On Monday, deep-feeling music fans Australia wide let out a cheer of celebration with the news that Movements will be touring in August. The California-based four piece of Patrick Miranda (vocals), Ira George (guitar), Spencer York (drums), and Austin Cressey (bass) will be gracing select intimate venues across Australia from 23rd August to 1st September. Joining them will be Sydney alternative rock five piece Eat Your Heart Out.
“Oh there’s a delay, don’t you love that?”, I said to Patrick, getting on the phone with him to talk about the tour. We had spoken previously in October when the band’s album Feel Something was released, and I felt like I had used up all of my ‘good questions’ for Patrick then. So I was keen for a relaxed conversation about their upcoming trip… albeit with significant pauses. Patrick commiserated and shared about other Australian phone interviews he’d had, including “the worst delay I’ve ever had to deal with” and how unbearable it was. He assured me not to “stress it”.
Surprised to hear that Patrick remembered our previous interview, I expressed my excitement for the upcoming tour, with Patrick echoing the sentiment: “We’re extremely excited to be going to Australia. It’s a place we’ve all wanted to go for so long, and it’s just cool that it’s finally happening.”
Travel is a relatively new thing for Patrick and his fellow Movements bandmates. They have just recently returned home from a tour of Europe. Patrick shares that the Europe tour was a first for him: “Up until last month when we went to Europe, I’ve never been out of North America. I’ve really done very little traveling in my life. So I’m excited just to go and be a tourist!”
I asked Patrick about the experience of being in Europe, whether this ‘first’ was a culture shock for him. “Definitely, yeah. There was a huge culture shock. Obviously not in a bad way, it was really incredible. I got to see so many historic monuments and so many things that I’ve learned about in either history class or in general over my lifetime. Being able to see it all in one place and experience it myself was extremely eye-opening. Being able to see a different culture and different foods, it was so cool. I had a great time. It was probably the most fun I’ve had on a tour. I’m excited! I’m excited to continue on and see more of the world.”
“I prefer being on the road to being at home.”
Considering Movements were so far away from home, I asked Patrick if he found this side of things taxing with the UK/EU tour. He was very direct in saying he doesn’t get homesick. “I prefer being on the road to being at home. I don’t really know why that is, but like, there’s not really a lot that I care about at home. Like obviously I miss my girlfriend and I miss my dog when I’m on tour, but other than that, if I could have both of them on tour with me wherever I went, I would never need to be at home. [laughs]”
“It’s not really something I care about. Really the only thing that really got overwhelming about being in Europe was just that there were so many places where I couldn’t read street signs or restaurant menus [laughs]. Just every day kind of things that you take for granted when you’re just reading something at English. You can look at your surroundings and understand what’s going on, but when you’re in a place like Germany and every single sign is in German, and times when no one was that great at English, with no English translations of anything. It was SO confusing. THAT was overwhelming to me. Other than that it was easy.”
“I definitely want to get the generic picture with the koala.”
By way of culture, I asked Patrick about his expectation of what Australia is like. “I’ve really always wanted to go to Australia in the summertime. I know when we’re there is your Winter. It’s sort of a bummer because I definitely want to do all of the cool beach things, and experience nice warm weather and that sort of stuff. But I definitely want to get the generic picture with the koala. Other than that I don’t know what to expect really! I just know that it’s beautiful there, and I know that people there are really cool. [laughs] I’m excited.”
While Movements are here in Australia, they’ll be hitting some venues that I’d refer to as ‘intimate’. I asked Patrick about the inspiration behind this in planning, and he described it as a ‘testing of waters’ for the band. “The reason for that is just because it’s a new country. Somewhere we’ve never been before. A new territory for us, business wise, because we’re not exactly sure what our draw is, in a lot of these areas. Since they are small shows, there’s definitely a chance there are going to be some of them that sell out, which is amazing. Because we definitely want to be able to say “Hey, we sold out shows in Australia” which is great. At the same time it’s like we could end up in a place where not many people know who we are. So if we were to be paying a 500-capacity venue and 50 people show up, then it’s going to look a little bad. But if we’re paying a 150-capacity venue and 50 people show up, at least it’s a third of the way full. It’s just a matter of weighing it out and seeing where we’re at as a band. If we end up selling out every single one of these shows, then we know for next time. Like, “Alright, we going to play bigger venues!” which is great.”
Having Eat Your Heart Out on tour with Movements means we’ll all get to see “Conscience” with Patrick’s vocal feature in the flesh. “I’m so excited”, says Patrick, saying that he feels like he knows Caitlin Henry (vocals), Andrew Anderson (guitar), Will Moore (guitar), Dom Cant (bass), and Jake Cronin (drums) already, because they’ve been “internet friends for so long” but he’s never met any of them in person. “It’ll be really neat to actually get to hang out with them and have an entire tour where we just chill every single day, and obviously I’ll do my part in “Conscience” and all that.”
