Polish Club Pour Their 'Heavy Weight Hearts' Out On New Album Tracklist

Polish Club’s latest release, Heavy Weight Heart, marks an exciting new era for the Sydney-based pairing.

With their latest album having dropped today (13th September), the duo of David Novak and John-Henry Pajak reflect on one of their most metaphorical career periods to date. Having navigated personal milestones like Novak's successful heart surgery, both members' recent marriages, as well as their newfound prospects as Independent artists after parting from Universal, Polish Club’s signature hazy guitar drone and punchy drums now have a new film of introspection. 

The album, which follows singles such as Manila, Heavyweight, and How Dare You Fall In Love In This City, showcases the band’s newest chops. Speaking to The Music, Polish Club offer up all the morsels of their first independent record. 

HEAVY WEIGHT HEART

Heavy Weight Heart is our fourth LP. It’s our longest record. It’s also our shortest tracklist. It’s our most romantic record. It’s our most fleshed-out record. It’s our first independent record. It’s one we’re incredibly proud of.

HOW DARE YOU FALL IN LOVE IN THIS CITY

This may be my favourite Polish Club song yet. It turned into a bit of a white whale as we strived to nail it in the studio. It was written very spontaneously with our friend Robby De Sa and I came up with the vocal and melody in 10 minutes.

Trying to recapture that immediacy proved initially difficult and somewhat of a fool’s errand. We eventually realised that it wasn’t a case of needing to replicate the demo but rather a case of trying to bring it to life in a much more organic, analog way when it came to recording it live. The result is a different energy that very much nails the same immediacy of the demo, just in a different way.

WHERE WE LAND

We took a few references into the studio that had a single-note drone throughout the track. This was the song in which we finally managed to fit one in. It’s just a single guitar note going up and down an octave through my EHX Pitchfork pedal throughout the entire song. Sometimes, finding a place for something ridiculously simple is the biggest eureka moment of all.

HEAVYWEIGHT

The whole concept of the album came about from JH wanting to use the term “super heavyweight”. I couldn’t really figure out a way to make those words fit in lyrically, but the boxing analogy really stuck in the mind. This track is the happy medium that informed the eventual title for the record. Boxing, love, heart surgery, it’s all in there somewhere.

MANILA

My maternal homeland is a strange place. It’s a city unlike any other and it’s hard to make heads or tails of it most times. It’s wildly metropolitan, yet incredibly old school. The scale is unfathomable, the people incredible. It really has everything, and thus it’s hard to know what to think about it at times. This track reflects those ambiguous feelings of actually being there. Above all, I suppose it’s pure fascination.

FOOL ON THE WEEKEND

We co-wrote this one with Budo Miller, which is wild to me. I’ve known him for years, and I would have never predicted that we’d eventually collaborate on a Polish Club track. We barely ever really co-write songs, but this one, and the ones with Robby, felt like such organic moments that it really didn’t feel too much different to those songs we write by ourselves.

THE M1

Krautrock is back, baby! Well, at least that’s what we’re trying. JH has always wanted to do an instrumental song, and as someone who very much considers themselves a singer first and foremost, it’s hard to refrain from doing so. That is still very much the case here, but it’s a vocal that sits back and meditates on repetition. We’re always playing around with ideas that are darker in tone, and they usually never get across the line, so this one is a satisfying personal win.

TIED IN A KNOT

On one hand, it’s a novelty for us to have such a piano-led song. On the other, the instrumentation that backs it up is as Polish Club as it gets. Namely, almost every single chord being seventh chords (i.e. jazzy). It’s always fun to play around with traditional Beatles-esque songwriting, even down to the super old Hofner bass on this track.

REPEATING REPEATING

If some of Tied In A Knot is as Polish Club as it gets, this entire song is probably the most Polish Club song on the record. It’s soaring, brash, melodic, and fun yet somewhat melancholic. It also features JH’s now wife, Kirsty Tickle on horns, which is always a sheer joy and privilege. There’s nothing better.

WAIT

This one kind of sounds like it came straight out of our writing sessions from the first record. That throwback, sparse two-piece vibe always rears its head at some point, regardless of what record we’re making. It’s like our safety blanket, in a way. Something we just do without thinking too much. And I think it’s always fun to revert back to that, and then by the end of the track, you drowned in noise and synths without realising.

I BELONG TO YOU

It’s a pretty unabashed song. If you doubted that this record was romantic, you’d have changed your mind at this point. Better late than never. I unironically adore old Coldplay records, namely the first three. They have this capability to swell to epic levels yet keep their heart and warmth. That balance was really the goal with the entire record. We wanted an ambitious stadium rock-ready record that was also intimate and warm. It’s an impossible task for a band that’s not the biggest in the world, but it’s a fun thing to chase. No regrets.

Polish Club’s new album, Heavy Weight Heart, is out now. You can buy the album here and catch them on tour in October - tickets are available here.