Foley Interview: The Confidence of ‘Can’t Help the Way’

Foley are taking their emotional side in their stride on their newest single ‘Can’t Help the Way’. The duo, comprised of Ash Wallace and Gabriel Everett have reclaimed their twenties with a new found sense of freedom and fearlessness in their identities through the new track’s carefree lyricism, and mirroring sonics. We chat to Foley about the single and their bond that allows them to keep growing as musicians. 

How does it feel to be getting new music out now?
Ash: It feels really good and we’re really excited. It’s been a long time coming for this song. We wrote it just over a year ago. It was funny because it came together so quickly on the night and it’s been in our live set for a while, but we haven’t gotten around to releasing it. It hasn’t been quite right until now. It’s really exciting to finally let it into the world. 

When you say it hasn’t been quite right, is that in terms of the timing wise or getting the song to the standards you want?
Ash: Mostly timing. We have been refining it for the last six weeks in the lead up. We refined the production a lot and made sure that everything is doing the best job it can. We stripped it back a bit and tried to build it up a bit more purposefully. Because we’re doing the video release, that delays things a wee bit as well.

Gabriel: Just making sure the stars are all aligned perfectly.

Would you say that you’re more overthinkers and nit-picky, or spontaneous in your approach?
Ash: Gabe is such a detail-oriented person. It’s crazy.

Gabriel: Me on the details, and Ash on the spontaneity. Then, we meet in the middle and get things done. You can go over the details forever, and get everything right, but until you get things rolling, you won’t get it out.

Ash: On the other hand, if I didn’t have Gabe getting the details right, [I’d say], ‘hey we wrote a song! Let’s chuck it out [to release]’. 

Speaking of that friendship where you draw from each other’s differences, how does your robust friendship make it easier to bring the vulnerability into your songs?
Ash: For us… we know what’s happening in each other’s lives from being best mates. It [helps] you past that first [step]. We love writing with other people, and we do lots of collaboration, but there’s always that first stepping stone of feeling comfortable and talking about what’s been going on. But, we can really just dive in because we know what’s going on with each other and how each other is feeling.

Gabriel: There’s a huge amount of mutual trust and we can get past all the first steps and get somewhere meaningful. We also are so each other wavelengths when it comes to writing. We’ll think of the same melodies to the song and know exactly where the other person will take it, which is great.

Ash: That’s come from time. Not just in our friendship, but time writing together. We’ve had years and years getting to know each other on a friendship level, and now we’ve had a good two years writing together all the time. It’s a massive asset.

How has gradually releasing singles helped you guys find what you both like musically and helped you evolve on your own terms?
Ash: It’s allowed us to check in with our fanbase a lot. When we started, we didn’t know who was going to respond to our music, and now we do. The trickle out has allowed us, not that we specifically write for what people want to hear to work out who are demographic is and get to know those people who come to the live shows. It’s allowed us to hone in on what we’re actually trying to achieve and what people best respond to.

Gabriel: It’s allowed us to explore different ideas and hone in on the ideas we want to make a point of. We’ve written a bunch of songs since ‘Can’t Help the Way’, and this one seems the right one this time. It comes with taking our time… Also, we get to get the details right, which is satisfying.

Ash: Subject matter wise as well, it’s allowed us to map out what’s been going on in our lives across the singles. It’s a bit of an arc and a narrative. The time in between has allowed us to be super honest about what’s been going on. As you go through the songs, it’s very sequential. Coming into whatever comes next in a larger body of work, you get more of a slice of life at that time. You get more of what’s going on more in depth. It’s been nice to lay out who we are and what we’re going through. So much of our stuff is about being in your twenties and not knowing what the fuck is going on and trying to work it out.

Gabriel: We’ve just been living life and that’s what we write about. It’s more material for us. The longer we wait, the more life we get to live out and the more things we get to overthink.

