Loose Goose Found Success by Stopping the Chase
Punk Head: You called the album Going Nowhere Fast. At what point did you realise that “nowhere” might actually be a better destination than chasing the next industry milestone?
Loose Goose: It’s not something we realised while writing, I think it was an outcome that evolved through the whole process. Having that rejection of not getting what you wanted, and then having the hindsight to look back and realised you probably weren’t ready for it, kinda helped to understand that sometimes you’re exactly where you need to be. It’s a realisation that there’ll never be a destination of satisfaction, so why chase them.
Punk Head: The record began as four songs and became nine. Did the album get bigger because you had more to say, or because you collectively lost control of the plan?
Loose Goose: The album evolved on its own, we really had only toyed with the idea of an album because we’d recorded so many demos initially. But our process is also quite spontaneous, and so in recording settings we seem to just come up with songs a lot easier. We end up recording 6 songs in two days in the studio, with a lot of them hardly being a fully fleshed concept prior. Still, we could’ve opted to release all of these as singles and do the whole tired 6 week single release cycle, but we knew our audience would appreciate an album much more, and that’s who we’re trying to reward at the end of the day.
Punk Head: How much of Going Nowhere Fast is anger, and how much is exhaustion?
Loose Goose: I think it’s just 100% energy. Everything is said with meaning and heart, whether it’s stress anger exhaustion… yearn. The anger and frustration was definitely a leading feeling for a lot of the tracks. But the exhaustion has been felt for a long time, and so I think it’s wrapped into every bit of every track. There’s a sense ground hog day about a lot of it I think.
Punk Head: “We got wrapped up in the game” is a pretty brutal admission. What did chasing the game actually start doing to the four of you?
Loose Goose: Just put absolutely ridiculous timelines and expectations on things that didn’t need that pressure. You’re constantly looking outward and you quickly start to complain to one another and get almost caught in a pity circle. To take your career in your own hands and admit jealousy, admit comparison, is the only way you can actually stop doing it. We’re a lot happier now running in our own lane, but it was also a necessary challenge for us to go through.
Punk Head: You finish the album with something involving an espresso martini, an ex-girlfriend and a goldfish. Was “Bolivian Boogie Sugar” the moment you decided subtlety had officially left the building?
Loose Goose: Bolivian boogie sugar is just absolute maximal loose goose. It was a jam in between demos of other songs that just went perfect. No comparison, no “what if we tried to make it sound like this band” or “how does this make a radio hit”. It was just “let’s go balls to the walls hard at it and either really turn people off or have a niche cult classic”. Going forward that’s probably the example of where we want to head, not sonically but as an approach to making music.
Punk Head: After selling out 500-capacity shows and building that following, what does “success” mean to you now? Has the definition changed since the band started?
Loose Goose: Success in the beginning was monthly listeners, streams on songs, supporting big bands we’d idolised, selling x amount of tickets. None of that is ever lasting happiness. Success to us now is in our crowds connection to the music, our ability to write songs that are genuine to us, the ability to grow and fly further with a growing audience. We’ve already had so much success to be grateful for, so we’re not in the mind of chasing some kind of ‘success’ that’s out of our control. Those things are a nice bi-product of the hard work, but no longer the definition. Take it all away, we still know who we are and what we stand for.
