal town. We wrote this song there and got a slick demo, but it turned into a nightmare trying to replicate that sound in the studio. Lesson learned: try your best to get shitty demos.

10. Before I Left

This song often brings tears to my eyes. I think of my child self and wish I could comfort him, and of my younger self, wanting to guide him. I used this song to vent so much of the chaos I have held inside for so long. 

The techno ending came about when Zac started playing with our SPD (sample pads) in the studio, triggering a big kick drum. It felt like the perfect end to the record: encapsulating the stylistic development of the band, lyrically exposing the crux of so much internal turmoil and resolving it with love, and perhaps even giving a gentle nod towards what's to come for the band.

A. Swayze & The Ghosts Let's Live A Better Life Than This is out now.