Following the release of their debut EP in May, a collection of raw, blown out garage rock, ‘Take A Ride Out East’ shows Barefoot Spacemen looking into new directions. The track sees the quintet tidy up their sound with crisp production, jangly guitars and sweet surf-pop harmonies, complete with a dreamy breakdown. We caught up with Scott Renton to have a chat about the new release.

TJ: So you’ve just released your new single 'Take A Ride Out East'. Want to tell us a bit about the track?

SR: I think I just came up with a couple ideas in the shower one morning like everybody does, showed them to the rest of the band and we kind of crafted the song from there. It got a good reception at a few live shows so we decided to make it a single. It's a weird feeling because it's your classic song about backflipping on a breakup, so to see people have a lot of fun dancing to it is somewhat bittersweet - but still dope.


This track feels like a little bit of a departure from the garage-blues of your debut EP, even though it only came out a few months ago. Is the next EP following a similar direction?

Yeah, we wanted to try something a little different and a little more poppy, which was one of the main reasons 'Take A Ride Out East' came out the way it did. We never wanted to limit ourselves to one sound so while it's not drastically different, it's cool that there's a noticeable difference there, and I think the next EP will be similar. If you look at The Who, back when they were young they were just banging out pop songs until they got big, then that gave them a little more room to try new things and still be heard, so hopefully we can follow a similar path.


A lot of garage/psych bands tend to get pretty abstract with their lyrics, but 'Take A Ride Out East' feels pretty honest and upfront - how important are your lyrics in the songwriting process?

Sometimes our lyrics are a collection of things you wanna scream at the world but can't do so from any socially acceptable platform other than music, other times they're just bullshit and a bit of fun. It was definitely the former in this case so the lyrics are pretty close to us. We try not to get too abstract so people know what's going on, and we always try to relate to an audience when we write or play. I think being able to achieve that connection separates good music from great music, so hopefully one day we can nail that.


What’s coming up next for Barefoot Spacemen?

We're hoping to get our second EP recorded soon and we've got a few gigs and mini-fests coming up leading into summer. We're pushing for a couple festival lineups so hopefully we can get on the bill for a couple of those too. Hopefully a couple surprises for our listeners as well.