half•alive may be may be from Long Beach, California, but they've chosen Australia to be the starting point of the tour behind their debut album Now, Not Yet.
"It's the furthest point away from home, and then we end in L.A." the trio of Josh, Brett, and J Tyler told Veronica and Lewis, in the country for the first time as a band.
A fleet-footed collection of hopped-up pop, soul, funk, and RnB, Now, Not Yet features 'arrow', 'RUNAWAY', and 'still feel.' - the breakout hit that took them from seven demos to 25 million views on YouTube.
A genre-hopper's delight, the album draws upon an array of inspirations, such as Bon Iver ("one we always look to"), Francis and the Lights, Christine and the Queens, Chance The Rapper, and Kimbra.
“I’ve been a huge fan of her work from the beginning," Josh gushed. In fact, the Kiwi music maverick shows up on the album track 'ice cold'. Hear how they hooked up in the chat above and listen to the collab below.
The group also spoke about the importance of synchronised dancing in their visual presentation - from the two weeks rehearsing the moves for viral hit 'still feel.' to their much buzzed-about Jimmy Kimmel performance.
"Ja Collective, our choreographers, are incredible at making moves that work with our own bodies and dance capabilities." The dance troupe have also flown out to be part of half•alive's Australian shows.
With all that movement, it's no surprise to learn there's more than a little musical theatre pumping in the band's blood. They've even been plotting a cover of the "incredible" 'My Favourite Things' from The Sound of Music.
So, it spooked the trio out when a fan randomly suggested they perform it for a potential Like A Version during a reddit AMA.
With a growing fanbase and a major label deal under their belt, half•alive have come a long way in the few short years since they began life as a songwriting experiment for frontman Josh Taylor.
In 2015, he took a semester off film school ("which has become many, many semesters off") to begin a project to write 50 songs in order to get better at his craft. "The whole thing was trying to do a song-and-a-half for seven months."
"Brett [Kramer, drummer] ended up joining me half-way through the project. We made a small EP [in 2017] and then J Tyler [Johnson, bassist] joined the band a little after, and we’ve been going ever since.”
half•alive perform in Sydney tonight, then Melbourne and Brisbane next week. Find more info on those dates at Live Nation AU.