“It feels uncomplicated, which is what I was going for,” Great Gable vocalist/guitarist Alex Whiteman tells Apple Music of the clear goal in mind when writing Small Fry. “The music feels quite naive and simple. That’s what was important. I just really wanted to simplify the whole thing. There’s nothing too complicated.” That clarity and focus came in the wake of the 2023 departure of longtime drummer Callum Guy, with whom Whiteman had previously co-written much of the Western Australian band’s music. “We were like, ‘Who’s going to write the songs?’,” recalls Whiteman. “I guess I really took charge of it. I look back on albums and stuff we’d done, and I felt like we overcomplicated things too much. I just started writing from scratch and really thinking about what kind of songs I wanted to write and just how simple it used to be.” Having recorded their previous two albums with singer-songwriter Matt Corby in northern New South Wales, for Small Fry the group opted to stay in Western Australia and record with Dave Parkin (Birds of Tokyo, Spacey Jane), infusing their melody-charged brand of jangly indie rock with an undeniably hometown flavour. “It was boiling hot when we recorded this album, we were going to the beach and whatnot, I feel like you can hear it,” smiles Whiteman. Memories of growing up in Bunbury, Western Australia, inform songs such as “Hometown”, while the album’s title harks back to Whiteman’s upbringing near the beach. “There was this club of these really talented young surfers, and they were called Small Fry,” he offers. “And it’s just stuck with me. I wrote a demo called ‘Small Fry’ that was an instrumental—I don’t know how I got the name, somehow ‘Small Fry’ popped into my head and I was like, ‘That’s cool.’ The demo didn’t make it onto the album but the name itself stuck with me.” Here, Whiteman talks Apple Music through the band’s third album, track by track. “Best Friend” “‘Best Friend’ just felt like an opening track. It’s a love song. I’m describing living with my best friend, my girlfriend. It’s just me appreciating that.” “Think Again, Motherf*cker” “We’d just been gigging with The Grogans, an Australian band, and the tune just reminded me of them. I wanted to write a song like their sort of stuff, something simple and surfy with a little essence of rocky sort of punk. I originally had the beat for another song. I really liked the beat but I didn’t like the song I’d written for it, so I chopped up the beat and called it ‘Think Again, Motherf*cker’. Telling myself, ‘Keep thinking on it and have another crack at it.’” “You Shall Not Pass” “My girlfriend had just bought me the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings after I had gotten back from a tour. I was probably in an absolute haze watching it, knackered after tour. I just started to play those opening chords. I recorded that quickly on my phone and came back to it a couple of days later and just started having a sing. It poured out and I recorded the whole thing. It’s me realising I’d let things go out of control a little bit, I was letting things slide. It’s also about not letting too much doubt sink in and that I wanted to take things a bit more seriously.” “Fogged Up” “Matt [Preen] our guitarist brought in the chords for that, and he had called it ‘Fogged Up’. When we started jamming, it we started rocking it up a bit more and I just started singing [the line ‘I fucked up’], but the name was always ‘Fogged Up’ so we just stuck with it. I guess that one feels like, you’re just admitting to fucking up. It’s telling a story of telling your mate you fucked up and you’re sorry.” “Hometown” “It’s basically a romanticised version of what it felt like growing up in Bunbury in Western Australia. I felt really lucky growing up down there. I’m stoked to have written a song about it.” “I Would Rather Be Happy Than Right” “I did that all at home on this tape cassette [deck] I have out the back, which is really cool. I always like the idea of instrumentals; it’s kind of melancholy but it feels nostalgic to me. I’d already had it before we started recording. We got to the end of recording most of the album, and I was like, ‘I’ve got this thing,’ and everyone dug it so we were like, ‘Let’s just slap it on.’” “Muck About” “I love this UK band called The La’s from the late ’80s/early ’90s. They’ve got some tunes where they just bash it out on acoustic guitars but it’s really quite moving. So that was the original idea—a faster song that’s on acoustic guitars, but a bunch of them. It’s kind of sing-along-y, with an essence of Englishness to it. It felt kind of fun.” “Fine Wine” “Matt [Preen] brought this one in. I was so happy when he brought it in, I just liked it straight off the bat and was looking forward to singing it. All the instrumentation is busier than the stuff I write but, at the same time, it feels like it sits nicely with the rest of the album.” “Wouldn’t Be So Mean” “That was written right when Cal left, and I think we were all just having big chats. We were probably pretty emotional about all sorts of things. [Of the lyric ‘I only called you to apologise/I didn’t realise that you would cry’] I don’t distinctly remember having a phone call with anyone or that actually happening, it was just that, when I was writing this tune, that came out and it felt like the perfect lyric. I was stoked with it and was like, ‘Write that down.’ It’s not written about anyone. Sometimes you call people to apologise about things. Maybe it happens to me more often!” “She Said” “I loved the Weezer track ‘Say It Ain’t So’. I just loved how the verses were really chilled out, and the chorus is massive. I was like, ‘That would be fun to muck around with.’ The verses are just telling a story of me being out with my mates and getting a telling off and getting told to go home.” “Blue Eyes” “It’s about meeting my girlfriend in Melbourne. It’s a slightly romanticised version of the night I met her, but it’s pretty much what it was. She’s got these beautiful blue eyes.” “Asleep” “It feels like a nice one to finish on. I love the chord progression. I’ve always loved slide guitar. It’s a real simple song and it feels a bit Beatles-y. It’s about falling asleep at the wheel—again, I let things get away from me a bit. It’s one of my favourites.”