Donny Love are the local heartwarmers of the Gold Coast scene that have found a way to bring a sparkle into the lives of their listeners. Mixed and mastered by Jack Prest (The Preatures, Sampa the Great, Bruce Springsteen), ‘Boredom Pills’ offers a kaleidoscope of pulsating rhythms, lecherous saxophone and heady-pop smarts, whilst telling a hypnotic story of our hyper-virtual reality.

After luminous keys and a magnetic bassline send the song spiralling into a technicoloured dream, the charming vocals of Andrew Hodges leads the track through the devilish woes of technology. To drive his message home, he’s backed by an “internet choir” - a virtual collaboration with the band’s extended network of Dons and Donnas - creating an immersive arena for listeners to delve into while celebrating a real sense of community in the digital realm.

We decided to dig a little deeper and chat with Andrew about the latest release and what it takes to harmoniously exist online.

TJ: ‘Boredom Pills’ shows a light-hearted cynicism on the dependence of social media in the 21st century, what led you to the point of making this the topic of your next single?

AH: I guess just the way social media has wriggled its way into all aspects of our lives. Public space, private space, the office, the dinner table, the bedroom, the toilet. I think it’s really important to poke a finger and question everyday things. Social media is one of the most common everyday things in our lives right now, as much as it still feels very bizarre to me. I think that the general philosophy for Donny is that we do use a bit of humour or sarcasm to get closer to certain topics. The songwriter’s purpose is to question and comment on things, rather than telling people to think a certain way.

Do you think that this year’s state of lockdown has impacted your take on the overuse of social media, compared to when the song was written in 2019?

‘Boredom Pills’ was never planned to be the first official single for the album but it just felt right and seemed more poignant to put the song out now given the circumstances of this year, the world sort of decided for us. With all this extra time at home and without things that normally take up a big chunk of the day, it’s easier to find yourself whittling away the hours on social media if you don’t catch yourself. It has been beautiful for spreading awareness of social movements and connecting people, but there always comes the question of intent when you see big companies posturing messages and virtue signalling, it can make you feel quite ill. It’s all so grey, but I guess the general idea is to catch yourself and question why you’re there in the first place.

Humans are malleable, which is amazing. One of the most beautiful human traits is that we can change and adapt to things, but we can also be naive to a lot of the influences around us. You can’t tell people to use it less, because every day it’s more integrated into our lives, especially at the moment while it’s what is connecting us. The point of this song was to explore how you can have positive interactions on the internet by using it as a tool rather than as a source of constant distraction.

The video clip for this song was created by Melbourne artist Ashley Goodall who’s known for her surrealistic and ethereal animation. Why did you choose to use this style for ‘Boredom Pills’?

Ashley’s an old friend of ours, and we really love a lot of the work that she’s done, especially with White Fence. I guess we wanted to explore that spooky, grey dystopian side of the song. The video became so central to the song’s meaning for us that we wanted people to hear the song first with her video, which was new for us. She helped take the song much further than any traditional or hypey type of video could have done.

The track features a choir that was established entirely over the internet, where did the idea stem from and how does it coincide with your intention for the song?

We wanted to try and explore how we could collaborate with a bunch of people through the internet. That’s not a new idea, but we did try to do it in our own way and use the internet as a positive thing instead of only criticising it. We posted a snippet of the chorus, asking people to sing over the top of it and email it to us, essentially. All of the submissions were amazing. The best ones were the dodgy ones with people sending in selfie videos where we had to rip the audio out and put it on the final track. There were some really well recorded studio submissions too from other artists... by the end of it we had a choir of 30 or so people who had never actually sat in a room together and it was a fun, bizarre experience. We have named it positive interneting.

Ashley Goodall, George Carpenter (who helped us engineer and co-produce the studio sessions) and Jack Prest (who mixed and mastered it) are all singing in the chorus as well. It was nice to wrap up the collaboration process with the whole team on the song along with everyone else that contributed over the internet.

You released an instagram filter that calls attention to the hilarity of sharing your life on the internet, did you find that this worked well with the release of your single?

The filter was made to further the purpose of the song and turn it into a kind of audiovisual nightmare. Songs in the 21st century include gimmicky angles of promotion to gain popularity, so we tried it. Duh. The instagram filter has been a bizarre experience. We took a snippet from Ashley’s animation and approached Joe Agius (Creases, Rinse, Hatchie) who’s made some hilarious filters in the past.

We wanted to see the relationship between interactions with the song itself versus the filter. I checked yesterday and I think the filter’s reached about 5000 people and the song has 1500 plays or something. The filter is reaching more people and I think that tells the entire story right there, folks.

