POLISH CLUB SHARES NEW SINGLE + VIDEO, ‘STOP FOR A MINUTE’
+ ANNOUNCES HEADLINE SHOWS IN MELBOURNE + BRISBANE THIS APRIL
Photo Credit: Derek Bogart
For their first single of 2021, Polish Club have assembled the biggest Trojan horse of their career. The instantly-indelible new single Stop For A Minute and the potentially edible visual accompaniment arrives today via Island Records Australia. The band will launch the single this April with headlining “Live! For A Minute” shows in Melbourne and Brisbane, marking their returns to each city for the first time in well over a year.
LISTEN TO ‘STOP FOR A MINUTE’ HERE
On first listens, Stop For A Minute is the most ambitiously pop track the Sydney duo have concocted since their 2018 breakthrough Clarity. Its instantly-indelible melody recalls the days of new jack swing, while its swinging four-on-the-floor strut will inevitably fill up dance-floor once our superiors deem them legally permissible once more. Beneath its bass crunch and siren-wail e-bow guitars, however, lies a dark underbelly.
“At its core, this song is me trying to deal with our inconsistent acknowledgement of the cavalcade of horrible things done by countless artists in a position of power,” says David Novak, the band's lead vocalist and guitarist.
“There is a knowledge that nothing ever really comes of these things until the relevance of these artists wane. A good hit is enough for us to all collectively decide it's not worth dealing with right now – or sometimes ever.”
Novak is acutely aware of the complexities and the inherent contrasts at hand within Stop For A Minute. It's the musical equivalent of trying to tell someone something important while a booming pop song blasts over the PA. Perhaps, even, a song performed by someone whose misdemeanours are a matter of public record and yet still finds themselves in rotation. Time has shown that the collective conscience holds short memory, after all. “All your heroes end up being fucking monsters,” Novak sings in the song's chorus, with the kind of conviction that comes from someone who knows what they're talking about.
“All I know is I can name – off the top of my head – a singer who nearly killed his ex, another who pisses on young women, a funk legend who kidnapped and burned a woman, an old rockstar who got his other old rockstar friend to take custody of a 14-year-old so that his mate could have a relationship with her, and a guy who everyone agrees has done some horrible shit but we don't say anything because we'll get in trouble,” concludes Novak.
“So, I've just written a fun song you can dance to.”
It may be argued that the medium of Stop For A Minute negates its message. Not so – after all, if we're so insistent that we can separate the art from the artist, surely the yin-yang dynamics at work here will allow for opposites to attract. It was Ben Lee, after all, that described pop music as “philosophy you can dance to.” Perhaps this is the destiny that awaits Polish Club.
The band have doubled down on this juxtaposition in the song's green-screen heavy music video. Director Tim Nathan, who has previously worked with the band on their Just Talking video, puts Novak to work as the singer lip-syncs for his life in a seemingly-familiar tuxedo.
"The only way to be original these days is to be completely unoriginal,” comments drummer John-Henry Pajak on the clip. “Also, people like watching other people try to dance... and people like sandwiches.”
Stop For A Minute arrives following a surprisingly-busy 2020 for Polish Club. Although the duo faced the same setbacks as every other band on the planet, they still managed to perform a series of sold-out shows at both The Vanguard and The Factory Theatre in Sydney's inner-west – eight in total. They also scored an APRA Award nomination for Most Performed Rock Work, released a new single in Just Talking and were one of the first bands to return to the ABC studios for triple j's Like a Version, where they performed a unique take on Doja Cat's smash hit Say So.
Amidst various stages of lockdown, the band convened at The Grove, one of Australia's best-loved recording studios, on the Central Coast of New South Wales. In-house engineer Scott Horscroft co-produced both Just Talking and Stop For A Minute alongside Polish Club themselves. These sessions not only marked the band's first time producing, but their first recordings without long-serving producer Wade Keighran.
Polish Club are men on a mission. They're out of the horse, and they're ready to strike. Be warned.
POLISH CLUB - “LIVE! FOR A MINUTE” TOUR DATES
Tickets on sale Friday 19th February 9am AEDT at www.polishclub.co
Saturday 17 April | Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Friday 30 April | The Triffid, Brisbane QLD
POLISH CLUB
New single Stop For A Minute OUT NOW