“This record is like my therapy, to get all my shit out there and go, this is what’s going on with me,” says Totally Unicorn frontman Drew Gardner of Sorry, the follow-up to the Sydney quartet’s 2016 debut, Dream Life. “It’s weird. The whole thing about this band is having fun, the live show is crazy, but it’s like the sad clown. The front is, ‘ha ha, good times’, but he’s going through some shit. And this is what I’m going through right now.”

 

Baring his inner most thoughts on Sorry is “terrifying”, says the burly frontman, not least because he tackles subjects as raw as his divorce (“Alley Fucking Cats”), the reality of ageing while still making bad lifestyle decisions (“Grub”), and abusing substances as a coping mechanism (“I’ll Be Fine Now”).

 

“Lots of things have gone on in the past two years since the last record,” says Gardner, nestling a schooner in a quiet beer garden not far from his Sydney house, a red beanie atop his head. “Lots of substance abuse, losing friends due to relationships, dealing with my own sadness in myself and not being confident in who I am.

 

Getting older, I’m 37 now, and still doing this and still acting the fool. Each song you’ll listen to and know what it’s about.”

 

The fact that co-producer Jonathan Boulet insisted Gardner make his lyrics as audible as possible made the whole process even more confronting.

 

“I showed the songs to a mate and he was like, ‘You can hear exactly what you’re saying and meaning’, where before it was like, not letting people in too much.”

 

The band’s determination to simplify their sound and move away from the constantly shifting time signatures and mathcore frenzy of previous work also means that Gardner’s lyrics are afforded a more solid platform to shine. This musical shift coincided with the arrival of former Robotosaurus drummer Adam Myers in 2017, with Totally Unicorn also becoming a four-piece that year following the departure of guitarist Kerim Erkin. (Bassist Lee Neilson and guitarist Aaron Streatfeild round out the unit.)

“With a new drummer and one guitarist down, we were starting with a relatively clean slate writing Sorry, so what better time to put the practice of simplicity in place?” offers Streatfeild.

 

“All of us had grown up playing in bands that one way or another focused on technicality, spending hours trying to write off-kilter time signatures and riffs, and we still love that kind of music. But this time we played more to our strengths and found ourselves questioning the motives of certain parts: is this for show? Or does it serve the song?

 

“I feel Sorry still maintains the band’s identity,” he adds, “but its back-to-basics songwriting allows room for each instrument to breathe.”

 

You can hear that in the way the group inject space and dynamics into the frantic heaviness of “The Island”; in the way they alternate seismic grooves with more typically chaotic musical passages on “Grub”; and in the manner that “Heavy Breathing” finds a groove and pretty much sticks to it, albeit with the little manic flourishes you’d expect of Totally Unicorn. There is still plenty of brutality on offer – witness the fury of “Song For The Dead Shits”, a song about Gardner’s walk to work each day – but there are also surprises such as “I’ll Be Fine”, a slow-burning, almost bluesy dirge unlike anything Totally Unicorn have ever attempted.

 

“I feel we’ve managed to create a heavy, grungy punk record that’s the sum of its parts,” says Streatfeild. “Vocals, guitar, bass and drums. We spent less time on bells and whistles and more time on writing good songs.”

 

Work on Sorry began in earnest following the band’s maiden trip to Japan in March, and within five months the album had been written and recorded (not bad going given that Dream Life took a year to make).

 

Decamping to Adelaide’s Ghostnote studios for two weeks, they worked with producers Jonathan Boulet (an acclaimed musician in his own right) and James Balderston (High Tension, Luca Brasi). By day the band would record, leaving Gardner to exorcise his emotional demons by night. Quite often he’d enter the vocal booth with only half the lyrics written, ad-libbing the rest so as to be open to channelling the raw sentiment of the moment.

 

“It was just me throwing my emotion into it,” he offers.

 

Gardner admits he couldn’t have dreamed of creating an album with the musical depth and maturity of Sorry when he formed Totally Unicorn in Wollongong in 2010. Back then it was intended to be a low-expectation, low-pressure vehicle for making music with friends, and nothing more.

 

But word of the band’s chaotic live show soon spread – “There have been many near-death experiences,” says Gardner of their performances. “I’ve fallen off the bar and flipped on my head and knocked myself out” – and before long they were being asked to support acts such as Violent Soho, Frenzal Rhomb and The Dillinger Escape Plan, as well as headlining their own national tours. A series of EPs and split-singles were released along the way, accompanied by appearances at festivals such as Yours & Owls, Secret Garden and River Rocks, with the band causing pandemonium wherever they went.

 

Sorry is an album that expands and redefines what it is that Totally Unicorn represent. The only question is, just who are they saying sorry to?

 

“I really don’t know,” says Gardner. “All the songs have so much meaning to me in ways that either I’ve fucked up or someone else has, and saying sorry can help or not help. It’s the emotion I was feeling at the time. Feeling sorry for myself, and wanting the apology from people who’ve fucked me over.”

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The band's forthcoming album Sorry will be released April 12 via Farmer and the Owl