I find that a lot of your music incorporates a tongue-in-cheek way of diving into different cultural and societal issues that you observe in your day-to-day life, what are you going to explore in the next album?

We spent more time on this album then we ever have on a release in the past. Meeting of the Dons is a journey through issues we chose to shine a light on in the year or two surrounding the making of it. We found a new production style and sent it down a more expansive pop route rather than the rocky, nostalgic sound on Sensation. It was mixed and mastered by Jack Prest (The Preatures, Sampa the Great, Flume), and has a lot of Don T-Bone’s saxophone which has become a central vibeforce for Donny. Along with the set cast of Dons, Randy (drums/percussion), Bill (keys), Wonton (bass), and myself, Don Hog, on vocals, guitar and some dodgy production.

Meeting of the Dons is a coming together, a communion and discussion on what’s important, what’s not, and what to then carry into this new, terrifying decade. The songs don’t need to be interpreted as overly philosophical or soul searching, but they do all offer underlying mantras, like little tickets to take along as a reminder to be present in decisions throughout your day, week, life. That’s what ‘Boredom Pills’ is with the chorus mantra (‘I don’t want to share my activities with you’) If someone can be opening their phone to document their poorly executed homemade pasta and that chorus pops into your head, we’ve done our job. Mantras can indeed haunt you but if they have a positive intent, they’re (arguably) better for your sanity in the long run.

There are a few songs on the album that we developed for a good year before recording them that really speak to issues of mental health and hanging in there through bad times. They are mantras to get through the trials of life I guess. I lost my father half way through the process of making this album, and the songs really helped get me through that and took on a much bigger and more personal meaning and depth. I’d never experienced the creative process as such a form of medicine as I did during the making of this album. I haven’t talked about it too much but it was a huge part of my grieving process, and making the album and the support from the band honestly got me through that time.

How did the album transform for you after the challenges you faced last year?

There was one song on the album that I didn’t even truly understand until it happened, and then I thought "oh crap, that’s what that song was really about", almost as a premonition. We were writing these songs as a way of trying to live a better life. In the past I’ve beaten around and explored the edges of topics. With Meeting of the Dons, I tried to be more direct and as genuine as I could when I was writing the lyrics especially. There was definitely the potential in there to drop the entire album if the songs hadn’t felt right when faced with the loss of my father, as has happened countless times in history. But in actual fact they were all intensified and new parts and meanings emerged which allowed the album to be completed. The songs were inevitably changed, charged, enriched, and it got me through that time and the album has both sides of a terrible event documented.

There’s one song for example that’s called ‘Put Up A Fight’ which explores mental health and resilience of the mind. So many people are lost along the way to their battles with mental health, and that song was for them and all us others facing those same problems. When I lost Dad it took on a much more personal meaning and it may sound silly, but I needed joyous music at that time, and that song is a beacon of hope in a way. To be listening to it, you may not hear all of that struggle in there, but the joy definitely comes through.

But even if all of this is lost to the listener, the album is still a big, weird journey as a listening experience. I don’t know how it will be received but I guess it’s just important for us that it got us through that time, and if people like it, great!

Tell us a bit about Holiday Maker Records, do you think this will change the future of the Dons?

Sean and I launched Holiday Maker Records at the start of this year. The lockdown brought Sean up from Melbourne and we had heaps of time to get stuck into it. I’ve had the dream for ages, building a community of like-minded artists has always been something I’ve wanted to do. There seems to be really set paths for musicians to go down which erodes a lot of their individuality and originality to the point where indie music is a homogenous mess at times. But then there are all of these really amazing artists and outcasts that make incredible music, with a different intent, that don’t have anything to unify them all and bring them together. We want Holiday Maker to give those artists a home. We signed Family Jordan who are amazing and we are putting out their fourth album later this year. It’s the best album I’ve heard this year. The Donny Love album will be HMR002 and this will change the future of the Dons.

How has it been now that you’re wearing both hats?

I think that it gives us a bit more drive in terms of how often and how rigorously we want to make our music. The band has been the project that we’ve lived and grown through. We've had other projects come and go but Donny is this slow moving beast that outlives everything else. I feel as though Holiday Maker is a similar principle to that in a way... It’s been a learning experience moving between the singer/songwriter and label roles, but creativity and music is embedded into everything we’re doing at Holiday Maker so it’s been amazing so far. More than anything it just feels good going all in on something we love doing. We’ve got a lot of weird and wonderful things planned, come along for the ride...