If their debut album, ‘Madra’, saw NewDad settling into who they are and getting to grips with that, its follow-up, ‘Altar’, is them embracing that with a firm grip. The three-piece return with a vision of what they are capable of and what they want the world of NewDad to look like, and with their second album, they bring that to life with startling clarity.
Writing had always been a cornerstone of frontwoman Julie Dawson’s life, but as ‘Altar’ came together, it proved a truly enlightening tool, allowing her to work through the tumultuous experiences of the music industry and life in her twenties, as well as prompting realisations about her own self in the process.
“I definitely feel more confident,” Julie notes. “‘Madra’ was very much written in my teenage years, and about that period of my life. Now, I’m 25, and I’ve been trying to find my feet in a big city and in the music industry, and I think that has come across in the songs. It took me a while, but I definitely know better who I am, and what I want NewDad to be and what I want to achieve. I’m just more capable of standing up for myself. You know that meme that’s like ‘in my villain era: saying no to people’? That was me for a very long time. I got there in the end. I think I’m less afraid to be more direct and say how I actually feel about outside things.”
‘Altar’ offered a space to be angry, to work through those feelings and come out of the pull of them swinging. Saying it how it is is a liberating feeling, and one that the album relishes. It’s something Julie, along with her bandmates Fiachra Parslow and Sean O’Dowd, have always allowed for, whether intentional or not. ‘Where I Go’, on ‘Madra’, was a moment of pure release, and ‘Roobosh’ is its rightful successor. It’s an incendiary and unleashed moment on the album, one encapsulating this newfound directness and refusal to conform.
“Having an album that is definitely direct and hard-hitting, but it is also quite soft in what it is as well,” Julie muses. “Initially, I wanted to have a song in the album that broke it up right in the middle, and was a bit of a curveball. But I do think it dripped into other songs. The tongue-in-cheek thing, I definitely carried into ‘Heavyweight’. It was a good lesson, and it was good to push myself to go to that place. When I first listened back…I’d done one vocal take for ‘Roobosh’, and I was just fucking angry. I’d had five beers or something and just gone in and did that, and I was initially so embarrassed. But I was like, ‘No, fuck that’, it’s just a bit of fun as well. Anything that happens to me in a day, if something upsets me or makes me annoyed or angry, I think about it when I’m singing that song, and I just let it out. It’s definitely good for the soul.”
In giving herself permission to go there and let the depths of those feelings swim right to the surface, a new level of understanding was made available. ‘Entertainer’ is a knowing recollection of how she has previously moulded herself to please others, with the intricate guitar work NewDad have become known for ablaze and enraged. Yet, as much as ‘Altar’ grapples with learning to stand up to others and speak your mind without fear, a huge part of that was in learning to stick up for herself and the natural inclinations that didn’t always serve her. ‘Misery’ saw that lesson at the forefront.
“It definitely made me more self-aware,” Julie says. “I was so angry, and upset, and writing about this feeling, then I was like, ‘This is fully within my control’. I just have to be brave enough to stand up for myself, and say no to things, and be okay with who I am, and remind myself that the version of me that exists is enough. I don’t have to fit into some idea of how I should be. As a frontwoman in a band, there are a lot of expectations that a lot of men might not necessarily have to deal with. There are a lot of double standards. There’s a lot of you know, ‘Be confident, but not too confident, because everyone’s going to think you’re a fucking arsehole’. How do you strike the balance? The way you strike the balance is just ignore the balance, and just be who you are. It’s cliché, but it’s true.”
“I always thought that NewDad would just be drenched in reverb, but I really love how this record sounds”
In ignoring the balance, ‘Altar’ finds itself perfectly aligned between dualities. The ferocious parts are as frequent as the gentler moments, evident in the immediate juxtaposition of opening track ‘Other Side’ and the twinkling music box beginning that descends into crashing guitars. It’s torn between pleasing others and the self, conforming and breaking out. Perhaps the most striking duality the album chronicles, however, is the split between places. Living in London they may be, but a yearning for their home of Galway and adoration for Ireland haunts the narrative of the record. It’s all well and good finding your feet, but when your feet long for somewhere else entirely, it’s tricky to find steadiness where you are.
“Honestly, just the peace and quiet was something I feel like I didn’t appreciate while I was there,” Julie reflects. “If you’re having a hard day, and you just need to go and have some peace of mind, it’s really easy to do that in Galway. You can go to the sea, you can go to the countryside, you can go to town, and it’s still not going to be that busy because there are 80,000 people in Galway. It’s not chaos.
