Hailing from Darwin, the eccentric five-piece alternative pop-punk band Draftday has blessed fans with another hard-hitting single, ‘Misspent’. After finding success with singles such as ‘Soap’ and ‘En Soi’, their newly released single evokes anger and sadness through its portrayal of being hurt. We sat down with the band to talk about their new single, past success, and influences.

‘Misspent’ evokes feelings of sadness and anger within the chords and lyrics. When you’re all writing a new track, how do your own feelings and experience translate into your songwriting? 

Emotion plays a heavy role in how we go about writing music, more out of necessity than anything else. 

It feels kind of aimless to write something that we aren’t personally moved by, our influences are really emotionally driven and that's an aspect of their writing that we admire. 

It’s one of the most incredible aspects of the creative process, being able to dissect your own feelings through an artistic work.  

What do you think about ‘Misspent’ will give listeners, either current or new, a new perspective on Draftday? 

I think it brings out a whole new side of our musicality, “Misspent” is definitely a far stretch from our previous releases and is the most ‘aggressive’ track that we’ve written. 

There’s a lot more experimentation on it production-wise and I think that will be different for those who have listened to our previous releases, we’re definitely hoping it’ll give listeners some excitement over what is yet to come! By avoiding getting too comfortable in one certain sonic approach. 

The singles ‘Soap’ and ‘En Soi’ have both been met with success on triple j. What does the recognition from an esteemed place like triple j mean for Draftday, especially considering those were your first two ever releases? 

It’s amazing, we really didn’t expect such a humbling reception to those first tracks. And triple j has been so supportive in giving our releases the time of day, there is that element of growing up in Australia and having triple j as one of the major centres of up and coming Australian music, so to hear your own music on that platform will always be surreal.  

You’ve been compared to other pop-punk bands such as Trophy Eyes and Ceres. What makes your style or take on pop-punk different from other acts currently? 

 Pop-Punk was (and still is) an immense influence on us all musically, again in growing up with it as a predominant genre/sub-culture. 

I think the difference comes from applying the core ideas of that sound to other musical influences, in our first demos we were more in line with the ‘generic’ sound of pop-Punk but it just didn’t transpose to the ideas we had in our head. 

There’s been a real development in that sound too in the last few years, even in the heavier scene. So I think it’s a really exciting time to be playing in this scene where everyone is finding new ways to approach a sound that defines a certain group. 

As a follow up to the previous question, what pop-punk bands or other musicians influence Draftday the most? 

 Originally it was definitely Ceres and Trophy Eyes, our influences have more moved into bands outside of the ‘Pop-Punk’ scene. Such as Teenage Wrist, Sonic Youth or The Cure. 

Are there any current bands you all are listening to currently? Any musicians in particular that you’re fond of recently? 

 We’ve all been constantly listening to the new Loathe or Sleep Token album, some seriously incredible work from those bands and the production is something we’ve been inspired by. 

Bands like The Dead Love, Paradise Club and Better Half have also been some local bands we’ve been getting into.  

How are all of you coping and spending your time during the COVID-19 pandemic? Have any of you been affected in any way and if so, how are you handling it? 

 We’re pushing on, as everyone else is. Filling in time with writing where we can and trying to stay connected with friends/family. 

Naturally, everyone has been affected in some way, we are fortunate in that Darwin has a relatively low amount of cases. It’s certainly been an eye-opener in how acclimatised we all are to a relatively large amount of freedom in our ways of living, in having that really constricted it does raise a lot of issues that previously we wouldn’t have acknowledged? 

Not to get too political, but I certainly believe that through this crisis we will see a shift in how our society operates from a political, social standpoint. The opportunity is certainly there in the hands of the youth to incite this change. 

Follow Draftday and their music here!