Australian pop punk band Stand Atlantic, consisting of Bonnie Fraser (vocals/rhythm guitar), David Potter (lead guitar), Jonno Panichi (drums) and Miki Rich (bass), released their fourth studio album “WAS HERE” on August 23, 2024 via Hopeless Records.
This marks their first album in two years since the 2022 album “F.E.A.R.”.
The album comprises a 15-track, featuring collaborations with Bruses, PVRIS, Sueco, and Polaris, produced by DAIDAI and Stevie Knight.
The band lead singer Bonnie Fraser said of the album, “I think that if I looked at this album, or any album and thought, 'Yes, this is the definitive moment', I think I would want to stop making music. Being in this band, or any artistic endeavour, is that you always strive for the next thing creatively and how to explore the next step. So, I don't see this as the album to define our band; it's just another aspect of our band. We were just trying to create and show another side of us, as we always fucking are.”
She added, "We just need to continue being ourselves; that's the only thing that gets you anywhere. We're not trying to be anything else than whatever the fuck this is. We don't know how to be anything else other than that. We've kept the same mantra in place the whole time, and that's what we will continue to do no matter what."
Bonnie Fraser said of the album cover artwork, "I had the vision of looking at myself dead on the cover of an album that I went through so much shit to make. I wanted to be able to hold that album in my hands, look at the person on the front and see them lying there from a completely different perspective.”
She continued, “That's because whilst making it, I felt like I was no longer the person that I was years before. It didn't feel like a gradual growth into this cool person that I am really proud of being. It felt like there was a huge black spot in my life where I went so inward and was not okay, and I was a shell of a person and a shell of who I was. I was grieving the person I used to be so badly because I didn't recognise the person that I was at the time.”
Bonnie Fraser explained track-by-track for the album via Apple Music.
“WAKE UP-SIT DOWN-SHUT UP” “The song was written when I was living in Manchester. I was feeling very numb. I was questioning everything about who we are, why we are here. Like, ‘Is this my life?’ I was getting super existential.”
“FRENEMIES” “I had this friend, and I didn’t know where the hell I stood with them. For some reason, they just weren’t interested in being my friend anymore. I did everything I could and extended every olive branch and still didn’t get anything back. I was like, ‘Is this what it feels like to have an enemy? I don’t know what I did wrong.’ It was a sad moment.”
“GIRL$” with PVRIS and Bruses “I’ve wanted to have Lynn [Gunn, PVRIS vocalist] on a song for a while. Someone at the label sent her the track and I got a text from her and she was like, ‘Oh, my God, “GIRL$” is so good!’ She loved the track and jumped on. I really wanted a third person on the track too, and having another queer woman [Mexican artist Bruses] is awesome. I don’t think we ever really got into depth about the song’s meaning specifically, but I know that at least me and Lynn have talked about growing up as a woman in the music industry, or in society in general. But I didn’t want it to be too heavy, it’s supposed to be fun and uplifting and like, the girls are the best.”
“FREAKIN’ OUT” “It’s one of my favorite tracks on the record. Lyrically, it just goes back to a dark spot that I was in—I was numbing myself subconsciously and in my behavior. I was partying and doing drugs and drinking without realizing that I was trying to cover up my feelings and not deal with the stuff that I was going through. Kind of heavy, I guess. But the song’s super fun, so that’s how we balance that out.”
“NOSE BLEED” with Sueco “I don’t know why this reminds me of Quentin Tarantino, but there’s this little organ thing that’s going on. And I’m like, ‘If Quentin Tarantino was a fucking song, that’s what it would sound like.’ So I was thinking a lot about that and that’s where all the visuals lyrically came in—of ‘nosebleed’ and ‘twist the knife’ and basically dying over someone and doing everything that they want and being stuck in this toxic cycle that you cannot get out of. And you’re like, ‘Well, just leave me to die. I surrender to the cycle, and I’m never getting out of here.’”
“LOVE U ANYWAY” “The relationship I was in, it felt like make-or-break at the time and I was like, ‘I’m gonna write a love song for the first time in my life.’ I don’t know if I was trying to trick myself into thinking everything is going to be OK or not. We ended up breaking up soon after I wrote it, which is awesome karma. So I’m never writing another love song in my life!”