Having already heard from Kieran Ellis-Jones in our interview about the way the “Conscience” video came together with Patrick appearing in the video as well as Eat Your Heart Out members, Patrick shared his take on that experience: “We were on tour at the time with Knuckle Puck. They were getting all the filming done for the music video. Basically what we did is blacked out the inside of the trailer with black sheets and stuff. Then we just shot it in there. It was kind of awkward, but they did a pretty good job of making it look relatively normal. The trailer is obviously on wheels, which is obviously on a suspension thing connected to a bandwagon, so if I moved around at all, it would shake the whole trailer up and down and we couldn’t get a clear shot. [laughing] So I just had to stand dead still and sing this part while we filmed it, and then send it over. It was funny. It ended up looking fine, it was just a crazy weird tour thing. Sometimes you’ve just gotta improvise.”
Kel: “Yep, because he said he was going to have to get a double of you otherwise. So I think some weird still emotional guy is probably a better option.”
Pat: “Yeaaah, I agree with that. [laughs]”
Kel: “Because how do you be expressive, [sings] “It’s too late! I’ve said too much!”, and then you’re like.. still.”
Pat: “AND STAND STILL. I know, right?! It’s like the weirdest contradiction. I wanted to move around but I couldn’t. I just had to stay still, so it was really strange!”
Though still fully appreciative of Feel Something, I nudged the topic of new music and if Movements had begun the journey toward album #2. “No, we’ve kind of been non-stop since the record came out. It’s been go go go, non-stop. We really haven’t had a lot of downtime to be writing new music. It’s definitely something we’re thinking about and we’re planning on getting new material going after Warped Tour and probably after we do Australia and stuff. We’ll have a little bit of downtime so we’re probably going to look at getting some studio time in and just jamming and seeing what we come up with, you know?”
In our last chat, Patrick shared that the inspiration behind the emotional lyrics of Feel Something are very personal experiences. Considering this, I appreciated (out loud) the fact that these kinds of things can’t be forced to a schedule. “Absolutely, yeah. There’s definitely going to be no shortage of the personal aspect of things in whatever the new record becomes. It’s definitely a theme that’s always going to be present in our music: deeply personal experiences. If we feel like we’re having to force ourselves to make music, we’re going to take a step back and wait until it comes naturally. We want to write the best second LP that we could possibly write, and if that takes a couple more years, then it takes a couple more years. We’re not going to try and rush anything for the sake of having new music out. We want it to be quality, not quantity.”
From a listener perspective, I expressed the fact that Feel Something is still very much present in songs regularly played, and I’m also seeing this with the people around me, sharing with Patrick “We’re not all bored of it or anything.” He considers it potentially “a risky move” to stay on one album for too long, “But at the same time I think that if we’re going to come up with something that’s going to blow Feel Something out of the water, it’s better to wait on it, and really spend a lot of time on it, to outdo what we did on the last record.”
On the topic of Feel Something and seeing how some of the songs on the album had well over 1 million streams, I asked Patrick how the band were feeling with how the album had been received since we spoke in October. “Honestly it’s been amazing. Seeing how many people really genuinely care about this album, and the people who come up to us after our shows are always thanking us for our music we write and telling us how the music has affected them, and helped them in their lives. It’s been really really humbling. I don’t think we could have asked for a better reception to this music. The shows have been unreal, you know? The shows have been incredible. Sales are doing well, streams are doing well. We’re.. doing the thing! [laughs] We’re being career musicans right now which is really cool. Yeah, it’s awesome.”
Kel: “Does that kind of mean now you’re having to create more goals or think bigger than how you previously had?”
Patrick: “Absolutely, yeah. We’re definitely needing to think more long term, thinking where we’re going to be five years from now, even two years from now, and what that’s going to mean to our band. Where we want to take it, you know? All of us want to take it as far as we can with Movements over the next 7-10 years, because I think that’s a realistic goal. I don’t necessarily know what that means yet, whether pushing more radio or mainstream – for lack of a better word. I don’t think we’ll ever write music that sounds mainstream or would be on the radio, but we want to be marketable and grow as much as possible. Yeah, we’ll see what happens. I don’t know yet!”
With Movements’ penchant for exploring very real emotional subject matter and experience in their music, and aspiring to have people truly ‘feel something’, I expressed to Patrick that I could see the mainstreaming of their music due to relatability alone. Everyone has dark moments, or have wishes for those they love to feel better (as in “Daylily”).
Tickets are on sale NOW for Movements’ tour of Australia with Eat Your Heart Out. With such intimate venues on the cards, head to Destroy All Lines to reserve your spot: https://tickets.destroyalllines.com/Default.aspx?Event=88500
