Why All We Are Scrapped Their Work And Rewrote Their Latest Album

Sunny Hills is All We Are's sophomore effort and marks a surprising shift away from their laconic, self-titled release. "The first album was coming from a really beautiful, languid, relaxed place," O'Flynn explains. "We had just signed, the band was new, and we wrote in more isolated places for that album, like cottages in Wales with beautiful surroundings. I think that definitely influenced that sort of languid and lush psychedelia of the first record."

Their follow-up threatens a departure from the fan base they established with this sound, and instead features a more abrasive selection of songs that differ greatly in style and substance. This time around, the band members wrote song lyrics individually, and aimed to engage with their shared experiences of feeling out of place while they currently live together in an abandoned school in Liverpool, where they rehearse and record together, being respectively born in Norway, Ireland, and Brazil.

"It's this way of expressing ourselves and saying that it's ok not to belong and that you can just be honest and be yourself."

"I think one of the things that we feel really keenly having left our countries is that there's always something you relinquish," O'Flynn explains. "You grow apart from your friends, and when you go back, you start to feel like you need more time to settle in. And, of course, we've made our home in Liverpool, but at the same time, none of us are really from here either, so there's this kind of sense of displacement."

Rather than shying away, the band have tried to address this directly with their new album. "We decided to put this change in direction and do something really honest that was coming from the heart, and I guess that's what you're hearing on Sunny Hills," O'Flynn says. "It's this way of expressing ourselves and saying that it's ok not to belong and that you can just be honest and be yourself, and there is a sort of sense of belonging in that kind of displacement."

The band had already written a follow-up to their debut before recording Sunny Hills, but a change of scenery was the final step that brought out a new a style of music from the band, which they found when writing in an old warehouse in the south-east of England. "At the end of the week, we realised that we'd had this kind of epiphany. The stuff we'd written was really resonating with us, and helping us find this cathartic release, you know; we were feeling this anxiety or darkness within us, and we found catharsis through this more direct music. So, we decided to scrap all the songs and rewrite the album, and that's what you're hearing on Sunny Hills; there was a shift towards playing this sort of faster, harder, more direct music, and we'd all feel much better after it."