We are delighted to premiere today the new single ‘Nothing Lasts’ from Western Australian artist Clay Western. Dripping with a delicious melancholia and framed by sky scraping choruses over an electronic thrum, this is a dynamic and heartening track that makes you simultaneously weep and laugh with joy.
The track is a paean to mutability and change, raw with Western’s own experiences with transience, loss, personal growth and resilience:
The track definitely makes me reflect a lot. The recording process alone was symbolic of moving on. These sessions with Josh and Jordi were pretty much the last things I did in WA before I left. Listening to it now makes me look back on the life I created in Fremantle, the times we had and all the friends I’m lucky enough to have. It’s like reading a great book, turning the page and hoping the next chapter is as good as the last.
Lyrically, it’s about leaving a relationship you don’t want to leave, knowing that it’s the right thing for the both of you. When you’ve made so many memories It’s never the easy, but it’s the right thing to do. Being a pretty melancholy song we tried to put a positive spin on it through the production. The pulsing synth bass carry the Rhodes and give it a sense of life. I feel like the chorus releases a lot of tension, and the production alone almost says, “everything is going to be just fine”. We layered up the chorus with a lot of backing vocal lines, synth lines and big crashing drums, which I think add to that feeling as well.
Western’s slightly reverberated vocals are velvet soft and expressive, a hammond organ-like keyboard provides an immersive pillow while a throbbing bass synth bubbles organically below the surface: all combine to create a dreamy, cloudy aura . The anthemic chorus bursts through the miasma like a golden ray of sunshine:
‘Nothing Lasts’ is out on 14 October, and you can pre-save here.
Produced and engineered by San Cisco’s Jordi Davieson and Josh Biondillo out of their home studio in Fremantle, ‘Nothing Lasts’ was mixed by Clay Western’s close friend and longtime collaborator Dylan Ollivierre (The Money War), with mastering completed by Andrew Edgeson from Studios 301.
