Australia a storm is about to hit! HEAVY Mag has also had a proud history of wanting to explore the best Australian music and we think that we have discovered one of the finds of 2018 with Sydney hard rock outfit Lillye. Fronted by the amazingly talented Virginia Lillye the band first founds fans with a self-titled EP and are now about to stun everyone as they are set to release one of the albums of the year – the brilliant Evolve.
As we chat to Virginia it is easy to see that this is someone who is deeply passionate about music and it has been a varied musical path, which has seen her perform in hit musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease and Fame that has seen her get to where she is today.”Well it was actually Jesus Christ Superstar,” Virginia says with a laugh when I ask where the transition from theatre to hard rock started. “I think that is the most amazing rock musical and it was actually on that show. I was living in Germany at the time and the actually theatre was an outdoor ruins of an old Church, so I’m in this little town in Germany in these ruins of an old Church, the orchestra started up and it was like ‘oh my God’ and this primitive vibe came over me and then it was dah dah dah and it just came over me… and I was like ‘ooohhhh yeah!’ And from there I was like ‘yeah I want to create something a little more rockier than usual.’
With just one listen to the lyrics of the tracks on Evolve you know that Lillye have been writing about some pretty deep things and Virginia is quick to confirm that. “It’s pretty much about busted up relationships,” she says when I ask about what was inspiring the band’s lyrics. “I went through a divorce, another member of the band went through a divorce, so that was pretty much the grounding of Evolve, it’s all about relationships and things going on with our lives in that sense. I also noticed that everybody has become so fixed to their phones, nothing seems real any more, we all seem to be living in this fantasy world – everything just seems to be on the screen, it’s a digital screen world and we have kind of lost the communication essence between one another so it’s about getting back to being social and talking to one another and calling each other rather than texting and just saying ‘how are you going?’. Just pick up the phone!”
Evolve is out through Eclipse Records on the 18th May.
