Features

Here's an email interview we did with Trophy Eyes vocalist John Floreani, who is back home down under fresh off a US tour with The Amity Affliction. The band recently released their second album, "Chemical Miracle", via Hopeless records. The shortest song on that album, "Chemical", clocks in at just 79 seconds. Read fast enough and you might have finished this interview before the song is done.

PRT: You spent the past months touring Australia and North America with The Amity Affliction. Are you glad it’s overand that you have some downtime? Or are you mostly bummed out?

John: Well that tour went for about 7 weeks, so I'm pretty glad to be home. Touring is always fun, but it's always nice to come home and see the family. I wouldn't say I'm glad it's over, but there is a definite proud sense of accomplishment and I'm looking forward to the next one.
 

PRT: The Australian part of the tour took about two weeks, the US tour about two months. Which made me wonder… do you ever look at being from Australia as something of a disadvantage, being relatively isolated with way less places to play?

John: Some attributes of living in Australia are definitely setbacks when it comes to music or entertaining. We're basically isolated from the rest of the world, and even with social media, it's hard to break a market overseas. It's slowly changing though, and as of the last two years, wherever I am in the world, people tell me they love Australian music. My hope is that it won't be so hard for good bands to break through now that it seems everyone is paying attention.
 

PRT: In the weeks leading up to the release, you hyped the shit out of “Chemical Miracle” on your social media. Is that something you liked doing or is that just something you can’t get around these days?

John: If you have something you want people to see, you talk about it. There's no use being too cool and announcing it the 'day of' to no one. I had something that I'd worked two years to create and kept it a secret for months until it was time to announce to the world we had a new album. I enjoyed doing it like people enjoy going Christmas shopping. I had something special that I wanted to give everyone.
 

PRT: There is a lot going on on “Chemical Miracle”. You’ve always had that pop punk/hardcore duality, but I feel like the new album is even more diverse. Did you set out to make something moodier, more atmospheric?

John: We just wrote what came naturally. We hadn't written in about 2 years, we'd been busy travelling the world and listening to new music from all over the world. When we finally came together to write, that's what came out.
 

PRT: Compared to “Mend, Move On” the music sounds a lot more uplifting with bigger hooks and a lot of major scales. Where did that come from?

John: It came from growing experience in songwriting and probably listening to a lot of pop music.
 

PRT: You dig pretty deep within yourselves when it comes to the lyrics. Do you ever feel like you are giving away too much of yourself?

John: I don't feel that way, no. To be able to perform so passionately and honestly unneeded something I felt passionately about. Everything I sing about is an honest first hand reflection of something that's happened to me before, and it's almost therapeutic writing about it and singing about it.  
 

PRT: So what’s next for you guys? Any plans to come over to Europe?

John: We have plans to tour the US a lot more and hopefully Asia as we haven't been there yet. No plans for Europe just yet, unfortunately.
 

PRT: Last question… I don’t know if you have seen the movie Almost Famous, but there is one scene where the band is in a plane and they think they are going to crash and so they come out with all these big confessions. If you were in that situation, what would you confess to the other guys in the band?

John: I would confess that the only female actress I have a crush on is Hellen Mirren and she's like 100