The Empty Threats 'happy birthday' album launch tour

As the name suggests, happy birthday – the exhilarating sophomore album from Adelaide band The Empty Threats – is certainly a celebration. Well, of sorts. It’s the sound of a sweaty, scuzzy house party; full of anxiety, messy social relations, desire, pill-popping and bruised, bopping bodies, which threatens to descend into total chaos. But for all its frenzy and rollicking bliss, it also covers the terrain of a celebration's aftermath – those painful revelations that turn crystalline at the break of dawn. If their 2023 debut Monster Truck Mondays was charged by a queer, radical politic that looked outward, then happy birthday sees the band turning inward, exploring the pleasures and anguish of romance, friendship and one’s own inner life. In a world where the rougher edges of neurodivergence are sanded down and made palatable, happy birthday, recorded and produced by guitarist Matt Schultz, is a sprawling,  euphoric garage rock record that positions itself in the muck of this reality, refusing to quieten or reconcile its many ideas or energies.

The album was written during a self-imposed, two-week sequestering in an old sheep ranch, located in the remote, mountainous Flinder’s Ranges, five hours north from Adelaide. The band’s (made up of Stu Patterson (they/them - [vocals / saxophone / clarinet]), Matt Schultz (they/them - [guitars]), Lenny Regione (he/him - [bass guitar]), Michael Bond (he/him - [drums]), Alex Dearman (him/him - [guitar]), Grace Vandals (she/her - [vocals / guitar / synth] and including contributions from former member Venus (she/her - guitar/backing vocals) aim was to lock themselves away and return to the city with a suite of songs. With no internet service, and precarious power sources (whenever the band wanted to plug in their amps, they had to run outside and turn on a generator), they emerged with the 15 songs that make up happy birthday. “It really felt like one of those ‘go to the desert and lose your mind’ kind of thing” says Patterson.

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