It’s a little hard to believe it’s gone by so fast, but 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of Melbourne group Slowly Slowly.

First formed in 2015 after frontman Ben Stewart had spent years playing in bands as a drummer, the group had initially begun as a recording project for Stewart. Few, of course, could have expected where he would find things a decade later.

Releasing their first album in 2016, the band would sign to UNFD soon after, with St. Leonards arriving in 2018 and giving them their first appearance on the ARIA charts. Two years later, 2020's Race Car Blues saw them peak at #7, while 2022's Daisy Chain improved that with a peak at #5.

All the while, their mesmerising blend of indie, pop punk, emo, and heartland rock (Stewart will admit to discovering the great Bruce Springsteen by way of The Killers) was resonating with fans. It’s hard not to find a listener of triple j who hasn’t fallen in love with the likes of Jellyfish, Blueprint, or their Like A version covers of Bon Iver’s Skinny Love or Blink-182’s I Miss You.

Now, two years on from their latest record, Slowly Slowly have released their latest effort, the magnificent Forgiving Spree, and it’s ready to become one of their biggest albums to date.

Stark, confessional, yet packed full of energy and those silky smooth hooks only they can deliver, it’s an impressive record that comes following a big year for the group. International touring, a solo release from Stewart, and plenty of local shows, surely by now it might be getting overwhelming. For Stewart, it’s just amazing they’ve come this far.

“You get reminded about how these sorts of measures of success just keep moving forward,” he explains over Zoom. “What is considered success for us now would just be these insane lofty heights that we never would have dreamed of years ago. It's wild how the ceiling just keeps raising, we just keep busting through it, and the community keeps growing around the band. 

“We're just so stoked, but we often say, ‘When is the backward step coming?’” he adds. “When are we going to have to take a backward step and tone things down a bit, have less staff on tour, or go back to playing smaller rooms.

“We know it's coming. It happens to every band. So we wait with bated breath, but we're very happy it's not yet.”

It’s not a case of Slowly Slowly having had it too good for too long, by any measure, but rather, they keep on setting their sights higher – and rightfully so. By now, they’re an established band within the local music industry, they’re a known quantity, and their fanbase is as strong as ever. But it doesn’t leave them feeling any less pressure to perform than any other artist would.

“I think when I first started, I was very gung-ho and ambitious about the project, and these days I'm really, really focused on my growth as an artist,” Stewart muses. “I think that is probably this inward searching to find the things that are truly honest to me artistically, and I feel like that has allowed us the longevity. 

“I'm quite certain that the currency of having a long career is staying true to yourself,” he continues. “So I'm always trying to find – whether it be a really micro decision or a macro one – what does my gut say? What is the right thing to do?”

Recognising his role as the figurehead of the band who makes a lot of the creative decisions, Stewart also notes that a lot of what keeps him grounded is his bandmates. However, before Forgiving Spree came about, Stewart’s Pushing Daylight solo album arrived in 2024, giving him a chance to once again try things without that safety net.

“I think we did have a perception of Forgiving Spree being quite a large-sounding record, a very grandiose, in-your-face, hook-laden, no-fat record,” he explains. “I really enjoy writing, I enjoy the studio process, I like writing within that brief of creating a really grandiose piece that is made for the stage, but I also like sort of like quiet, wandering, style of songwriting and things that are just introspective and don't really like have to conform to anything.

“With Slowly, it’s like a project that really is like born and bred on the stage,” he adds. “So we've naturally adapted songs to be a way that everybody can party together and, you know, come together for a night. With the solo stuff, I guess more about just being 100% artistic and just sort of following my nose with that stuff.”

While many of the songs that Stewart writes often present themselves to him as either fitting the brief for his solo work, or feature the potential to be used in Slowly Slowly, the result is this zig-zagging of styles and songwriting that allow for a truly eclectic result.

For many of these songs, the result they found themselves categorised under was Slowly Slowly's Forgiving Spree record. For this album, Stewart found himself engaging in writing sessions between Melbourne and Los Angeles, with the latter giving him some professional help with which to further his craft.

“I just needed some other voices, and some sounding boards in the weeds of the songwriting process,” he explains. “The boys in the band are amazing at shaping things and helping out in the songwriting, but often they view it as a whole, whereas I was needing to actually get in the weeds and be like, ‘How about this chord? What do you think about this line here?”

For anyone who has had the privilege of listening to Slowly Slowly, one of the most notable aspects of the band’s music is indeed Stewart’s songwriting. In fact, oftentimes it can feel visceral and raw in a way that almost seems voyeuristic and wrong to be listening to his work. 

A lot of artists would find this sort of vulnerability difficult, though Stewart’s work is peppered with it to the point that it almost seems to come naturally. As he notes, that is indeed the case, but only with songwriting itself.

“Since a young age, I’ve not been someone that talks about their feelings a lot, and actually it's something I would have to work on,” he explains. “So songs are always like a vessel for me to do that. So I don't know, it's always felt really natural in that space to kind of go there.

“I think I always look for that ‘hair on the back of your neck’ feeling across the emotional songs. Obviously, it's sort of more fun songs these days, but for the more vulnerable songs or the more revealing songs autobiographically, I think they're real anchors of our sound and why people keep coming back.

“I don't think you'd want an album full of them though,” he continues. “I think it would be really hard. You'd have to wait ten years to have an album full of them because they're special for a reason – because they're sort of built around milestones of your own life. So I'm really grateful for those songs when they pop up because they help me make sense of my life.”

Ten years into Slowly Slowly’s life though, what does an album say about the band? Five albums down, are they more confident than ever? Assured that the sixth album will come easily? Or ready to rest on their laurels and simply rake in the kudos? Rather, it’s all become about letting go and trusting the overarching process.

“Forgiving Spree is a feeling of comfortability within the project,” Stewart explains. “Through past records, every time we'd step out of the box that we built for ourselves with the previous record, I often felt like there's so much trepidation, and having those neurotic episodes of having to envision what this project was, how it was changing, and the different chapters as it went. 

“I feel like now I've almost forged that path to just follow my nose and create music, regardless of genre, because we've built a narrative around the band as opposed to like around a sub genre,” he adds. “It's not like, ‘Oh, this is an emo band, a pop punk band, a rock band, or an indie band’, it’s become ‘We are Slowly Slowly and the people that listen to us understand that universe that we've built inch by inch’. 

“For this record, it wasn’t fraught with that feeling, and it was comfortable. We knew we could trust ourselves,” he continues. “Across the record, we sort of step into sounds from our heritage, more rocky moments, then pop stuff, and we can trust that people will kind of follow us into the dark a bit. 

“I was kind of anxious about past records and if we were staying true, but I just knew in my gut that I was like, ‘Oh no, this is us and it's worked until now, so let's trust the gut’. And it feels good.”