‘Tomorrow is Fine’, the single release from Sean Sully & The Sleep Ins, is an optimistic track that is looking towards a carefree and exciting future ahead. The acoustic-based track is bright and undemanding, focusing on the promising future ahead. This is a solo project for Sean Sully, exhibiting a different style from what he has previously been involved with, drawing upon a collection of inspirations, from playing in China Beach, to experience writing for cabaret shows.
This track is not the first release for Sean Sully, previously releasing a couple of EPs on Bandcamp over the years. ‘Tomorrow Is Fine’, however, is the start of something serious for him, a chance to showcase his own style of songwriting. “The first EP I released was just some songs that I had, and I recorded them and tried mixing them myself. I pieced them together until I liked them… then I just decided to put them all online - whoever could see them could see them and that was just about it.’ Discusses Sean, “I have [also] been playing in various projects around Melbourne for a while. I joined China Beach, which is a disco/funk band based in Melbourne that I have been playing keys in for about 3 years. We have played around Australia, we have done a couple of shows in New Zealand and Bali, but that wasn’t really my own music, that was me playing as part of a band.”
Along with China Beach, Sean has also performed in cabaret acts for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. In 2018, the show he co-wrote with the team over at Picked Last for Sport, ‘Creatures of the Deep’ won Best Cabaret of the Year at the 2018 Melbourne Fringe Festival, a family friendly show focused marine conservation. It dives into the issues all while chronicles the light-hearted story of a scientist trying to find a giant squid and the creatures he meets along the way. Sean stated that the cabaret shows he has written tell a story, but at their core are quite jovial with a more tongue-in-cheek style of humour to help heighten the topic that the show is based around.
Discussing ‘Tomorrow Is Fine’, Sean divulges that this is about the immense effect that love and falling in love can have on you, and how it changes your outlook towards the future. “‘Tomorrow is Fine’ is the last thing I say on the track, and the idea of it was from a feeling I had and the song just came together really quickly. The song is about looking into the future in a positive way… It’s about discovering love and having that love make you look forward into the future.” Sean explains that, “There have been times in my life where I haven’t looked forward into the future, I think that the future isn’t going to be good and you go through rounds of depression, you feel lost and hopeless and you don’t make plans for the future because you don’t think about it. But this was a feeling that I had after falling in love and thinking that, for the first time, I am looking forward to the future and caring about myself in a way that I want to be around of that future.”
You can see a lot of acoustic and folk greats eluding in the track, being reminiscent of more lyrical-forward musicians such as Josh Pyke and Father John Misty. Sean stated Crowded House having a significant impact on his song writing, praising Neil Finn for his capacity to structure songs and ability to be more fluid with how he structures his songs, creating more complexity in his work. When discussing his influences, we talked about how more acoustic styles of music can tell a story, saying that “there is the expectation with acoustic music for it to be a coast along and to have it wash over you, but some really good folk music can get you into a groove, while having an amazing story being told… it’s something you often find with a lot of Celtic and Irish folk music.” He emphasised that this is something that he wants to do with his own music, subverting the expectation of just “verse – chorus – bridge” and creating something more immersive and story driven.
Originally ‘Tomorrow Is Fine’ was written at the end of 2019, what feels like an eternity ago. Sean discussed how this track came together in pieces over the past year. Initially, a friend of his, Rowena Wise, who would go onto mix the final track, put out the call for someone to record some music with her. “[Rowena] put out the call on Facebook. She was doing a music production course at RMIT and she wanted someone to come in and record some tracks for her final assessment. I came over and laid down some tracks, and then lockdown hit and I wasn’t able to go in and finish recording what we had started. When we had that break between lockdown one and lockdown two, I was able to go back into RMIT and record the main vocals and the guitars for this song. I couldn’t get the rest of the band in, so the rest of this track is basically recorded from home. I got a friend to go backing vocals, I got someone to add violin … and it all kind of come together in the past month. we went around to see James Wingard and laid down the drums at his place, and I pretty much played all the other parts."
If all goes to plan, this will just the start of what we hear of Sean Sully & The Sleep Ins. Working on a final line-up, there are plans to work on an EP or a full-length album over the course of 2021. For now, Tomorrow Is Fine is available on Bandcamp and Spotify today from (27th of December), with a single launch planned in January 2021.
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