Bonnie Fraser - Stand Atlantic ‘We Don't Want To Be Boxed In, So Please Don't Do That’

From their early days emerging as a pop-punk band, to now their fully-flourishing career that knows no bounds, Stand Atlantic have been chipping away the parameters of the identity they once knew, and using their growing sense of self, multitude of life experiences, and expressionism that is second-to-none, to create an album that is perfectly curated chaos. WAS HERE sees that with creativity, often the best things grow. 

Presenting the band on a silver platter; raw and vulnerable, but fun and exciting- there is nowhere to hide. 

We sat down with Bonnie Fraser to talk about this new direction, and all that it entailed for Australia’s sweethearts! 

There is really nothing more spectacular than looking at Stand Atlantic's progression from Skinny Dipping to now. You came out with this classic pop-punk record to the new album being a crazy catalogue of all these different feelings and sounds. It's like a finger in every pie moment. But looking back on your journey to now, does it ever shock you, where you've ended up musically?

Yes, I think so. I feel like we've always had the vision of just not having any set goal of what we want to sound like or be, besides the fact that we never want to be put in a box. I think that leaves it open to whatever we're feeling at the time. But yeah, sometimes I look back and I'm like, if I told Skinny Dipping Bon that this album is the next album, I think I would have been like, 'What the fuck are you doing?' Like, crazy. But yeah, I guess just as life goes on, your influences change all the time and new stuff is coming out all the time and new sounds and things. Life experience is so different that, of course, it's going to be super different at this point, especially given the fact that we had the stance from the start being like, there's no rules with our band. Yeah, it is pretty crazy, though.

Looking at it now, Pink Elephant and f.e.a.r. evolved in their own way. It was like you were chipping away just very, very softly for a few moments. The new album exudes a different type of confidence in yourself as creators. What do you think allowed this final confidence to creep through and just go, we're just doing what we want?

I actually don't know. I think I personally, I was a little bit, not sick of, but just felt like even though we had delved into different sounds and tried these things out on previous albums, it was never enough for me in a sense of I felt like we were just dipping our toes in and I'm like, I want us to commit to this and let's see how far we can fucking go. Again, we don't like being put into a box or pigeonholed into some genre or whatever that makes it feel like you can't grow as an artist. Or not grow, but evolve as an artist. That's scary as fuck to me. I'm like, 'Okay, well, let's just actually send it on this one and just write some crazy shit'. I feel like we've been saying it for ages, and now this is the album that defines who we are in a way, because there's no rhyme or reason to the genre at all. There's nothing that sounds the same. We do have songs that shadow past records. But everything is just so different and it just is a representation of exactly what we've been saying, which is we don't want to be boxed in, so please don't do that.

Was that ever something that became a problem with you versus external influences? Considering if these songs can go on an album next to each other? Was that ever some discussion you were getting back from people?

Are you talking about when you're doing the tracklisting for the album? We usually have complete control over that. If we don't want to put a song at number seven, then we don't have to. But generally, we do try and create some flow. But it is very hard when you go into an album or you go into writing an album that isn't a concept or it isn't written in that way. We do have a tough time trying to figure out tracklisting because they're all just such individual songs. We're like, 'I don't know. Just chuck it somewhere. Who cares? Someone's just going to put it on shuffle anyways'.

In a bit of a different air, there’s been a lot of new things going on for Stand Atlantic. I think mostly for you Bon, you’ve become a bit of a creator. You're a lot more active on social media, especially with TikToks. How has that been as a learning curve to reach that audience?

I'm sick of getting calls from management with the label being like, Use TikTok. It feels so gross. But I feel like the way we've approached it is we're just going to do us on TikTok. If it flops, I don't care. If it doesn't, then great, fine. But yeah, I feel like there was definitely a period of time where the suits or management and label were like, 'You should do this dance trend'. We're just like, 'No, that's not who we are'. And it also shows, or it's shown us anyways, that as soon as we try and do something that's disingenuous to who we are and our vibe, I guess, it never works. It just never works. And you can't keep that up. So we may as well just stick to our dumb ass selves and do the stuff that comes naturally. And that's all we can really do. But yeah, I don't know how I feel about it. It's annoying. It feels like I have seven jobs at once.

