Run Home Slow

Australian band The Teskey Brothers have a sound that’s directly influenced by ’60s and ’70s soul and psychedelic rock. But the themes on their second album, Run Home Slow, look toward the band’s future. “This is a coming-into-your-thirties album,” singer Josh Teskey (who founded the four-piece with his guitarist brother Sam) tells Apple Music. “It’s about everything that’s been changing in our lives. We’ve left our old jobs behind and now we're doing this music thing full-time. And we’re learning to hold our lives together on this new path.” Here, Josh talks us through the meaning and sounds behind each song on Run Home Slow.

“Let Me Let You Down”
“In any relationship, there’s going to be points where either person does something wrong. There are failures, but we work through them. They’re simple words: Let me let you down. It's going to be all right. We're going to fight, but we're still going to do this.”

“Carry You”
“This album is about letting go of the past, holding your life together, and finding a new path. This song talks a bit about mental health: If you're struggling, if you're having a hard time in any way, reach out. We need to help carry each other. We can't do it alone.”

“Man of the Universe”
“This one had a big Stevie Wonder influence, which we hadn't really done before. It’s about two things. We’re saying, stop trying to label everything and put fences up between us. You’re from here, I’m from there, but there’s so much bullshit in that discrimination. It’s also about the addiction we have to wealth. It’s a curse. Still, it’s a positive song—it’s about making changes.”

“Hold Me”
“Out in the studio here in Warrandyte [a semi-rural town near Melbourne], we were looking for somewhere to record a really good stomp on the floor and a clap. So we went outside on the veranda and hung all these mics from trees. You can picture us all in a circle, on the deck, just stomping and doing it all live. If you listen carefully, you can hear the birds in the background. It’s really beautiful out here.”

“Paint My Heart”
“Our last album was mostly influenced by soul, but here we’re letting the psychedelic influence really shine through. The whole album was recorded in analog, on an old tape machine, and I especially love that here. We had five tapes of this track and loved the start of one of them but the outro of another. Our producer spliced them together live. We could’ve done it on a computer later, but we wanted to do it this way.”

“Rain”
“We worked on the vocals a lot on this one—there’s a real Otis Redding influence here. It’s about losing friends, people who have died or anyone you've lost in your life. It’s really close to our hearts, as we’ve tragically lost some friends. So it's a really sad song.”

“So Caught Up”
“We wanted a female vocalist on this one. The sound was influenced by an amazing artist called Lady Wray, so we contacted her to see if she was up for singing on it, and she was. It moves into the pop world a little bit, which is different for us, but it’s a really good groove.”

“San Francisco”
“This one has a more folksy, Neil Young, Americana influence. We really love that stuff and wanted to do something that felt more like a ballad. It was written by Sam while he was in San Francisco, and it’s about him trying to hold things together while being away.”

“Sunshine Baby”
“This is a sad song that started out more as a poem, and it’s written in the third person—not as a personal experience. It’s about an older guy who has spent his whole life with one person. And when she dies, he’s left alone. He's getting older now, his life is going on, and his memory is starting to go. All he’s got left is this photograph—but even that’s fading. What has he got left?”

“Sun Come Ease Me In”
“Me and Liam [Gough, drummer] were up at a New Year's party after we'd played Falls Festival, and we'd stopped to hang out with our friends on this camping trip. We stayed up all night and we were up at the top of this hill watching the sun come up, and that’s where the idea for this one came from. It’s got this big party spirit to it.”

“That Bird”
“I wrote this while I was camping with my partner on the Colorado River in Utah. It was a dream song. I woke up in the middle of the night and just had the words and melody going around in my head, so I quickly wrote it down and recorded a little voice memo so I didn’t forget it in the morning. And I didn’t change any of it when we recorded it in the studio. Where did it come from? I don’t know. I guess the bird had a song to sing and something to say. It’s mysterious.”