Skegss – the Australian duo of Ben Reed (vocals, guitar) and Jonny Lani (drums) – last night via their triple j First Play on Drive, announced their new album Pacific Highway Music will be released Friday October 18th, 2024, via Loma Vista Recordings. Their jangly, irresistible new single ‘Out Of My Head’ is also out now alongside a playful karaoke video, directed by Vaughan Deadly & Nick Pollet. “Don’t get caught up on how someone makes you feel for too long in a negative way, pretend you get to restart life again and go do the things that make you thrive,” Reed says of the track. “We all say and do dumb things no matter how wise someone seems. So don’t get too hung up on your mistakes if you recognise them.” Produced by Paul Butler (Devendra Banhart, Michael Kiwanuka, St. Paul & the Broken Bones), Pacific Highway Music is now available for pre-order.
The announcement follows Skegss’ May single ‘Spaceman‘ and a massive regional tour around the country in support of the single, which was their debut as a two-piece and first new music since 2022’s double release of ‘Stranger Days‘ and ‘December‘.
Pacific Highway Music presents Skegss’ most masterful and fully realised work to date. The Byron Bay-bred band’s third full-length release—the follow-up to their acclaimed sophomore album Rehearsal, which debuted at #1 on ARIA Albums Chart, and led to their first-ever Coachella appearance and a sold-out U.S. tour—brings a newly heightened creative energy to every aspect of their explosive yet introspective form of rock. Centred on Reed’s frenetic and playful lyricism, Pacific Highway Music ultimately finds Skegss exploring the more complicated elements of the human experience with sincerity, soul, and unabashed joie de vivre.
Recorded at two iconic L.A. studios (The Village and Topanga Canyon’s Fivestar Studios), Pacific Highway Music partly owes its wildly unpredictable sound to the period of time Skegss spent cutting demos at Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree with studio owner Dave Catching (a musician/engineer known for his work with Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lanegan, and more). “In the past I’d deprived myself of using things like synthesisers, not realising how much texture and atmosphere they can add to the music,”says Reed.
“Working with Paul felt like letting our guard down and completely opening up in terms of what these songs could be.” Pacific Highway Music sustains an unstoppable velocity as the band confronts what he refers to as “the rollercoaster of emotions that come with being human.”
Reed lists punk libertines like Iggy Pop and underground artists like Deepakalypse among his inspirations, and first immersed himself writing songs after taking guitar lessons from a neighbour at the age of 11. As he broadened his musical palette with the help of surf-movie soundtracks, he began self-recording in his bedroom and creating entire comic books to accompany the collections of original songs he burned onto CDs to hand out at school. In 2013 Reed moved from his hometown of Forster to Byron Bay, where he reconnected with his childhood friend Lani and co-founded Skegss with former bassist Toby Cregan the following year. Although the band started out playing skate parks and pubs, they quickly ascended through the scene and made their debut at Splendour in the Grass within a year, famously drawing a crowd of 20,000 for their opening-slot set. Skegss’ 2018 full-length debut My Own Mess climbed the charts in Australia, earned an ARIA Award nomination for Best Rock Album, and gained widespread recognition in the U.S. In addition, Skegss also received triple j Feature Album of The Week forbothRehearsal and debut album, My Own Mess, plus five consecutive placements in triple j’s Hottest 100 for singles, ‘Up In The Clouds‘, ‘Save If For The Weekend‘, ‘Under The Thunder‘, ‘Valhalla‘ and ‘Stranger Days‘.
In choosing a title for their new album, Skegss honour their roots by nodding to the Australian coastal road they’ve driven on countless of times (on tour and on frequent surf trips), while also reflecting the band’s deepened sense of purpose. “I’ve spent a lot of my life driving on the Pacific Highway, and most of the time it puts me in a bit of hypnotic state,” says Reed. “With this album I tried to be as honest as possible, but I also wanted to create the kind of songs that give you that same feeling—songs where you can shut your eyes, let your imagination take over, and drift off into another world that exists only in your mind.”
