Indey Salvestro - Windwaker 'Achieving Chaotic Cohesiveness on Love Language'

You have had the weekend to listen to and digest Windwaker’s incredible debut album Love Language (our review here) and boy what an album! Prior to release, I was lucky enough to sit down for a chat with none of than Indey from Windy (very funny, I know) to talk about the band's physic connection, love, getting to tour again and the album itself...

First of all, I was lucky enough to be at your recent Brisbane show. I did not get COVID, a few of you guys did though, how are you all feeling?

The only one that actually got COVID was Will because all of us got ours at Knight and Day on New Year's.

Yeah, that's when I got mine as well. Not at Knight and Day but on New Year's.

So many people got it at Knight and Day, it was crazy! But we got back from Brisbane and we heard that someone from Banks Arcade had it, we all freaked out and got RATs. And then we hadn't heard from Will and then like a day later, he messaged us and he was just crook. Unfortunately for him, because he's got immune problems it knocked him out for two weeks. And we had to cancel both our shows because of it. He’s all good now though.

I'm glad he is feeling all good again. Obviously, you've gotten back to playing shows after quite a long time off, it must feel amazing to get out there.

It's so good, it's amazing! Our first show back after COVID was Knight and Day and I just remember being on stage like, “wow, I've missed this, so much!” I was on stage, looking at the crowd, playing and I had actually forgotten what it was like to be up there – it's just such a euphoric feeling.

And then when we got to do a headliner, obviously, we had so many issues and had to cancel two of our shows. But the shows we did play were so much fun. And the fact that we had so many people there that were so excited to see us and just enjoy live music again – it was so, so good.

Knight and Day - that's a huge crowd to just go straight back into.

Yeah, we were all super nervous! I mean, we've been doing it for a while so pre-COVID we were pretty dialled in. We'd get a little nervous but we're pretty good before the shows. But for Knight and Day, all of us were just collectively sh*tting ourselves!

It was such a good response at Knight and Day though. We tested out a few of the new songs off our album and they went off really well. So that gave us a really good vibe for the album. It was an epic show to come back to, just amazing.

So you tested some of the songs out at Knight and Day, what would have happened if it had been "That's not how I expected people to react to those songs”. Would you have headed back into the studio?

Yeah, just throw the album in the bin. I mean, if it was a bad reaction we'd probably just be like, “we'll just have to wait and see,” because, at that point everything's finished, so you just have to commit. Luckily, it wasn't like that but we probably wouldn't have freaked out.

Yeah, at the Brisbane show, I saw the reaction to the new songs and it was amazing. There was actually someone in the crowd who knew every single word to ‘Glow’ already and it had been released the day before. It was incredible!

People are committed, it’s so good! I saw that person too, singing the whole way and I was like, “Damn, that is awesome”. It's such a cool feeling to release something and people start singing it back to you straight away. Even back to Knight and Day, we had people just pick up on the chorus for ‘Beautiful’ when we played it and that was playing it for the first time ever.

I watch Billie Eilish, her crowds are wild the way they sing along with her. I wouldn't be able to do it, I would get so emotional and choked up seeing people sing along with me.

Thankfully, I'm not the lead vocalist, because I get pretty distracted on stage sometimes because I pick up on the crowd’s energy – If the crowd is going nuts, I go more nuts.

Live shows are such a relationship of a thing, when the crowd’s going nuts – you feed each other.

Listening to Love Language, there are a lot of different sounds on the album – every song changes track and theme. Did you set out to make an album that sounded really differently sonically from song to song? Or is that just something that happened?

I think sonically, it just came together like that because we didn't want to put any restrictions on ourselves when we were writing. Every time we start the writing process we have a meeting, and everyone will come with a few influences. We all listen to different types of music – literally, none of us listens to the same. So when we started we were like – where do we want to start? Where do we want to go? And we all bring examples. So we started with something a little bit of a direction, and then it just went chaotic.

