Broadside: A Decade Of Growth

It’s been ten years since the Virginian band, BROADSIDE, started out, slowly working their way into everyone’s playlists and album collections with their catchy melodies and poignant lyrics. From the demo, Far From Home, to two more albums throughout the rest of the 2010s. As the band have grown in the 10 years they’ve worked together, their upcoming third album, Into The Raging Sea, shows growth and maturity from the band. Vocalist Oliver Baxxter, explains further to Distorted Sound, as well as what to do to help arts during this pandemic.

“I think that offering some sort of relief fund that’s more active towards the idea of using the arts to benefit charities is how I think both parties could really grow, grow and get the word out,” Oliver says. “So the artists, painters, novelists, poets, and musicians can express their art while having the funds to work with charities that need the funds to obviously contribute back to society. With more people at home, more people are consuming art at a very fast pace and if you can get your artist and these people that they’re looking to for entertainment during this downtime.”

Into The Raging Sea is the third album from the band, where Oliver explains that this is a natural progression for the band to take in their music. “Between album two, album three, is when we’ve done the most growing. I lost close companions and I moved across the country and we’re no longer on the old label that we were on, you know, there are so many opportunities where I’ve learned how to establish myself under very stressful situations,” he says. “when approaching the album I was able to write from a place of growth, as opposed to a place of hope, and kind of dreaming and wanting. A lot of the first two records it’s a lot of, ‘I hope I hope I hope’, and now at this record, it feels just like I’m starting to see, and/or, this is what I want; as opposed to hoping, it’s saying, this is what I’m going to do to get there. On top of just a few more mature sounding notes and it’s in the music itself, I think those are the biggest changes.”

“I really hope that we gain new fans with our more tuned in, more mature sound, but I hope overall that it shows people that we can outlast the test of the change that our genre sees all the time, especially with new artists on the horizon constantly,” Oliver continues. “I can understand why it was the closest thing to attach it to, we kind of follow that genre and its melodies and take influence. I know some of my band members take influence from all the pop-punk bands growing up, but I would say definitely in the situation we’re in, it’s a bit silly to feel like, ‘oh should I be answering this like a pop-punk band or should I be answering like an artist who has been struggling with this for 10 years’, and I think either one, I’m flattered by. If it gets him in the door, that’s fine, we’ll, we’ll do the rest.”

So, how would Oliver describe the music on BROADSIDE in his own words? Simple. “We’re just like a standard pop-rock band, meaning a little bit more towards the pop on certain songs and a little more rock on the others. I would say more pop, but also more polished rock music,” he explains. “This is the first time that we’ve ever like gotten together and wrote the album in the same room. Our drummer Jeff, he’s the newest member of the band and so we sat down and he came to my flat like, I’d say about a year, year and a half ago. And we spent all the winter just sitting and writing songs and so half the songs that are on the record are actually were written right there in the living room like not much changed about them so usually what it is we’ll send bits and pieces by, you know, through just a long text thread, or just email one another and add their idea and send it back but with this one, it was just the very organic hands-on approach to writing the album.”

As like many bands aching to return once the pandemic is over, BROADSIDE are no exception, with Oliver describing his ideal location to perform. “You know, I have a man of small dreams I really just want to play somewhere tropical, you know, I want to play on a beach, and then I want to say, ‘I can’t believe that this same sunset I’ve been seeing setting for 30 years looks completely different’. That’s one of my dreams.” He adds, “it does feel like as a band we’re faced with this challenge where you know people are expecting something of us or expecting nothing and actually this is where a band starts to fall off the face of the earth, or they start to become solidified in their everyday lives. They’re not just like, you know, a new band anymore they’re kind of like people are looking at us with these expectations and that’s kind of what it feels like with being in this vast audience.”

Into The Raging Sea is out now via SharpTone Records.

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