Hailing from the southernmost Australian island of Tasmania (Hobart to be exact), The Silverbeets present their new single ‘We Mattered (Once Upon a Time)’ – a grand way to announce that the band will be releasing their next album, titled Halcyon Days, this autumn.

With eight tracks on offer, the band presents their best, ripe-for-the-picking output. Here they find themselves in lush territory occupied by other notable artists such as XTC, The Judybats, The Lightning Seeds, and They Might be Giants, among others. This is fresh and sounds fantastic – really upbeat, positive, and the cloth more music should be cut from.

The Silverbeets formed in 2014 in Hobart, Tasmania – the small Australian island state at the bottom of the world. This relative isolation has led the band craft an idiosyncratic sound that borrows from luminary rock acts like Pink Floyd, The Byrds, David Bowie, Radiohead, The Pixies, Queen, Fleet Foxes, Simon & Garfunkel, Nick Cave, and Neil Young, among others.

The Silverbeets consist of Farnz Cordeaux (rhythm guitar, vocals), Jamie Scott (lead guitar, vocals), Nigel Hope (bass), and Bill O’Brien (drums) but their recorded sound is also heavily influenced by their “5th member”, producer and multi-instrumentalist Ernie Oppenheimer.

“This is a song about how government, or people in power, once treated people with some common decency, like we mattered. However all semblance of caring seems to have completely gone by the wayside and all we have left is the greed of man, the greed of those in power who know how to use it against the 99% Viva la revolution!” says frontman Farnz Cordeaux.

“This is the band’s third multi-track release – we are starting to show who we are. By this we mean that only now, looking back at our all our releases, can people start to get a handle on what we are trying to do. We don’t sit in one style, we don’t just write one mood of music but instead are reaching to push ourselves to show a range of human emotions and incorporate different musical styles while doing so.”

The LP _Halcyon Days’_was recorded at Bad Radio Studios and Urban Fringe Compound between mid 2019 and mid 2020. All songs were mixed and mastered by Ernie O at Urban Fringe Compound.

In 2016, The Silverbeets debuted with their Purple Stems EP, rated among the year’s best releases by the NBTMusicRadio. The band followed up with a ripping cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘We’ve Got a Groovy Thing Goin’ (2016) and their Stay Tuned LP in 2018, an epic homage to the concept album (also rated the year’s 16th best album by NBTMusicRadio). In January 2020, they released ‘I’ve Got to Get Away (on an Hawaiian Holiday)’, a polemic tune on the lack of government leadership in handling the fires in Australia.

As of September 21, ‘We Mattered (Once Upon a Time)’ will be available across online stores such as Apple Music and streaming platforms such as Spotify. The full Halcyon Days album will be released on November 13, both digitally and on CD. It can be pre-ordered via Bandcamp

CREDITS
Farnz Cordeaux – rhythm guitar vocals, keys
Ernie Oppenheimer – bass
Joe Haley – lead guitar
Konrad Park – drums
Recorded at Bad Radio Studios and Urban Fringe Compound
Produced by Ernie Oppenheimer
Front and back cover artwork photos by Micah Kleinert
Photos by Craig Opie

Also check out their tongue-in-cheek critical single about the way the Australian government handled that massive forest fire crisis earlier this year

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