It’s a great representation of the times because it was chaos during COVID – emotionally, and physically, everything was unknown territory. I think that bled into the writing process because we all went away and we started writing and then lockdown made us sometimes feel irritated and pissed off. On the album are very freaking angry songs as well. It wasn't meant to be like that, but I'm very happy it is because I think we somehow achieved chaotic cohesiveness because it still flows together – it's got a nice throughline.

We hadn't named the album until after it was finished, and Will came to us and said he really wanted to call the album Love Language. And we were all like, “that is probably the most perfect name for this album we can think of.” Those two words encapsulated exactly what the album was to all of us. This Sonic experience of our lives through love and all the different emotions that come with love because it's such a broad spectrum – like relationships, friendships, partners, intimacy, aggression.

Yeah, I think it's perfect. And yeah, as you said, every song does change but you can tell like there's that story that it goes through – I definitely got that when I listened to it.

Oh, that's awesome – I'm glad you said that! That's what we're trying to do. There are a few different ways to listen to the album – you can just listen to it at face value and you’ll get a nice experience out of it. But if you really dive deep into it, and you go through the lyrics, listen through in a deep sense, you experience what you're talking about– a bit of a narrative through-line, and I really like that.

Yeah, I know Will was posting the lyrics of the songs leading up to the release, and that's something that you miss in albums these days. When we used to get albums (I am aging myself here), but you’d get a CD and you'd sit with the lyrics and read through it all. That's something that doesn't happen as much anymore. I like that you are encouraging that as well.

I used to do that as a kid as well – I think the first album I bought myself was Green Day's American Idiot. I remember sitting there reading the lyrics while I was listening to the album. I do that with every album I've bought ever since then– I go through the lyrics and have that experience. It's a shame that that's kind of lost with the digital age. I think that's what Will was doing by posting the lyrics – we really want people to experience as much as they can. We want them to get out as much as they can because we put so much into it. The experience is there to have if you're willing,

That's another thing too, film clips aren't a thing that happen as much anymore but you have released four awesome film clips. Is that something you're trying to bring back too?

I mean, for me personally, I also shoot film clips…

Yeah, ‘Glow’ was your concept, right?

Yeah, ‘Glow’ was my baby, I wrote and directed the clip for ‘Glow”. I'm like a bit of a film nerd and I love movies and film. We're also very chaotic and we always have lots of ideas, so it's difficult for us to just do like a regular performance type video. We like to push the boundaries, throw ideas out there and see what we can come up with. So I don't know if it's necessarily about trying to bring film clips back, but more of just an expression of ourselves. We like to have a lot of fun as Windwaker, so we try to reflect that in the work that we do. And music videos – like what I was saying about getting the experience out of the music – they're an extension of the music. We're just trying to tell the story even more and trying to just entertainment really.

It reflects your personality as a band as well. Your songs have fun and dancey parts, but sometimes the lyrics and the themes of the song can take that more serious side and then you bring the fun back in the music clips.

I totally agree. We always try to have a nice balance because obviously, as a band, a lot of our branding is fun and p*ss-taking and not taking ourselves too seriously…

And memes…

Yes, the memes! I mean even on Facebook, the sh*t posting gets at least three to four times more reach than serious posts. When we do try and take ourselves seriously for moments, we try to find a nice balance to still have people engage in that.

Going back to the sound of the album, it's quite different to what you have previously released. You've obviously grown as people and you've grown sonically – what do you think the biggest changes have been for you as a band?

Obviously, we don't have Liam as a member anymore and he was quite an influential writer in the band back when we wrote the Empire EP. So that already changed a lot of how we write – our core writers now are mainly Chris and Jesse. I think progressively, we've come together a lot more as a band. It's hard to explain, it's kind of psychically, we don't talk about it, but we just know what we like, as a group. That only comes from being together and working together for so long, because we've been a band for seven years now. And when we write there's no more worrying about hurting feelings – we're all very honest with each other. We move through the writing process a lot quicker now because we all know what we're going for – even if we don't really talk about it. We've built up this energy between us that that is a connection. I think that is probably the biggest progression that we've made in our writing process, even though that's not a technical thing.

