Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Armlock, the up-and-coming Australian indie rock duo of Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell, have announced their new album, “Amazing”, due out February 5th via Run For Cover Records.
Armlock take an electronic approach to the creation of deeply human indie rock, and on “Amazing“ they’ve boiled their sound to its most crucial elements, distilling all the character and feeling that makes their music so resonant. To celebrate the album’s announcement they’ve shared lead single “Lifer“ which offers the perfect introduction to Armlock‘s uniquely minimalist yet deeply immersive music.
The band discussed the new song, saying:
“We’ve written a lot of simple songs, but ‘Lifer’ might be the most straightforward song we’ve ever made. Around the time we wrote it, we became a little obsessed with using really plain, unpoetic lyrics. That probably came from a series of long and complicated conversations happening in real life at the time. There was something soothing about trying to boil down messy thoughts into the simplest words possible. The chorus kind of says everything the song is trying to say. It’s about finding confidence in someone else’s confidence, moving forward, and who you’re doing it with.
We shot the video ourselves (with our bass player, Geography) on a day off on tour in LA. We wanted to use a luxury car and Hollywood as a symbol of prosperity, and an overly positive omen for the future. We couldn’t afford to hire the car for the day but they let us sit in it for an hour or two.”
“Amazing” follows the band’s 2024 album, “Seashell Angel Lucky Charm“ (which drew attention from the likes of Stereogum, The FADER, BrooklynVegan, FLOOD Magazine, Paste Magazine, Bandcamp Daily, and more), and since then Armlock have been staying busy. The group toured heavily, including shows with Snail Mail (who recently sang their praises), Momma, Bellair Lip Balms, and more, and they released two singles “Strobe” and “Half Time“, both of which will appear on “Amazing”.
Longtime friends and collaborators, Lam (vocals and guitar) and Mitchell (guitar and keyboards) met studying jazz at Monash University in Melbourne, eventually discovering a shared love of electronic music. After a handful of electronic and dance-oriented projects (I’lls, Couture, Kllo) Armlock began in earnest and the two musicians began incorporating guitar into the songs they were making for the first time.“It was like ‘ok, we’re gonna make guitar music because we don’t really know how to do that and it will be an exciting challenge,” Lam explains. Mitchell adds, “Even now I would say my main influence for Armlock is just physically playing the guitar–it’s still so foreign to me, not like piano where I know my way around, so I’m always discovering something on the instrument itself.”
“Amazing” pushes their imaginative and sonically rich sound even further, at times recalling Pinback’s lean alternative, Alex G’s adventurous indie, or the wave of mysterious-yet-endearing “cloud-rock” coming out of Copenhagen’s prolific scene. And throughout the record Lam’s concisely affecting lyricism explores the kind of quiet desperation that can seep into everyday life as youth fully gives way to adulthood. “A lot of it is about the future,” he says. “Trying to build a life because you can feel that change is impending—it’s sort of like a race against time to get yourself set up, to burn through the habits of your twenties because things are getting serious. But how do you keep the flame alive at the same time?”
“Amazing” tracklist:
1. Lifer
2. Half Time
3. Nectarine
4. From Here On
5. Amazing
6. Crystal
7. Did
8. Strobe
9. Kiss
10. Air
