The amazing Allusinlove are currently gearing up for what is set to be a massive and prosperous summer. In the space of just a few months, the band will be playing Download Festival, Behave Festival and 2000 Trees Festival, all before heading out towards the mainland to tour alongside the prolific and legendary Skunk Anansie. However, preceding these adventures is the release of their highly anticipated full length debut It’s Okay To Talk, which is released on June 7th. Ahead of it’s release, we spoke to guitarist Drey Pavolovic, who indulged us on the details and stories behind each track on the record. ‘Full Circle’ “‘Full Circle’ is about stars dying – particularly your star. At first you think you have a clear idea about something, but eventually you realise that’s not true because usually something that good never lasts. When you have a vivid imagination these things can seem very real, but ultimately you know they are not – ‘Don’t stare at the wall, you’ll only get bored’. This song was created very naturally while the band were jamming together in their rehearsal room. There was no intention to create a song that day – we’d just come out of a dry spell and the ideas were flowing. Drey came up with the chord progression and rough arrangement and Jason and Jemal approached the lyrics and melody. The song came together very easily in the studio. Catherine Marks made some very important calls about the way the arrangement of a few parts and this really took the song to the next level. It’s personally the band’s favourite song.” ‘All My Love’ “All My Love’ is about giving the entirety of one’s love to another but never feeling like it’s enough! It’s a very simple and catchy banger and probably our most self explanatory song. This track came together in the studio with the help of our producer Catherine Marks and songwriter Robin Howl. It is our most collaborated-on song in terms of receiving help from the outside. Jason had the chorus penned for quite a while and whenever he played it at rehearsals Connor just started to jam along with a Motown style drumbeat. It already sounded like a cover song from a long-gone guitar-rock era so there was no question of this being recorded as a studio version to appear on the album!” ‘Lucky You’ “‘Lucky You’ is about not wanting to confirm to peoples opinions and letting them mould you in a way that is only beneficial to them. It’s a very old song that Jason wrote in the early days of the band. When we began our album sessions, this was the song we started tracking with as we felt it was the most immediate overall representation of the first impressions of our sound.” ‘Sunset Yellow’ “‘Sunset Yellow’ is our most open to interpretation song. The idea here is to take the lyrics and accompanying music and adapt them into your own situation. The song and lyrics have a meaning to us that represents the birth of this band. It was the first song we ever wrote together and it’s also our most timeless song. It has travelled with us through thick and thin and in the context of this band it means everything to us. ‘All Good People’ ‘All Good People’ is about sex – just awesome, perfect, mutually enjoyable sex. Jason wrote this song in 3 minutes a few summers back while listening to a lot of Perfume Genius. The song of theirs ‘Your Body’ and how the singer essentially serenades his partner when they play live on stage was the main inspiration behind this track. This was the song that essentially got us a record deal and elevated the band to the next level.” ‘Lover I Need A Friend’ “‘Lover I Need A Friend’ is a hymn about just wanting to die in a moment that is so good. A sexual moment to be exact – ‘When we collide, I want to die’. Jason wrote all the core parts to this song – it’s our slowest and most fluid piece of music with a lot of Jeff Buckley inspiration peppered in. We still haven’t been able to top the original first demo that was recorded of this song, so maybe one day we will be able to release it.” ‘Bad Girls’ “‘Bad Girls’ – clue’s in the title. I (Drey) remember Jason coming up to my house to record what we originally intended to be an RnB song. We made an electronic version of Bad Girls that was never intended to be used for this band. We just wanted to capture this particular idea for artistic closure. This song was sent to Catherine Marks as part of our album planning sessions, and in the first day of our album pre-production she played us the track from her phone citing it as one of her favourite songs. We had no ‘full band’ version of this song just yet, but after hearing Catherine’s excitement about it we went home after pre-production and we made a full band version that we absolutely love it. It’s one of our favourite songs to play live.” ‘I’m Your Man’ ‘”I’m Your Man’ is about wanting to be someone’s everything. It’s a very simple message that is direct to the recipient. The music is full of pace with many stop / start dynamics in the chorus. We love to play this song live and we sometimes use it as an opener for our live set. This is also one of our older songs that was created in the very early days of the first version of this band.” ‘Happy Eyes’ “‘Happy Eyes’ is about adolescent love and your infatuation with other people – it tells the story of our experiences of possessive relationships where your partner wonders what you are up to all the time they are not around. It’s a very busy song with a lot quiet – loud dynamics surrounding it. It’s what you could consider our most ‘emo’ or ‘pop-rock’ song. We wrote it a long time ago and we have many demo versions of this song. The album version is by far the best we have ever captured this song.” ‘It’s Okay To Talk’ “‘It’s Okay To Talk’ is our biggest and most epic song. This track helped us sum up and release exactly what was hurting us mentally at the time. It’s a very important phrase and hashtag on the mental health front – not enough people feel confident to talk about what it is that is hurting them, so many of us will bottle up our emotions in order to not seem vulnerable. Many of us will turn to drugs and alcohol or unhealthy food in order to cope. The truth is, we are all vulnerable, we all hurt and we all need someone to talk to. Don’t suffer in silence. Jason and Drey finalised this song prior to the album sessions soon after deciding it should be the leading title track.” ‘The Deepest’ “‘The Deepest’ is about betrayal and deception sung in a very filmic and edgy manner. Each sentence of the song is a visual reference to a movie scene that does not exist yet. The idea here is to use your imagination with each line and try to picture the visual aspect of what is being said. It’s also our darkest and heaviest song, recorded in drop C sharp. The end riff will shake your house down. It’s one of the first songs Jason wrote and arguably our most mature track.” Allusinlove release It’s Okay To Talk on June 7th via Good Solider Songs.
