Developing 'Second Album Syndrome' On A Fourth Record

Luca Brasi

Listening to the opening title track of Luca Brasi's new album, their fourth since 2011's debut Extended Family, it would be easy to not recognise the Tassie punk band. With its minute and a half long instrumental, Stay could be easily mistaken for a sleepmakeswaves offering — something that frontman Tyler Richardson is more than aware of.

"That was kind of like a big gamble. We really wanted to do an intro for a bigger tour we did last year. We were like, 'Ok, let's put an intro together,'" explains Richardson. "We started mucking around with that at practice, and then it came to basically being that and we got to the studio and were like, 'Let's put this on the album and see if it's shit or if it kind of fits.'"

Luca Brasi, known for their engaging live shows and brutally honest albums, have fast become an Aussie favourite. While their early albums grew a loyal fanbase, it was 2016's If This Is All We're Going To Be that really gained national attention, with huge support from triple j (including that cover of Paul Kelly's How To Make Gravy for Like A Version) and national support spots with groups like The Smith Street Band. Richardson has an interesting take on what the past two years have meant for both their fanbase and their forthcoming album.

"There's so much - from our end - there's so much nerves and trepidation about putting out any new music, especially for this record because I don't think the first two albums are very prevalent in many people's back catalogue," he shares. "I feel like our band started, to a lot of people, on the last record. So this kind of feels like album number two, do you know what I mean? There's always such a huge pressure on doing a second record, and this kind of feels like our... as much as it's not, it kind of feels like a second record, and will for a lot of people.

"Our first record came out in 2011, so that's seven years, and back then the songs were like... We hadn't been a band before, we didn't know what we were doing, it was just raw as. 'Let's write fast songs about drinking.' That was basically it. So it kind of evolved a lot from there," he says.

"Any tour since then, since the last record, has been interesting watching the songs that you see popular live slowly become the ones that people don't really know anymore, as much. It's really crazy to watch. For a long time a lot of those songs that we did on those records were the big songs; you play that song last, you play that song in the middle. Now we don't even play those songs live because no one really knows them!"

Stay represents a new age of Luca Brasi; it's Richardson's most vulnerable writing to date and themes of maturing and leaving his 20s behind are prevalent across the album. The past few years have offered huge change for both the band and for Richardson personally, who has recently completed an education degree after years of working as a boilermaker. When asked if the next ten years of Luca Brasi look very different from the first, Richardson takes his time to consider his response.

"That's a lot to think about. I definitely think... inevitably it would have to be. Two of the boys have kids, everyone has careers outside of the band. Pat's an engineer, Danny's a personal trainer and a masseuse and a roofer, Busby studies political science, I'm a teacher; we all have all this stuff going on. That changes the dynamic," he reflects.

"We still tour quite a lot, but we've been fortunate enough that we are in a position as a band that we can now play bigger shows and do festivals, and we're fortunate enough that people liked the last record enough that we got to be able to tour smarter and do things that we want to do, do awesome things. I don't know if the last record did well that we'd still be touring that often, because it was just too hard. We were fine to do it in our early 20s because it didn't matter, we could do whatever we wanted. But now we're lucky enough that we are in a hard position trying to juggle time, but we can do cool stuff as well."

"We never set out to do anything, and the fact that we get to do anything, it's just - I say it all the time - the fact that we get to do anything is a bonus. If it was over now, we'd still be so stoked about who we got to meet, the places we got to go, that people cared enough to come and waste their time and money hanging out with us, is just fucking awesome! I guess it'd be different if we set out for all these massive goals, but we just didn't. We're really lucky that it has worked to this point. Until the record flops, anyway, and then we'll be back to square one," he laughs.