Pagan ProfilePagan were born in 2014 from a desire to "make loud music" and have been "raising hell and taking over minds in bars and on the radio since". Their new track Good Grief was recorded at The Black Lodge in Brunswick with Mike Deslandes - "an evil genius, a great human" - in what, according to bass player Dan Bonnici, was a very natural process, working more from a vibe than a structured vision - or, as he puts it, "Sincerity is timeless, man".
"The song has some pretty bleak, death/mourning-related themes, so I'm guessing Nikki obviously had a bit on her mind."
"Musically, the song came together very organically, just by jamming on that bass riff you'll hear in the intro/choruses, which was a total accident," says Bonnici. "Lyrically, the song has some pretty bleak, death/mourning-related themes, so I'm guessing Nikki [Brumen, singer] obviously had a bit on her mind."
Despite the rock'n'rollers' haphazard approach, they rarely end up wasting time on dead-end rhythms. "We usually know within a couple of hours of fucking around that a song idea isn't working, so the bad eggs don't even make it to pre-production (shit phone recording). If something isn't flowing and makes us have to think too much, it's usually thrown on the scrap heap."
The single, which is getting released in spectacular fashion at The Tote with a mess of supports and a video clip premiere, isn't attached to any upcoming larger projects. Pagan like to launch tracks with the same devil-may-care style in which they write them. "Like a young Hank Williams, we're just gonna keep putting out gnarly singles for now. It's a fun way to constantly be releasing new music. Only we'll be releasing them digitally because it's not the 1940s, and hopefully I won't die before I turn 30 like Hank did."