We've also all gotten better as musicians as well because we just have to, so that's obviously helped as well. I mean, Jesse is an absolute freak on guitar, and he's pushed my bass playing to all kinds of extremes because I have to follow a lot of the stuff that he writes on bass. I think Will has progressed insanely as a vocalist, I personally think the vocal performance across the album is absolutely insane.

Agreed! I definitely picked up on that as well.  And it's so different too, it changes quite a lot from song to song. Obviously, Will's incredible on the older releases but his vocals on Love Language are wild!

Yeah, he's really stepped it up. And I think it's just a testament to the hard work, we all really commit to this band and we all really put in the hours. We take our career very seriously, we want to do our best work and that just comes with putting in the hard work as well. Will's put hours and hours and hours into his voice and it's reflected in his work.

Yeah, you can definitely hear the hard work you've put into the band in this album. Your last EP was incredible and is one of my favourites – I listen to it all the time. But this one– you really do see the step in it, it will blow people’s minds, mine was like explosion sound. Especially 'Love Language' the song – phwoar my brain!

Yeah, that song – that song ruins me. I remember when, when we finished it, I couldn't listen to it for a bit. A few of us couldn't because we all were going through different hard times with relationships and stuff during the writing process. And there was just a stage where I just couldn't listen to that song because it affected me emotionally too much. And Jesse's guitar performance on that song is amazing too!

Is that one that you will bring to live shows?

I think definitely, well, specifically headliner shows. Whether it comes into shows where we're supporting I'm not too sure, because usually support slots we just try and keep the energy up. But I'd say for headliners, we definitely want to play that song live.

Cool, I'm really excited to see it live. Speaking of shows, you've got the I Prevail/Motionless In White tour coming up in June. What is next for you guys after that?

We have a bunch of really cool stuff that's going to be announced soon. We're playing a lot of shows – the second half of the year, we're just we're pretty much touring. I don't think I can say too much now, but there's some pretty exciting stuff coming out – I just remembered one of them – it's crazy! I wish I could share it now, it's going to be pretty epic! It's going to be a really good year for us. What to expect is just lots of shows.

That’s really exciting! Speaking of shows, I read that the idea to do the cover of 'Toxic' was your idea. I love it and it's like it was made for you, it sounds like your song now. What made you choose it though?

It's so funny – we just like doing covers during our sets, especially for headliners. We just like throwing in a cover, pre-COVID we did a cover of Silverchair's ‘Freak’. Covers always just go off so we were like “now that shows are coming back let's do a cover.”

We were trying to think of what we could do that would be cool and I think one of one of the boys was like “Let's do like a pop thing.” And love Britney, so I was like “let's do Britney, Toxic.” We never intended to record it but we started putting the arrangements together and thought let's record this and release it. Jesse wrote that really sweet breakdown in the middle of it and we pulled that together within like a few days once we were set on recording it. It came out cool.

Really cool and I love that there's the little “Leave Britney alone” in there as well.

A little ode to the classic YouTube days, right? Right before the breakdown hits, too.

Yeah, it's such a good little detail. I definitely think that there are huge things ahead for you guys. Obviously, at Wall of Sound, we've always been big Windy fans…

We love you guys too...

Awww! What is one last sentiment that you want to leave people with? What do you want people to think about or feel when they're listening to the album?

I would just love for people to have an experience with the album and use it as an opportunity to reflect on life and your own experience through love. And what love has brought to you, what love has done for you, how it's changed you, how it's progressed, made you progress through life. Because we've tried to put our own experiences of love through that record. And we'd love to hear how it's affected everyone as well and hear how it's made people think about their experience of life through love.

Interview by Cait Mac @cait_2tone

Dive into Windwaker's Love Language (again) here.

Read our 10/10 review here

Windwaker – Love Language tracklisting:

1. Beautiful
2. Lucy
3. Nighthawk
4. Dopamine Freestyle
5. Me + You, But Mostly Me
6. Glow
7. Trenches
8. Superstitious Fantasy
9. Silver Linings
10. Love Language
11. Hide & Seek
12. The Rain