Their debut album Flashbacks is out today, here we interview Jason, one third of Petric about the album and how they have evolved in the past few years as a band.
Thanks for taking the time to chat.
No, thank you!
It must feel very strange after all this time to finally be putting out this album, 2 years in the making? Can you talk about the process to get to this point and the evolution of the album?
This album has been in the works for much longer than 2 years, Tom and I got signed to a record label as a duo back in 2015 – one of the best opportunities we’ve had in our careers but also one of the biggest mistakes we ever made was not realising that we weren’t a duo, we were a trio. Jordan is such a huge element in our music, in our band and in our creative process, both in live performance and studio. In the fall of 2018, we had a meeting with Jordan to say ‘listen, we’ve got to get you into this band, something is missing, I’m confident that it’s the magic we have when it’s the three of us, and I want to take that into the studio.’ In the fall of 2018, we decided to do this, we decided to make it a three-way band, he was in, no questions asked and we wanted to do an album. A week after that meeting, we were in the studio recording our first single. I think we’re a good unit and I’m really excited that we can share this together.
When you did form the trio, did you all have very different styles or was it a very organic process coming together to form a sound?
I don’t think any of us are great musicians, I’m not a very good singer…
I think a lot of people would beg to differ.
We’re ok guitar players, but when we get on stage, every now and again, we look at each other and think ‘wow, was that ever cool’ – there’s that magic. That’s what music should be, it shouldn’t be that a producer creates a whole song and sends it off to a band who auto-tunes the vocal so that it doesn’t even sound like them and then you’re No. 1 on Billboard four weeks later – that’s not music. Music is that magic and that moment and I think that every now and then PETRIC – Tom, Jordan and myself – we create that magic. It’s a lot of fun to create that magic when that happens, I hope that people can hear and find that magic on Flashbacks.
You definitely can… Was it a very natural choice again for which songs you chose as singles, for instance with KIDS?
It’s never easy to pick a single, especially when there’s brothers in the band. I’ll dial it back, it’s never easy when there’s two brothers in a band (laughs). I think every song on this album has an argument for why it should get some special treatment, we hold ourselves up to a pretty high standard when picking songs. There isn’t a song on the album that anyone dislikes. ‘Kids’ has a lot of energy, you’re absolutely correct and the video itself really captures our last moments with our fans – that show that is featured in this video was in our hometown, it was our biggest headlining hometown show of our careers. About a week and a half later, the pandemic hit and our whole career was basically cancelled, so that is a very special moment and video for us. The nostalgic moment and feel on ‘Kids’ really compliments that video.
It must feel very strange to watch back that video and think what was possible only a year ago… Talking about how high your energy is as a band and as a unit, how have you found it navigating the past year and keeping that momentum and energy during this period?
You know what it actually hasn’t been too bad, we really miss our fans and we really miss our camaraderie that we have with our band – that really sucks, I don’t see my friends anymore, these guys are my best friends and we don’t get together as often. We still communicate and do what we can, we’re very lucky that we had this album about 90% recorded. Yeah, we did some stuff to get it ready but for the most part it was ready and done. It gave us the opportunity to do some music videos with our bandmates and it gave us the opportunity to take some pictures and be creative. If we hadn’t had this album, I think this year would have felt very different for us and probably would have been a little more depressing, to be completely honest. It’s very exciting to get to share this record.
There’s a lot of positivity in the record that we need to listen to right now.
I hope so, I hope that it makes people smile, it’s nine tracks – about thirty minutes long. If it can bring a smile to your face for thirty minutes, we’ll have done our job.