“In London, it’s really hard to find a place like that. The peace was the main thing. Another really random thing that I never really appreciated, but I remember it struck me the first time I came back from America on a family holiday, we landed in Shannon, and I was like, ‘The air is so creamy’. It’s just so good, you could drink it. It’s so fresh, and it wakes you up and it energises you. Honestly, that’s something I miss so much. You wake up in your stuffy, sweaty bedroom, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I need to get outside’, and then you go outside in London, and you’re just like, god, it’s so intense. It’s a big city, so that’s the vibe, but I miss the creamy air.”
It’s an age-old tale that moving away from somewhere makes you appreciate it more, and that’s certainly the case for NewDad. Whilst acknowledging that being in London makes sense for now, that fact doesn’t negate the longing that comes with being away from home. ‘Altar’ exists in that split, removed from but in awe and reverence of the place that made them. It’s a fracture that is brought to life in the sonics of the album, which are sharper than ever before. Known and loved for tending towards a shoegazy tone, the album has a clarity of sound that is new for the band, but necessary for the story they were telling. Working with their producer Shrink, also known as Sam Breathwick, who Julie calls “a legend in the making, but he’s already a legend to me”, proved fundamental in getting to that point.
“We learnt so much from him,” Julie says. “He’s such a great musician that it forced us to be better musicians in a way, because he opened our minds a little bit more to those other sounds. If anyone asks me my opinion on anything to do with music, I will always say ‘drench it in reverb’, because I love that sound. But I understand that the role of a producer is to make sure it all sounds great, and each individual part that you put so much effort into sounds great, clear, and comes through. I always thought that NewDad would just be drenched in reverb, but I really love how this record sounds, and I think it emphasises the points of the songs and the feelings and thoughts, in being a more direct sound as well as narrative. It had to be this way.”
“You need to be pushed out of your comfort zone”
There’s a crispness to it all that lends it a ferocity – there is no disguising those emotions as they take hold of the sonics. The guitar on tracks like ‘Heavyweight’ are thunderous, the percussion crystalline. There’s nothing to hide behind on these tracks, and without that veil, the band were pushed further than ever before. A notable part of that is in the vocals, too. ‘Puzzle’ plays with tone and volume to create an unnerving effect, each word a taunt. Julie found herself testing the limits of her vocals more than ever, leading to an album that was more ambitious as a result.
“I love a monotone, straight-through vocal,” Julie laughs. “For me, a lot of the time, it’s more about the instrumentation. But actually, as I’ve developed as a songwriter, and worked with people who have pushed me to be better and to challenge myself when it came to my vocal, it made me way more appreciative of actual songwriting and melody. I think that came from working with Sam, but also with Justin Parker, who I did a lot of the songs on this album with. He’d bring forward a melody, and I’d be like ‘I can’t sing that’, and he’d say ‘Just try’. That would be the thing that really sticks. You need to be pushed out of your comfort zone, for sure. I still feel like when I have to belt a vocal, I instantly shrink inside myself. I know that I can; it’s purely psychological, but it’s important to have people around you who do push you a bit. We got some great vocals out of it, so I’m really grateful for those people.”
With more confidence developing as a result of that influential circle around the band, ‘Altar’ became a reaching, powerful beast. Of course, however, a huge part of that simmering power was there in the very roots of the album. In the beer-fuelled anger of the first take of ‘Roobosh’, in the instinctual ideas at its core. Trusting in those instincts and pursuing them was undoubtedly enabled by that ever-growing faith in themselves and their abilities, and it is that which allows ‘Altar’ to master its capricious, finely-tuned and balanced magnetism.
“I don’t want NewDad to be one thing,” Julie says. “We want to be able to explore different avenues and see what really works for us, but also what resonates with other people. Quite a lot of the time, because the songs were written over the span of two years, I was in a different place when I recorded a lot of them. The thing with vocals is that you can try and recreate a vocal as much as you like, but more often than not, the original vocal is the best, because that’s when you were really feeling that thing. It feels like the most authentic. There are a good few songs that we thought that the first vocal take from when we made the demo was it. It’s really hard to capture the feeling again in the studio when you’re under pressure. There’s a magic in the originals, always.”
In the originals, in the finished product, in each moment on ‘Altar’, that magic is a thrumming heartbeat. It’s the story of a band willing to be louder, be clearer, and speak their truths, and what it looks like to traverse the new paths opened up to them in permitting themselves to do those things. It’s bold, and it relishes being so, unmasking a new side to NewDad that suits them perfectly.
NewDad’s album ‘Altar’ is out now.
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