“Scary Movies”: The Thrill of Falling in Love with The Rions
Sydney, Australia schoolmates - Noah Blockley, Harley Wilson, Asher McLean & Tom Partington - earned their ‘ones to watch’ badges after their success in triple j’s Unearthed High 2021 competition. While they continue to produce records with a youthful charm, they don’t falter in showcasing their impressive storytelling abilities accompanied by glimpses of surf-rock instrumentation. Ready to embark on a freshly announced national tour beginning in Brisbane, the band announces new indie-rocking single “Scary Movies.” Unpublished got the opportunity to chat with The Rions to learn about the creative process behind the new single, working with Skegss producer Chris Collins, and how they constantly pitch themselves over their triple j’s Unearthed High win.
Photo by Maclay Heriot
[UNPUBLISHED]: As “Scary Movies” is your first release of the year, do you see the record as a continuation from tracks like “Anakin” or more as a beginning of a new era?
[THE RIONS]: With “Scary Movies,” it was really about finding its personality once we had the main idea fleshed out. We like to think of our music as having a wide range in sound and feeling so we wouldn’t call it a continuation or a new era, it’s more of a call back to elements of one of our first songs Sadie with its light-hearted themes and tonality. Something that can fit into the world we’re building, without necessarily defining our new creative direction.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you walk us through the writing process for the new record?
[THE RIONS]: It was actually the result of a writing session Noah and I had with Holy Holy’s Oscar Dawson. It began with finding the kind of song we felt like creating that day, and went in a direction that initially I felt might be straying too far from our sound, but luckily to my surprise, Oscar’s incredible talents balanced out each of the elements to a place where Noah and I were keen on showing Tom and Asher. From there we really just nailed down the aspects we loved and shaped it into a true Rions song. Chris Collins then worked on the final version when recording, adding some of our favourite aspects of the song, being the groovy keyboard and the talk box in the outro.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Where did the title “Scary Movies” come from in relation to a song that is about the thrill of falling in love?
[THE RIONS]: For the chorus of the song we really wanted to zero in on what the classic aspects of a blossoming relationship entail. The intimacy and timeless experience of watching a scary movie with your significant other is often what can bring you close to each other for the first time, so for us it was a no brainer expanding on the concept of the unity Scary Movies create in a romantic context.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I love the music video concept created for the record! What was the inspiration behind bringing the ‘scary movie’ characters together in one video?
[THE RIONS]: Movies are a huge love of ours, so after deciding on the name it really became a situation of ‘how can we come up with an excuse to dress up as the most iconic figures of classic horror and dance around for a whole day?’. We were lucky enough to work with Mude on the video and they were excellent in facilitating our dreams of being a monster band. The idea of taking characters from the 1930’s-1950’s as opposed to modern monsters was really both about connecting the timeless trope of movie dates to the timeless characters that pioneered the Scary Movies of today.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You worked on the production in Byron Bay with producer Chris Collins. As I’m a huge fan of his work with Skegss, this was really exciting to see! What’s the moment in the production stage of “Scary Movies” that you are most proud of?
[THE RIONS]: This would definitely have to be the harmonies in the song’s chorus. As a band it’s taken years for back up singing and harmonies to be adopted, learnt and implemented, especially in a live sense. So for the chorus to consist of harmonies from both Tom and I [Harley] for the first time instead of Noah having to do them himself, is definitely a big step for us.
[UNPUBLISHED]: If your listeners could take one thing away from “Scary Movies,” what do you hope that will be?
[THE RIONS]: If our listeners could take one thing away from listening to our song, we hope it would be a more positive outlook on love. Whether that be in the form of a reminder to appreciate love more often, or a new found drive to obtain it. Too often in our generation, nihilism is seen as a desirable lens to view the world through, so we hope to spread a bit more love back into people’s lives.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Congratulations on the announcement of your national tour beginning in May! Before you set off on the Scary Movies tour, can you tell us what your most memorable gig has been thus far?
[THE RIONS]: Thank you! Last year we checked touring with Lime Cordiale off the bucket list, and the long awaited experience did not disappoint. The show we played in Adelaide at the Thebby was one of the most incredible responses we’ve had as an opener and a band in general. It was the largest audience we’d played to that couldn’t walk away as a festival haha! An incredible show with incredible people we’ll never forget.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did it feel when you heard you won the triple j Unearthed High competition in 2021, and how has that success motivated you in your careers since then?
[THE RIONS]: To this day we still pinch ourselves. Winning unearthed high is one of the biggest achievements we have the privilege of claiming and we’re forever thankful for the exposure it’s given us. In any time of doubt it’s always an incredibly motivating feeling to think back to the fact that we won a nationwide competition with what I believe to be the biggest pool of contestants in the competition’s history at that point. This is only further proven to be an incredibly lucky experience every time someone tells us they heard about us from that win, or call us “that band that won a couple years ago?” We’ll take it!