You're doing a great job! In terms of creating this little community and people knowing who you are, it's brought some really cool guests to this album. You've got PVRIS, you've got Polaris, to name a few. What intentions go behind picking these collabs? And what is it like working with such different artists?

Polaris and PVRIS, we were just friends with, so that came about super easy. We wanted to work with Polaris for ages as well, and PVRIS too. We just had the right songs that we thought would suit them. So we were like, 'You like this?' And they were like, 'Yeah, let's go'. And then Sueco as well was another artist we were just really interested in working with. He also just said yes! We'd never met or anything like that, and didn't even know he knew who we were. We just fucking went through. We were like, 'Yo, you like this?' And he was like, 'Yeah'. Then Bruses was a wild card, but I'd known of her for a while, and I fucked with her stuff. Then she got thrown in the mix as a potential third for ‘GIRL$’. When I heard her name, I was like, 'Oh, yeah, we got to do this. Let's do it'. I think it's a cool, unique little... Just a unique point in that song where it's like, someone's speaking Spanish! That's crazy. I don't know. I just think it's cool. It's just different. And she's awesome.

The album was dictated by all these crazy moments, but it's not just musically. Even the album cover is just really jarring and gripping. It's something completely different for you guys. Who came up with the idea for the album cover and what was it like on photo day being covered in blood, sprawled across the floor?

I came up with the idea! I feel like it's, to be honest, it was a bit of a lazy choice because I feel like the title WAS HERE, obviously alludes to us dying or whatever. I'm pretty sure that was just one of the first images that came to my mind. I was like, 'We should do this'. Originally, I just wanted the album to just be plain white. I wanted it to be so simple. We've never had ourselves on the cover either before. That was cool for this one as well and just worked out. But I forgot the rest of your question. What else? Oh, yeah. How was it covered in blood? I choked. It was awesome. It was really fun. We ruined our clothes, but every time we got pulled individually! Brandon, our photographer, put our backs in the blood and then he pulled us down to create the... What do you call it? Smear. And every time he dragged one of us, we were all just making just the cutest noises for the most dark cover. But yeah, it was super fun.

The album cover is so grueling to look at, but I can only imagine by the day that it was anything but! Despite this album being dictated by the craziness and the fun, you also have a lot to say, and all of it is very eloquently spoken with no fear. You look at ‘GIRL$’, it's a very empowering anthem and other songs along it. What was the songwriting process for this album and what did you find yourself fueled by, mostly?

Thank you. The process was quite long. We wrote ‘WARZONE’ and ‘KILL[H]ER’, like at the end of 2022 in LA. Then we had a month in Manchester, start of 2023, where we wrote a big chunk of the album. That was a big turning point for me personally. Over the last couple of years, I've been going through some stuff personally, and I hadn't faced any of it. I numbed myself for a long time, and I just was not in touch with my emotions or anything, and I found it really hard to open up and feel vulnerable and be honest with myself. During the writing process in Manchester, Stevie, our producer, and my co-writer, he just pulled me aside and he was like, 'Yo, what's going on? You're not on it. What the fuck's up?' Then I broke down and was like, 'I don't know who I am anymore'. Just all this shit that was happening in my life was really affecting me in ways that I didn't even realise. That was a big turning point. Then from then on, I was able to actually access vulnerable parts of myself again, which was relieving. I was so scared that I would never get that back again. Then from there, we also wrote a bunch in Australia as well. But yeah, this album definitely just helped me through a lot, personally, just by writing it. It was very therapeutic for me and will always have a special place in my heart for that, get me through some crazy shit.

