Green Buzzard announces debut album Amidst The Clutter & Mess, out 8 November via I OH YOU. Along with today’s album announcement, Green Buzzard is also releasing a new single and video To Be Like You.
The project of Sydney-based singer and guitarist Paddy Harrowsmith —Green Buzzard’s new single To Be Like You dials back the distortion heard in previous incarnations of the project, in favour of a new found clarity and directness. Ceaselessly energetic, the tracks instrumentation pushes the music forward but it’s Harrowsmith’s vocals which take centre stage.
Speaking on the new new single, Paddy Harrowsmith said: “‘To Be Like You’ and much of the album is introspective lyrically. It’s a break up song essentially. It’s not about one person or one moment in particular but rather those feelings of regret and disdain for something you’ve done and realising you never want to be like that.”
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A beautifully shot narcissistic nightmare, the video for To Be Like You was directed by Bill Bleakley, previously creating videos for fellow Australian acts such as DMA’s and DZ Deathrays. “I worked with Bill pretty closely hashing out the idea and concept behind the video,” Harrowsmith said. “We decided the use of manikins and mirrors, cut with copies of myself portrayed that feeling of questioning yourself and your actions.”
Produced by Dave Sitek (TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Weezer) at his rambling LA studio, debut album Amidst The Clutter & Mess marks a new chapter for Green Buzzard. A textured and perfectly crafted indie rock record, across its 12 tracks the record covers a lot of themes: break ups, resignation, the desire to up stumps and retreat to a rural idyll, acerbic takedowns of Sydney’s greedy excesses and existential confusion, as life and the future seem to stretch out into uncertainty.
Ultimately though, Amidst The Clutter & Mess is a statement about learning to be comfortable with yourself, no longer keeping the world at arm’s length by telling fictional stories, or hiding behind fuzz and overproduction. And for a debut record, that makes perfect sense. It sounds like a coming of age.