‘House With The Blue Door’ out Oct 4

 

Nick Ward’s music transcends boundaries, weaving together elements of indie pop rock, emo, electronic and hip-hop to create a sound that is uniquely his own. With each song, he invites listeners into a world of introspection, vulnerability, and raw emotion. Nick’s artistry continues to captivate audiences worldwide, earning him accolades and recognition as a breakthrough artist in the music industry.

Nick Ward initially envisioned his debut album, “House With The Blue Door,” completed just before his 22nd birthday, as a kind of blurred time capsule for his youth. After spending an afternoon at a Sydney exhibition of Hilma Af Klint’s “The Ten Largest” (1907) paintings, Nick Ward had the idea to create an album about childhood, and the lingering emotions of the past.

“It’s about family, childhood, DNA, and the complex relationship we have with the past. I wanted to encapsulate my childhood and adolescence into a single statement and explore the way trauma and memory influence who I am today. They were significant influences on the structure of the record, and the way those filmmakers translated memories from their childhoods into abstracted stories and vignettes,” explains Nick. “Initially, the album began as an attempt to tap into the sunny, innocent feeling of being a kid, but I think all the turbulence of life and growing up made its way into the music too.”

As with his previous releases, Nick mostly wrote and produced “House With The Blue Door” in his bedroom studio. Filled with trinkets, a wall of photos, film stills, scraps of writing, posters, and a whiteboard with scribbled ideas, it’s the exact recording environment one imagines when listening to Nick’s bedroom-spun pop. There is a tactile, rough-hewn quality to the album: hissing tapes, see-sawing rhythms, skittering beats, and a rambling voicemail recording left by one of Nick’s grandparents’ friends. 

As a producer, Nick cites the innovative ambient artist Brian Eno as a core influence. Preferring to work with first-take recordings of instruments and vocals, there is a playfulness alongside his fanatical attention to sounds.

The sound of the album was ultimately inspired by the music playing in his dad’s car when he was growing up, from The Beatles and Lou Reed to classic Australian pub-rock. “The most influential part of those songs wasn’t the sounds or the instruments they used; it was the feeling it gave me when I was ten years old. I drove myself insane trying to make music that would bring back all those emotions for me,” explains Nick. This, along with his ability to sneak big melodies into the messy overdrive of jagged indie rock, solidified the album’s soundscape. 

“House With The Blue Door” was produced and written by Nick Ward and his friends – Gab Strum (Mallrat / Allday / Gretta Ray), Golden Vessel (1tsbp / BAYNK / Emerson Leif), Len20 (Lil Nas X / Kid Cudi), Tim Nelson (Cub Sport), Simon Lam (Kllo / Armlock / Phoebe Go), SOLLYY, and FRIDAY*. Joe Visciano (SZA, Lil Nas X, Kendrick Lamar) mixed the entire project.

With a quiet capacity for writing inescapable hooks, “House With The Blue Door” contains some of Nick’s sturdiest and most creative pop melodies to date. A recent writing trip to Stockholm working with Troye Sivan and Oscar Gorres helped further inspire the pop influence on the record. These sessions, working on “Can’t Go Back Baby” (a track from Sivan’s “Something To Give Each Other”), expanded his view of pop music and further helped shape “House With The Blue Door” into an exuberant and fuzzed-out, emotional yet danceable record.

Nick is the rare kind of songwriter who commands you to delve a little deeper… deciding that the growing pains and introspection of the album should not be at the expense of its fun; that vulnerability can be at its most potent when it’s musical.

The strutting “Gimme” veils lyrics about over-analyzing in a floor-filling banger; the spiralling and insatiable “Control”, a song about grappling with genetic destiny, is imagined as a fuzzed-out, frenzied post-punk rager.

The sweet fuzz of “Shooting Star,” a Hip-hop inspired pop song. Easily the most confident and affirming song of the album… “I wanted it to sound like a pop song dissolved in acid,” explains Nick.

“I Wanna Be A Mother,” the emotional pinnacle of the project, is a song written to Nick’s future child, about all the things Nick is scared of inevitably passing down to his child.

 “Go!” is a track about social anxiety – the lyrics and verses jump back and forth in time between a moment in Nick’s childhood, and a night out in Sydney with his friends. 

“All Your Life” is a soaring finale, a send-off to the listener that explores themes of grappling with depression. With its blend of raw emotion and infectious pop hooks, “House With The Blue Door” solidifies Nick Ward’s place as a visionary artist, leaving a lasting impression on all who venture through its musical corridors.