Winterbourne Explain How They Stayed True To Themselves On Their Debut Album

With Central Coast duo Winterbourne’s new album Echo Of Youth set for release this month, the anticipation is building for longtime friends James Draper and Jordan Brady. “Because we’re getting into the final phase of doing stuff toward the album, it’s more exciting than anything,” says Draper. 

“It’s always better to be waiting for the album to come out than it be out and us having nothing to do,” adds Brady.

Draper and Brady have played music together since they were teenagers, Echo Of Youth the culmination of the last eight years’ worth of professional experience. 

“Our EPs [All But The Sun, Pendulum] were points along the way for us,” says Draper, “and now everything we’ve loved and learnt about music has come out on this album.

“We haven’t gone for anything in particular sonically, we just made what came out and that’s ended up [as] a record we really love and sums up the sound of the band now and what it has been all this time.”

When you listen to Echo Of Youth you’ll hear Winterbourne, straight up – Draper and Brady have said they wanted to make a sound that can be linked to them and no other, and yet their influences are so incredibly diverse.

While they’ve been compared to the likes of Simon & Garfunkel or The Verve, ultimately Winterbourne would prefer to be identified for their own unique sound. “It’s the worst thing about putting out songs and making records that you have to come up with comparisons with other musicians,” says Draper.

“The whole soul of what you’re doing is that it’s unique and you’re offering something to the world you haven’t before.

“When we get an email asking for a list of people that have inspired the album well, it’s like everyone, ever, everything that’s ever gone in our ears and come out in our fingers, that’s what this album is.”

Winterbourne were never actively writing songs as a way to emulate their favourite bands, they’ve just gone with what felt natural for them. “It’s something that gets a little difficult,” Brady begins. “Sometimes when you write a lot of songs and you realise you’re starting to head down a certain path to make it sound like something you’ve heard before, you have to find a way to keep it true to yourself.

“We’ve done that with the vocals on this record – we could experiment with different sounds but if the core of the music was James and I singing harmonies, it feels like us the whole time. 

“Even as musicians, it gets a bit muddy sometimes in terms of what your sound is, and we really struggle to explain our sound to people – having an album that explains for us was the goal.”

As wonderfully cohesive yet intricate their debut album is, Winterbourne have still left themselves space to get creative in future releases by not confining themselves to any one label. “We wanted to make something that we liked now and the kind of music we always wanted to make,” says Brady. “That was the reference – if we liked it, then it goes on.

“That leaves us room in future, if our tastes change or what we like about our own music changes, then we can go in any direction we want.”

For now, it’s all about getting a true Winterbourne album out. “We don’t listen to a particular genre more than another,” Draper continues. “It’s always more about the song than the sound. There were a lot of opportunities where we could have gone further.

“We tried to stay within a framework to make it a little more unique, something we applied to each song. Now, when we listen to the album, it definitely sounds like Winterbourne to me, which is all we could have hoped for.”