It definitely shows, like I said, with some of the tracks on there, they resonate so much, and you can definitely feel everything you're feeling. I think it's a testament to how you write your songs. There's also been a lot of tracks that have captured the airways thus far. I think for me in particular, for a hot minute, I could not escape ‘SEX ON THE BEACH’! At the time of recording, did you anticipate that these songs were going to be the face of the album? Or did you know they were the ones that would stick?

‘SEX ON THE BEACH’ was a weird one because we'd written a couple at that time and we needed to pick a single ASAP, which is never fun because you've only written four songs at this point, so what the hell? When you're writing them, you're like, 'Oh, yeah, this will be a single'. But that's as far as it goes. I think you can get really caught up in thinking that you've written the best song of all time and it's going to go viral and everyone's going to fucking love it and you're going to get shot off into the moon. But at the end of the day, you can never predict anything or you can't predict what people are going to like or how things are going to get shared around or anything like that. ‘SEX ON THE BEACH’ was one of those ones where we had absolutely no idea how it was going to go. It could have made us completely bomb or it's been the best thing that ever happened to us. I don't think it was either. It was just a weird song to release at the time, but we were feeling risky and we were like, fuck it, let's just send it. It's weird. When you're writing them, it's just so involved in the process that you… you can definitely feel when something's going to be a single or people are going to like it, but you don't know to what extent.

There's so much going on with songs like that. How has this album changed your live performance? It almost seems like there's more of a spectacle now. Has there been a lot working out what to do on stage or how you perform it?

There's a lot more programming and computer noises, I guess I'll call them, and synths and stuff in this record. Some are very stripped back and poppy. It's bringing that to the live aspect. We've definitely taken that into consideration, and we just want these songs to absolutely kick ass live and be almost like a completely different song when you listen to it live and also make sure it's cohesive with all the other tracks that we have as well from the past and making sure it all just sounds like the same band, basically. It's been really fun to work that out and figure out how to make these songs come to life in a completely different way. And so far, it's been good. So I'm excited.

On the wavelength of tours, you're doing the Aussie one soon. And I guess using Sydney as an example, one of the times I first saw you guys was opening for Neck Deep at the Metro, and now you're headlining the Roundhouse. What does that mean to you, such a massive venue that is all yours?

It means that I really hope you show up? It's super weird. I think it's very easy for things to just become super normalised and not take a step back and try and look at your life and look at what's happening and be like, 'Oh, shit. This is actually crazy', and appreciate it properly. It's definitely crazy to be headlining that. At the end of the day, I'm just really scared, but I'm also so excited because we just have so much stuff planned for the Australian shows that it's going to be so stupid, so dumb. You’ll walk into a circus, I swear to God, it's going to be sick.

Oh, I can't wait. You have sold it even more.

I know. I hope I haven't just hiked it up way too much now and you're like, What the fuck is this?

I'm expecting big things, and I expect them to be fulfilled! To close up, the album is only a few days away, what are some of the final thoughts that have been rushing around your head at the moment? What are you thinking?

I'm really busy. I need to slow down and there's so much shit that I need to do. It's very overwhelming, but I'm really excited to see what people think about this, about the record, but I'm more excited to play these songs live. I'm so excited.

Amazing. Well, hopefully, I'll be there to see the circus unfold.

Hell, yeah!!

Interview by Georgia Haskins @ghaskins2002

Read our album review of WAS HERE right here

WAS HERE is out on August 23rd via Hopeless Records. Pre-order here

Stand Atlantic - Was Here tracklisting 

1. WAKE UP-SIT DOWN-SHUT UP
2. FRENEMIES
3. GIRL$ [feat. PVRIS & Bruses]
4. FREAKIN’ OUT
5. NOSE BLEED [feat. Sueco]
6. LOVE U ANYWAY
7. KISSIN’ KILLER COBRAS
8. WARZ0NE
9. CRIMINAL [feat. Polaris]
10. 17
11. 17 // REPRIZE [ONE TAKE]
12. G.A.G.
13. ROCKSTAR
14. SEX ON THE BEACH
15. KILL[H]ER