Brisbane trio Columbus are back and they are here to offer A Hot Take On Heartbreak – their second album set for release on May 25 via UNFD.
The first single lifted from the album is “Don’t Know How To Act” – a tongue-in-cheek, Weezer inspired jam about a relationship that’s just way too good to be true, belted out in the shower. Literally.
Bands evolve from album to album as the lives of its members, and their music tastes, continue to change. That’s particularly true in the case of Columbus, whose debut album was entitled Spring Forever, but its follow-up A Hot Take on Heartbreak has seen the Brisbane trio opting for a dramatic change of season.
“On Spring Forever we went into the studio and did exactly what we wanted,” recalls Columbus’ singer/guitarist Alex Moses of their debut. “But after touring that record and it coming time to do a new one, we realised that the music we wanted to play was distinctly different. We didn’t want to be a pop punk band anymore. We didn’t even want to be a punk band anymore. We wanted people to know us as a rock band.”
A Hot Take on Heartbreak will certainly leave listeners in no doubt about that, or that this change has harnessed excellent, if surprising, results.
That desire to move on was informed by a shift in the collective listening habits of Alex and his bandmates, bassist Ben Paynter and drummer Daniel Seymour, who traded the punk and hardcore of their formative years for the influential alt-rock of the late 90s/early 00s, including Weezer and The All-American Rejects.
Columbus recorded A Hot Take On Heartbreak with Joel Quartermain, widely known as the multi-instrumentalist of Western Australian rockers Eskimo Joe; and a producer with a wealth of experience and the know-how that comes with being in a band himself. And not just any band; Joel’s experience having won eight ARIAs over the course of multiple Number one and platinum albums informed the creative process in such a way that it allowed Columbus to take more risks because they had the full support of someone who had already scaled the heights.
A Hot Take On Heartbreak is available for preorder via 24Hundred and iTunes.
