An Ocean of psychedelic rock
Ocean Alley have captivated audiences around the country with their psychedelic blend of surf rock amassing over 40 million streams online and 600,000 monthly Spotify listeners. Hailing from Sydney’s northern beaches the band are on a mission to take their sun-soaked psychedelic rock to the world. Guitarist Mitch Galbraith spoke with The Echo ahead of their Falls Festival performance.
How was your headline across the USA and Canada earlier this year?
It was a great time! We did a lot of miles in the month we were there and got to play in some really cool places. When we head back it’s definitely going to be bigger and better.
You have a reputation for powerful live performances. How do you approach creating your live sets?
We like to change the setup depending on where we are and for how long we are playing. We try to curate something that flows and is going to be fun for the audience and for us to play too.
Is it a challenge to take an album to the stage? How much does it change?
We don’t play the record in full or in order really. It’s broken up with some older songs thrown in there so that we can have a live set that stays interesting and flows better. The songs don’t change much but we do write extra parts that we only play live.
What kind of experience do you want your audience to have?
If the crowd is having fun then we always have a good time. So something that is attention grabbing with lots to listen to and watch I guess. It needs to be a whole experience and the venue and environment play a huge part in that.
You’ve been called the ‘next Big Thing’ from Triple J. Is it a bit of a weird thing live up to?
It is really weird and the pressure is always there but we love writing and performing music for our audiences so it’s something we are still really excited to keep doing.
How would you like to see your career as musicians and as a band develop? In a ideal world of course…
I think it’s a dream for each of us to become career musicians and we’ve all jumped right in there with this band. More specifically we have the best time when we are writing our own music. It’s always a pleasure to be a part of the moment when it all comes together simply and elegantly. In an ideal world you could live that over and over again for your whole life.
What should we expect from Ocean Alley at Falls Festival?
We’ve got a new lightshow and we are going to play a mix of old and new songs. We are keen to send it all over the country when we tour around with the festival. They will be some of our only shows around that time so we hope to see ya there!
Falls Festival hits the North Byron Parklands 31 Dec till 2 Jan. For tickets and program info go to fallsfestival.com.