Album Of The Week: Ocean Alley's New Record Is Their 'Most Complete' Collection Of Music

Ocean Alley certainly have kept themselves busy over the past few years. 

As if touring extensively and topping the 2018 Hottest 100 isn't enough, the Sydney group have somehow found the time to get in the studio and record their third studio album, Lonely Diamond. 

The album is the follow-up to their 2018 album Chiaroscuro and saw them work long-time collaborator Callum Howell at the Grove Studios. The band have shared an open letter about the album, read it below. 

What they're saying...

Lonely Diamond feels to us like the most complete and concise collection of music we have created. 

Written over twelve months and inn between bouts of touring, each song depicts our state of mind in those particular times and unconsciously carries each of our own styles and creative decisions. This record was our opportunity to experiment as a band but also to grow individually as songwriters. 

We focused on creating a record that was tasteful and felt familiar when compared to our previous work, whilst also including moments of experimentation and provocation of our playing and writing. It’s important to us to make our music captivating, so we went about creating drama during songs and generally across the record.

We continued to develop our understanding of the recording process together and through working closely with our producer Callum Howell who has guided us through many of the unknowns when it comes to recording. While the general process for us has not dramatically changed, there is an ever-present sense of progress and development when it comes to our playing, writing and recording.

The stakes were higher when we started this journey of a third record and we felt the pressure to follow up on the previous work that we’ve had such a good response to, but it didn’t phase us too much - rather, it prompted us to work harder and try to not just better our music but better ourselves. 

In saying that, our main goal was and still is to have our music connect with listeners and for people to enjoy it both live and on record. We hope that our audience accepts this album as an expression of ourselves musically and personally over the last two years. It’s a shared experience that has been so special for us, we just want that feeling to translate across to anyone who listens.

Check out Lonely Diamond below.