Dan Ray - Nautical Mile 'Overcoming Adversity And Making Big Plans'

There's some serious musical talent brewing on the west coast of Australia, and the latest act to be aware of is pop punk band Nautical Mile. These guys just released their debut full-length The Only Way Is Through a few weeks ago and with the help of their friend and Carrington vocalist, Emmett Carroll, have created one of the most solid pop punk releases this year by an upcoming Australian band. So, to get you up to speed with the band themselves, we had a fun chat with guitarist Dan Ray about the band's influences, that Jesse McCartney cover and how they're huuuge ADTR fans...

Things sure are heating up in Nautical Mile. You guys have just released your debut album The Only Way Is Through  and are about to head out on tour for that album! What was your inspiration while making the album?

The whole album kinda relates to overcoming adversity and pushing through experiences to guide you and to make you a better person. We’ve all had various hardships over the last 12-18 months not just individually but as a band as well, and we sorta wanted to harness a little bit of that negativity and try to turn into something more positive and constructive, and that’s where the idea for the album came from. You sort of have to push through a lot of things in life and it kinda became a recurring theme over the course of the album. 

I really enjoy the different musical styles right throughout this album, and the song ‘Sweet Tooth' definitely gives me a heavier A Day To Remember vibe. Was that the intention here to have to such a different mix?

It sorta just happened, We were sorta conscious of the fact there were a lot of different styles going on, like you said 'Sweet Tooth' is quite heavy, very ADTR and Chunk! No Captain Chunk! Compared to “Wake Up” which is more like All Time Low and Simple Plan. But we decided that the sound was very us as a band, we were happy enough with the songs, you can still tell it’s us, and we were just really careful with our track listing and made sure everything flowed. With ‘Sweet Tooth’ especially, you get a definite change in mood between the first half and second half. It starts off quite happy then gets quite negative and darker sounding. So yeah, like I said, we were aware that the songs they all sounded quite different, but we sorta took that and created a proper musical journey that matches up with the whole album title and theme.

You’ve also nailed the really catchy fun, high-energy songs too like ’Spin the Bottle’ and ‘Wake Up’ which are definitely more mainstream. The video for ‘Wake Up’ by the way is pretty entertaining. What was that filming experience like?

We were all a bit knackered before we even started filming because we had to blow up 500 balloons for about 3-4 hours. Then, we were like “what do we wanna do? It’s like a really fun, bouncy song. Let’s just do stupid stuff, get cake and smash them in each other’s faces, spray each other with whipped cream." I don’t know where the whole pink thing came from, it just kinda happened that way. The song is super poppy and super catchy, so we just went with it and see what happened. It’s probably our fave video yet.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmXyZ07Lclk&w=560&h=315]

Personally, I’m a massive Blink-182 fan and always have been - that band is the mother of pop punk. Take Off Your Pants and Jacket is 18 years old now and it still sounds like it could have been written today. We’re also all big ADTR fans (which you could probably already tell through our heavier tracks), and then there’s bands like Neck Deep, WSTR, The Story So Far, State Champs - we’re all fans of that polished pop punk but they’ve still got the heavy element. 

And so I gotta ask - you guys recently covered ‘Beautiful Soul’ by Jesse McCartney. What made you guys want to cover that song?

It was Brodi’s choice. He sorta came to us with an idea - let’s cover this song, it’s never been done before. And we thought “yeah why not? Let’s do it!” It’s one of those songs that everyone knew, it was a massive song and a little bit older than your typical punk goes pop covers. So we sat down, wrote it out and it all came together really quickly. We’re really happy with the result. We’re extremely happy with that music video too, it’s pretty basic, just a performance video, but we thought it looked nice for the style of the song. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk8o1GrdHrU&w=560&h=315]

We’re really really excited to go to Geelong and Newcastle. We’ve never played those towns before so we’re looking forward to play the Cambridge Hotel in Newcastle which is a proper reknowned live venue and we’re really excited to be there. We’ve never played the Barwon in Geelong but we’ve heard really good things in general. We’ve got a few days off in the middle inbetween Geelong and Canberra, so we’re actually going to go up to Jindabyne and just hang out there for a couple days, so that’ll be fun too.

Hell yeah! I’d definitely recommend Jindabyne having lived there myself a few winters back! It’s a good time!

Yeah, unfortunately there probably won’t be any snow. But it’ll still be good. We’re really looking forward to get up there and visit a part of Australia I’ve never seen before. We’re just really keen to get back out on the road. We love touring and playing shows. We’ve got some really good bands coming out to the shows with us on the tour as well. It’s going to be a really good week!

And if you could tour with any band right now, who would it be?

A Day To Remember, hands down. We’d love to get on their next album tour, that’s the dream.

At Wall Of Sound right now, we’re currently rounding up our best of 2019 lists. Tell us what’s your top 5 albums of the year?

#1 - Halfway There by Busted

For me personally, still my #1 album this year is Busted’s Halfway There. They’re not particularly well known here, but they were massive over in the UK. They’re my all time fave band.

#2 -  amo by Bring Me the Horizon

I did rate Bring Me The Horizon’s amo album as well earlier this year, but it took a long time to grow on me. To be honest if ADTR had stuck to their plans and released their new album this month, I’d be saying that too. 

#3 - NINE by Blink-182

Blink-182’s NINE record also took its time to grow on me. When I heard the singles, 'Darkside' and 'Blame It on My Youth', I was pretty skeptical. But when I actually listened to the album I was really surprised by the end of it, and by the time I got to the end of it the second time I thought, yeah this is actually a Blink album. It sounds like the logical progression for them, which is awesome. 

#4 - Meant Well by Parting Ways

A band called Parting Ways from Canada released their album after 18 months of delays, called Meant Well, which was really really cool. It was very The Story So Far and more post-hardcore, but it was still a really good album, and I highly recommend it. 

#5 - Alter Ego EP by Carrington

Our mates in Carrington released their Alter Ego EP back in June and that was a really good collection, solid tracks, and they did awesome work with that release. They’ve been killing it since, and just put out another EP a few weeks back. 

And finally, what’s your New Years Resolution for 2020?

We want to get overseas next year, so hopefully have some good things to announce on that front. We also want to keep writing new music, and keep touring. We’re already starting to plan the next tour after this one. We’re always writing, always looking to do new things. I guess, that’s our resolution really - keep writing, keep touring, and keep the momentum up for the album.

Interview by Tamara May @citylightsTAM

The Only Way Is Through is out now. Check it out here.

Nautical Mile 'The Only Way Is Through' Australian Tour 2020

Sunday 24th November - The Barwon Club, Geelong
W/ A New Way Home, Letters To Amara & Bearclaw Camp

Wednesday 27th November - The Basement, Canberra
W/ Signs & Symbols, Capitol Affair & This Time Only

Thursday 28th November - The Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle
W/ Low Key Affair, Capitol Affair & Halfwait

Friday 29th November - The Burdekin Hotel, Sydney
W/ Capitol Affair, This Time Only & Halfwait

Sunday 1st December - Crowbar, Brisbane
W/ Grizzlyshark, Bligh & Halfwait

Tickets here

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3F0suuAI50&w=853&h=480]