From the outside looking in, the duo appear to be more confident in their lyrics. We hear in ‘Talk About It’ the lyric, ‘don’t wanna talk about it’, but now they Ash sings boldly, ‘can’t help the way I feel about you’. There seems to be more of an acceptance of your feelings. Has that been the case?
Ash: Yeah totally! That sums it up really well. Especially [when we say] an arc as far as the singles go. When we first started out, a lot of the content was about breakups or relationships in a time of strife… We were speaking on feeling unsure and all of those feelings of doubt. We’re both massive overthinkers.
Now, we’ve come to a point where enough time has passed that we’re back on the self-confidence and moving past a massive hurdle in your life, or a time in life that’s really hard. [Now], it’s that confidence and letting go. ‘Can’t Help the Way’ is definitely a song about letting go of overthinking and moving past all of the times when you talk yourself into things, or out of things… [It’s just about], this is how I feel, I can’t help that I feel that way, so I’m just going to try and ride the wave and enjoy it.

Gabriel: In ‘Talk About It’, the confidence is almost like a coping mechanism. You’ve dealt with this thing, so here’s what to do to move on. With ‘Can’t Help the Way’, it’s realising that you don’t have to deal with that every time and there’s different ways. It’s sort of almost the opposite. We’ve gone, ‘sweet, [we] don’t have to solve the problem every time’. It’s a vibe of freedom and letting go. We wanted it to be joyous and fun. There’s always two sides of the coin with relationships. There’s the hard times and the good times. We’re making sure we also communicate that we want to have fun and derive joy from our lives. It was important to us to make sure that we weren’t always [doing] a breakup song… We wanted to make sure we [showed] the joy in our lives as well. We’re both pretty upbeat [people].

Do you think that letting go has come with maturation and more life experience, or from getting it out to each other and through music?
Ash: Both. I wonder if maybe, we weren’t doing this, because it acts like a therapy, I wonder if it would take longer to get over these things. On the other hand, it can be really hard to go on stage and sing a song that is about something rough for you and everyone is singing it back like, ‘woo hoo’. It’s awesome, but there is that side of it. It’s definitely a bit of both. Time is such a healer.

Gabriel: Writing songs about it helps you pinpoint that moment in your life and really cements it. That allows you to look at it with context. You can take a couple of steps back and continue to overanalyse the situation, but in a much healthier way and move on from it. The difference with this song and the other ones is us growing up and realising that there’s not just one way to solve things. Things are sometimes completely out of your control and that’s fine too.

Additionally, the duo capture that coming-of-age through the soundscapes created.
Can you talk about using the vocoder and bringing in those elements without oversaturating?
Gabriel: The vocoder was a spur of the moment thing. It was in the first demo. We wrote it with the vocoder on. That was the moment the track clicked for us sonically. We spent a lot of time getting the chords right and making sure the song felt right. There wasn’t any particular reason behind the vocoder or that sound, but we were trying out things and it stood out over everything else. It really meant that it was the right thing to do and [we] stuck with it through all of the production and the rest of the song-writing. That is the one thing that is central to the song.

Ash: It also has a sense of nostalgia to it. The reason [Ash] is attracted to it is because [you can hear] a dark-punk time. We wanted to do something a bit different… sonically than what we were used to. We wanted to dive in. From the onset, it wasn’t about a really polished vocal, or intense pop vibe. It was about the energy and fun. At the beginning, it was about throwing in cool elements and having a good time. At the end, we stripped it back and made sure everything contributed how we wanted it to. We focused on the important things. There were a lot of things that sounded good but didn’t make the cut… Most of the stuff was about creating an energy that matched the lyrics and the vocoder was the first thing that achieved that. Everything else, like the synth choices, guitar lines and all the sounds were about creating rhythmic energy to support what we were trying to get across.

Gabriel: If you play it acoustic, it’s really downbeat. It’s really melancholic if you just play it on a piano.

