Indie rockers Lennon Wells team up with brewery for debut album release
A Bruny Island shack, 14-hour recording days, and a craft brewery collaboration have shaped the ambitious debut album from Tasmania’s indie rock stars Lennon Wells.
Tasmanian indie rockers Lennon Wells are getting ready for their debut long-play album — with a celebratory brew to serve with it.
The five-member band formed in 2020 and are known for rocking out at Tassie festivals like Party in the Paddock and releasing hit singles like Baddie and No Kings, earning them a nomination in 2023 by the National Live Music Awards for Tasmania’s Best Live Act.
Their new 10-track album Blink (and you’ll miss it) is the fruit of the last two and a half years of labour for the group, with vocalist, guitarist and band frontman Ben Wells stating the album really focuses on “living in the moment”.
“I guess a lot of it has to do with like the moment and being in the moment or certain captured parts of different moments and reflection on those,” he said.
“But then … all the songs were written in this one space, one after another … but for us musically it’s like one piece of music.”
It was a quintessential Tassie writing that helped to fuel the new sound for the album, with the band heading to a shack on Bruny Island with all of their recording equipment to write the album over three 14-hour days.
These tracks were later finetuned at The Chapel Studios in Austins Ferry, with the help of Apple Isle producers A. Swayze and Alistair Campbell.
Keys and harmonica player Scott Target said moving from producing a whole album compared to singles changed the planning process for the band.
“The planning of it is probably the biggest difference because when you’re doing song by song you can easily just say ‘Well, we’ve got these two days to track it and mix it and then we’ll put it out’, but when it’s the whole album, that deadline is much further into the future and you’ve got so much more work to get complete,” he said.
As a further stretch to their creative juices, the Lennon Wells boys decided to align the launch of their album with a beer collaboration from Mountain Culture Brewery.
“Because we’ve put so much work into the album and it had been really two years of … piecing together the time, we figured if we were going to do it, we might as well make a real goal of it and try and think of some creative marketing ideas to really push it to get it in front of people,” Mr Wells said.
“So I knew James at Mountain Culture and kind of came in and had a chat with him about what they thought of the idea.
“They’re really keen on getting involved in the community, which is really cool and they’re trying to do lots of different kind of community projects.
“Then we kind of went around to a bunch of pubs where we like to drink at and they were all like, ‘yeah we’ll put it on tap’, so it’s going to be at like 10 different bars.”
The ‘Blink (and you’ll miss it)’ Mountain Culture Hazy Pale Ale will launch at the album listening party on November 21, where Lennon Wells will shout a keg.
Entry to the party is via pre-sale purchase of the record as well as giving you the chance to win 1 of 10 cartons of the collaboration beer.
‘Blink (and you’ll miss it)’ will be out for general release on November 26, with the album released on limited edition Deluxe 12” Vinyl.
It’s available for pre-order now via Bandcamp.
The band will also kick off touring shortly after, starting at Altar Bar on December 5 and The Goods Shed on December 19.
Head to lennonwells.com for more tour dates or to book tickets.
Originally published as Indie rockers Lennon Wells team up with brewery for debut album release
