Listen: Openside’s new song, 'I Feel Nothing'.

Openside have just released a brand new single in the form of ‘I Feel Nothing’, the first new music that we've heard from them since their debut EP last year.

We spoke to the band about their new song, and upcoming video - as well as their plans for the rest of 2017…

COUP DE MAIN: What can you tell us about the writing/recording process of ‘I Feel Nothing’?
POSSUM: We wrote it with Djeisan [Suskov, of Leisure], and that was probably only a few months ago. It was one eight-hour session, it was our first session with Djeisan. We were kind of like, ‘Let’s write together and see what happens,’ and then we were all just really feeling it. By the end of the eight hours, we almost had the entire song as it ended up being. We took it to Josh [Fountain] at Golden Age Studios, and worked on it with him a little bit.

CDM: You also shot the video in the Californian desert I hear. What was that experience like?
POSSUM: We did the video for it in Los Angeles about a month ago - it was filmed in the desert.
GEORGE: We were in these outfits - which you wouldn’t even wear in NZ - it was full pants, jackets. We stepped out, and it was 49°C… we kind of used the car as a base - because of the air-con.
HARRY: I died.
GEORGE: Harry got heat-stroke. It was wild.

CDM: It sounds so sacrificial.
GEORGE: That’s kind of what we thought. Like, ‘Man, if we’re going through this level of stress to do this product, it’s going to come out amazing.’ And it did.
POSSUM: The thing is, it felt like we were so exhausted and wired-looking - I was doing my own make-up. I thought we would look way more haggered and exhausted, but we’ve seen the edit, and it looks low-key, mellow, and sunny. You cannot tell.
PJ: You look at the video and you’re like, ‘Oh man, that looks 30°C maybe…’
POSSUM: It doesn’t look that bad.
GEORGE: Fake it ’til you make it. But in terms of the song, it’s a good step up for us. It’s a detachment from the sound we’ve done in previous releases - I feel like we grew up on the more pop-punk thing, and recently we’ve all just been listening to a lot more electronic music, and modern styles of music. It’s such a generic answer, but it’s such a progression of what we’re listening to, compared to what we were. So we’ve still got the good parts of all that kind of music, but it’s just shown in a modern context.

CDM: Is ‘I Feel Nothing’ lifted from an EP, or an album?
POSSUM: It’s the start of a new project, but we don’t know what yet.
GEORGE: Right now, it’s just its own thing.

CDM: What else does 2017 have in store for you?
GEORGE: We’ll release the song, and then all the bells and whistles that come with that - we want to get back on the stage for sure, and play some more shows.
POSSUM: We haven’t played a headline show this year actually.
HARRY: That’s in the works.
GEORGE: See more of the country hopefully - put ourselves out there more, and be seen.
POSSUM: We’ve sort of spent the last six months working on dozens of demos, and now we’re having to pick out the ones that have the most potential and rework them. Go do some more collaborations with more producers, figure out what the next single is going to be.
GEORGE: It almost feels like the rest of this year is relaunching the band. We did the last EP cycle, and it felt like it was what it was, and then this feels almost like we’re starting a new band. It’s really exciting. Like Possum said, we’ve spent the whole year in the studio, behind closed doors, getting things ready.
POSSUM: And with the last EP, it was our first one - we were still figuring out how we were going to do it, and how we worked together, and how we liked to write together, so it was a little experimental. Now we’re much more settled into understanding how we like to write, how we like to work. This song in particular, is the first one where everyone feels like they’re on the same page, everyone’s excited about it. It definitely feels like a big step in the right direction.

Listen to ‘I Feel Nothing’ below…

P.S. Read our interview with Openside here.