THE BELAIR LIP BOMBS SHARE 5 RECORDS THAT INSPIRED DEBUT ALBUM ‘LUSH LIFE’

Melbourne indie rock quartet The Belair Lip Bombs have very recently shared their debut album ‘Lush Life’ with the world and to celebrate this release, the band have put together a list of albums that they were inspired by.

I always say it’s really hard trying to figure out what your influences are, I much prefer the word ‘inspired’ so here are 5 records that inspired me during the writing of Lush Life

Nilüfer Yanya: Miss Universe

I remember being actually mind blown when I first heard this record. It’s such a cool indie rock that doesn’t really sound like anything else. She writes really interesting vocal melodies. I was channeling her vocal style a lot in the second verse of our song ‘Lucky Nine’ I think with the trippy falsetto bits. ‘In Your Head’ is honestly one of the best indie rock songs of the decade I reckon.

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Wig Out At Jagbags

Or any Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks album to be honest. Stephen Malkmus is the frontman of Pavement and this is his other band. I think this is what I was listening to the most during the writing stages of the album. I didn’t even really bother with Pavement which is kind of random cause it’s pretty similar stuff. I associate our song ‘Suck It In’ the most with Stephen Malkmus. I think I figured out his signature songwriting trick which is writing good guitar riffs and singing the same melody over the top of the guitar. We did that in the chorus of Suck It In. 

Teenage Fanclub: A Catholic Education

I heard ‘Everything Flows’ for the first time a couple of years ago and my mind was blown. Think it’s the only song I listened to for like 2 months straight. The rest of the album is great too but that song really struck something inside of me. I don’t know if that’s how Say My Name came to be but I like to think so, it inspired me to try and write a song that is kind of melancholy but really powerful and loud. 

Penelope Isles: Until The Tide Creeps In

Awesome indie rock band from the UK. Listened to this album heaps in 2020. Incredible vocal harmonies throughout this album. And I really like the production on the album. I think it might have been a production reference for us. The song ‘Leipzig’ is so damn good, it’s what reeled me into this band. 

Billy Nomates: Emergency Telephone

Found the song ‘Petrol Fumes’ on this EP randomly on Spotify one day. Listened to it non stop. I love her voice so much, it’s really strong but has a lot of soul at the same time. AWESOME harmonies in the production as well.  She put out a new album this year and it’s damn good. 

BONUS, AND MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT INSPIRATION OF ALL: 

Siamese: Code One

This is a band from Adelaide. Well not really anymore, they kind of reformed and are called Junk Harmony now. But there is a song on this EP called….you guessed it…Lush Life! I think maybe John Coltrane or someone was the first one to use that title, but I heard it from Siamese. I think this EP came out in 2018 and I must have heard it around when it came out. The phrase ‘Lush Life’ resonated with me soooo hard. I don’t know why. It was just stuck in my head forever. I put ‘living the lush life’ in my Instagram bio like 5 years ago. Then I wrote Say My Name and the first lyric was ‘I wanna live in the lush life way’. And we kind of built the rest of the album around that. I would love to say I came up with the title Lush Life but it’s just not entirely true. We’ve created our own meaning for it now, a meaning that feels like it belongs to us, but if it wasn’t for Siamese that wouldn’t be the case! 

I emailed Tom, the songwriter/frontman like a year ago explaining who I was and basically wrote what I have written here. He’s a legend. We played with Junk Harmony in Adelaide a few months ago and they played Lush Life and dedicated it to us. It was sooo sick. Everyone should go and listen to it right now.