“KISSIN’ KILLER COBRAS” “I have a fair share of experience in toxic relationships. Sometimes when you’re in a toxic relationship, because that’s your normal, you lean into that and you think that’s normal to fight back or participate and perpetuate other toxic interactions. It kind of made me feel like I was becoming the monster that I was being presented with, if that makes sense. So I was trying to write this little urban legend of someone getting attacked by a snake and then becoming the fucking snake.”
“WARZ0NE” “It’s basically me being like, ‘Fuck you’ to the keyboard warriors—people on the internet who have nothing better to do than send hate for no reason. They don’t know you personally, but they’ll judge everything about you based on stuff they see online or your songs. You can tell yourself that it doesn’t matter and not to read into it, but when you see it, it does hurt a little. It makes you so angry because you want to respond and roast the fuck out of them, but you have to just not. So the only way I could do that was write a song and be like, ‘Fuck you guys.’”
“CRIMINAL” with Polaris “The way I write and the style of writing that I participate in is like, I need to feel something and then get it out. I feel like you can get caught in this cycle mentally of like, ‘Oh, I guess I need to fuck my life up a little bit to write these songs.’ And the people that are selling them don’t care about what you’ve gone through to get there as long as you get the song. And it feels a little weird. You’re making other people money based off the pain that you put yourself through. Then you also make money off it. It does feel a little bit criminal.”
“17” “It’s something I’ve barely spoken about. And I’ve definitely never written about it. It’s about sexual assault; it was something that happened to me a few years ago. I thought I’d processed the whole thing properly, but one night on tour, I woke up in my bunk and I’d had a dream about this person, who I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I hadn’t thought about the situation in a long time. I woke up and I was so angry, and I was punching the bunk above me. After that I was like, ‘I think there’s some residual shit here that I need to process, or at least stop burying and actually talk about.’ The only way for me to do that is writing a song about it.”
“17 // REPRIZE [ONE TAKE]” “The original song is where I was at the time and getting all that emotion out. Then the reprise is like, ‘This is where I’m at now. It’s not fine, all that stuff that you did, because I have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I’m doing OK, and you’re not clouding up my mind every day. And I’m not fucking my life up because of what you did.’ The interesting thing about that song was that we did that in one take. The lyrics just kind of came out in one go.”
“G.A.G.” “It stands for ‘Girl’s a Gun’ but I didn’t want to have the word ‘girl’ in two titles! That again is just back to a toxic relationship situation. Just feeling like you have to surrender to it to make it get better when it doesn’t. But you’re also questioning like, ‘Is this right? Are we doing something stupid here? Like, maybe we need to look at this a little further.’ But essentially it’s kind of just surrendering to it all, unfortunately.”
“ROCKSTAR” “It’s about a specific person. I thought we were cool with each other, and then I found out he was talking so much shit on my friends, on my band, my friends’ bands. It just pissed me off so much. I was like, ‘You literally think you’re the coolest dude. And all you do is talk shit on other people because you’re friggin’ insecure. Fuck you.’ It’s just a huge middle finger to this person. There’s lots of Easter eggs, so if people know the story and know the person, they’ll be able to figure out who it’s about.”
“SEX ON THE BEACH” “It was inspired by one of the first times I went to LA. I was in this club and it was full of douchebags wearing their sunglasses inside at 3 am and purposely being dicks. I was like, ‘This is so gross. I’m just gonna sit here and drink myself to death, I guess.’ Then, people at the same time were blowing smoke up my arse and trying to be a friend. I know exactly what you’re trying to do here, you’re trying to network. It just feels superficial. I did not like that at all.”
“KILL[H]ER” “Lyrically, it’s when you’re in a situation that you feel like you can’t get out of and you are compromising who you are constantly. It feels like you’re killing off a version of yourself. It’s kind of like wishing to get that old you back but realizing that that person doesn’t exist anymore, and you’re left with this shell of whatever the hell you used to be. You’ve killed yourself off, basically.”