Do you think that’s something that helps the song stand out for a greater range of people?
Ash: Yeah. We’re big believers in the song being strong enough to stand on its own without all the production. We always make sure that the songs we release, if you take it down to the bones, it’s a good song. Especially harmony wise. We’re really big on making sure the harmony is achieving what we want. That’s where a lot of our detail in the song-writing goes; making sure the harmonies and melodies are really solid before we add anything else.
With pop music, you have the opportunity to package the emotion into something that’s going to hopefully be received by a lot of people. It’s important to us to make sure what we’re saying is to make sure that what we’re saying is then making people feel [our emotions]. That people really understand what we’re saying. We’re really trying to be authentic in it. The sonics supporting that is so important. We want people to feel what we’re singing about and understand that it’s real for us and we’re speaking on our lives.

Gabriel: The craft of pop is to condense a feeling into the pop structure and put as much emphasis behind each word as you can. That’s the whole purpose.

The duo are no strangers to collaboration, taking the opportunity to work with producer Giorgio Scott in the initial demo, then refining it with producer Josh Fountain. 
Does bringing new people in your circle better for offering a new perspective, or is it good because they have a similar outlook?
Gabriel: It’s always a new perspective. With Josh, we take in the track after we’ve exhausted all of our ends. We give it to him and he’s sorted out the one thing that’s unlocked the rest of the song for us. Getting more people into a session, to a point, is beneficial because you have such a melting pot of ideas and creativity. Why wouldn’t you want a whole group of experts trying to refine what you want to say? That’s part of the beauty of pop music. Big groups of people trying to achieve the same goals is really cool. It’s something we get a lot of enjoyment out of.

Ash: The collaboration adds to the passion. It takes away from the frustration of when you get stuck or when you feel less than inspired. Those moments flip away because there’s always someone who’s going to be inspired, and you have this amazing group of people who are really passionate and do the same thing. We love bringing more people into the circle and think it’s really important. Now that we’ve established our sound, and are comfortable in what we’re trying to achieve, it’s a lot easier to bring people in and not get waylaid. We can write with a group of people and achieve something that sounds like us.

The ‘Can’t Help the Way’ video will be released next week.
What can we expect?
Ash: We have taken things out of the box in the past and wanted to try something new. The whole thing was really spontaneous. We flew to Brisbane randomly to shoot the video with people we’ve never met. It was a ballsy move. It could’ve gone the wrong way. We wanted it to be energetic and playful. It’s still a bit out of the box. We’re not about doing a video that doesn’t do anything extra. It’s easy to lip-sync into the camera… but we’re trying to for all of our videos, to create an aesthetic that’s different or unexpected. I really like videos where people go, ‘wait what?’ That might not be a good reaction sometimes, but it’s great when people react.It’s not as out the gate as the ‘Talk About It’ video was, but the directors had a really amazing vision. It turned out cool and we’re really pleased.

Gabriel: With videos, one of the things I always likes is, if you can watch it without the sound, and it’s still a good video, then you’ve achieved something. We think we’ve done that with this video.

Ash: It was so cool to work with Aussies and get out of our space. The last video was in London and that was so cool because you’re not in your own environment, so you can’t play it safe. It’s the same with this. Coming over to Australia, and trusting these people we’ve never met, who were amazing guys and talented and did a great job, but it was risky. We had no idea. It made everyone step up their game a lot. It was the same for them, they were like, ‘who are these two random kiwis flying to Brisbane? What are you doing?’ Everyone was really on their toes and that makes for creative and cool work, because people are risking and think, ‘we’re risking it, so we may as well go big or go home’.

What can we expect after the video release?
Ash: We’ve been playing a lot of shows recently, so we’re taking a break from the live set and crack into writing the next releases. We’re going down into writing mode. We’ve got heaps of songs that we’re excited about. We’re [going] to see how this one goes, and then see what we want to release next.

Gabriel: Also, intentionally taking it easy and not stressing too much about what’s next. Figuring it out the way we’ve always done, which is just [by] maturing a little bit.