BELLWETHER // Pop-Punk Vs. The World

Hey pop-punk fans, this one’s for you! Sydney’s Bellwether has stepped out with yet another massive track. This time its Charade, a very Scott Pilgrim influenced number that we’re in complete lesbians with.

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We got guitarist Heath Joukhadar to run us through how it came together, the band’s next steps and more.

Hysteria: Who’s in the band, and how’d you come together?

Heath: We are Bellwether. I’m Heath, and I met Josh (Nicholas, drums), Zac (Wallace, guitar) and James (Graham, vocals) through being in the local scene and playing in different bands. They were in Oaks, and I was in Flicker and eventually, I ended up joining them. I left my previous band, and they had members leaving, so we got together and started working on new material. We decided that with the dynamic change and sound change, we’d turn this into a whole new project. We also eventually met our bassist Gabrielle (Michael), who we knew through the local scene and friends.

You took inspiration from Bojack on your first track, Shortsighted and now Scott Pilgrim on Charade. Tell us about that.

It was interesting because Charade was a song that came together very last minute, right before we went into the studio. We were working on other songs, and we wanted to take a break and work on something new. So we went off some ideas that I had. We wanted to do another Scott Pilgrim centred track because a couple of other songs we were working on were also very much influenced by the comic series and film. And then Josh, who is probably the main lyricist in the band, had some ideas. We looked at those, and we ended up saying, what if we wrote this song from the perspective of Knives Chau, who was Scott Pilgrim’s ex-girlfriend in the series. With how the lyrics were, we thought that would be a cool concept to explore.

What other references can we expect to see in your future tracks?

Scott Pilgrim was very much a core influence on the songs we were writing. Outside of that, there might also be a Yu-Gi-Oh! influence track as well.

We ended up saying, what if we wrote this song from the perspective of Knives Chau, who was Scott Pilgrim’s ex-girlfriend in the series. With how the lyrics were, we thought that would be a cool concept to explore.
[ Heath Joukhadar ]

Classic. So you worked with Stevie Knight again. What’s kept you going back to him?

Stevie Knight had worked with the boys in Oaks on their last single, Chokehold, so they were keen to work with him again. The material he put out with them was really good, and they enjoyed working with him. He was someone I always wanted to work with, having seen a lot of the material he’d worked on with bands such as Stand Atlantic and Yours Truly. So that was very much the deciding factor in going with Stevie.

What’s in store for your AM//PM show with Bloom?

Hopefully, a lot of good vibes and a lot of good times. It’s going to be an interesting show; we’re the only pop-punk band on the lineup. People can expect to hear these singles live for the first time, and everything else we’ve been working on. So that should be really exciting.

When might we see more music from Bellwether?

We are hoping to have some more music sometime early next year. We’ve had these songs for quite a while, and due to various circumstances, we’ve had to hold on to them. But yes, early next year, we’re hoping to announce more music.

Who are some local bands we should be checking out?

Oh, really, putting me on the spot here! Obviously, Bloom, I don’t know if you’d call them a local band because they are rising in popularity quite fast, but we’re playing with them, and they’re really sick dudes. They’re probably the best melodic hardcore band out at the moment, in my opinion.

Other than that, it’s been hard when there haven’t been any shows for a couple of years, and a lot of bands have broken up. But I’ll have to give a shout out to my boys in Afterthought, who just put out their second EP. They’re all young, around 18, so it’s really cool to see some young people in the scene playing shows and releasing really cool music.

The band’s been killing it on TikTok lately. Tell us about that.

Fun and interesting are both words that come to mind. Obviously, TikTok is like the big social platform at the moment, and it’s really what’s been making or breaking a lot of artists and bands recently, particularly through the pandemic when there haven’t been shows. We wanted to take advantage of that. But also, I just find creating content a lot of fun. And finding and following other people and being part of TikTok communities. It’s a really cool thing to be a part of. But at the same time, we did have a video go semi-viral recently, which had a lot of mean comments. But also, I love hate comments because they’re the funniest thing in the world. They’re always so objectively wrong.

We’ve had a few other videos of ours get a few thousand views, but that’s probably been our one big one so far. If we do get some more viral videos, we’re hoping they’re actually about our songs rather than certain skits and bits.

Yeah. And with nice people too, you know?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, controversy does well; it gets people commenting and gets the video going around. So if people want to hate the song, that’s perfectly fine with me!