A Quick Chat With The Burbs About “There’s No Time For Presents”

Q: Hi! “There’s No Time For Presents” has such a haunting, confessional tone. What was the emotional catalyst behind this track?

A: A close friend who was going through a lot and sticking by their side.

Q: You worked with Aaron Dobos at Sing Sing Studios for this single — what did he bring to the recording process that helped shape the song’s raw intensity?

A: We were kinda trying to dull down the intensity more than anything cos it started out as a pretty in-your-face track. Aaron helped us sweeten it up with harmonies and tambo and all that stuff. He’s always guiding us in the right direction. Before hitting the studio we also had Ted from The Vasco Era come in and help us calm it down into something more palatable.

Q: The use of a pocketknife slicing paper as percussion is incredibly vivid. How did that idea come about, and what was it like capturing that sound in the studio?

A: We’d done a similar thing on an older track (Pristine Evergreen) where a güiro came in halfway through the second verse. Not sure who’s idea that was, but it was tasty and we wanted to do it again. There’s another Aussie band we’re fans of called Augie March, and they’d used the sound of a box of cutlery being kicked across the studio floor as their snare sound on the track Heartbeat and Sails. Doing something with an object that wasn’t an instrument seemed appealing.

Q: Your sound blends grunge grit with pop hooks and a visceral acoustic feel. Do you see that hybrid evolving on future releases this year?

A: I dunno about the whole grunge thing. Sometimes it feels like a competition like oh yeah we’re more punk rock or more grunge than they are, and you can hang your hat on that, and having people think you’re badass or whatever… there’s often a temptation. But we just like music. We feel we just write pop songs and play them in whatever style they bloom. There’s a constant evolution with our music, not in the guts, more in the production. The future songs will always sound like The Burbs, just more polished.

Q: Following the momentum of your demo album Sunlight Spills Across The Swimming Pool and tracks like Ladder To The Moon, how do you see “There’s No Time For Presents” building on that foundation?

A: We weren’t really meant to release this track, its pretty personal and its not our best. I doubt anything we do this year will count for much. There’s eleven other tracks we’re currently working on in the studio for next year’s album and they’ll contain more splashes of brilliance than what’s been going on in our recent releases. We’ll probably look back on There’s No Time For Presents and think it was a funny sideways kink in our journey but hopefully still part of the broader tapestry.

Q: Bells Beach feels baked into your identity — how does your environment influence your songwriting and sound?

A: That’s cool to hear, but its hard to talk about our hometown as an influence… I don’t think there’s anything here that’s shaped our music other than fragments of lyrics. We spent a couple of years up in Melbourne too and the only inspiring thing there was that you could get lost in the ridiculous number of cliques which was kinda good and let us be ourselves as we were developing and maybe depart from some of the notion that we were just clueless surf town rats now that we’d had a taste of being clueless city rats too. If we were born in a different time and place we could’ve easily felt like we fitted into a scene with bands like Ash, Supergrass, Mansun, Primal Scream, The Posies, etc. I guess we take musical inspiration from those kinda bands and it gets made here and now from within experiences we’re having in the places we live and the places we move through.

Q: This track dives into themes of failure, love, and powerlessness. Are those themes we can expect to hear more of in upcoming material this year?

A: We write about everything. We’re feelers, so maybe that guides a lot of the themes. The next single will be similar because we wrote it as a prequel to There’s No Time For Presents. The album we’re working on will be called Signs of Life. We like going down to the cliffs at night and watching the UFOs. There’s always something different to write about as life goes through its twists.

Q: You’ve built a reputation for emotionally raw, electric live performances. Any plans for touring or festival appearances in 2025?

A: Hate to say it but this year is heads down bums up for us working on the album. When we release ourselves from this cage there will be some kempt up energy for sure and we can’t wait to hit the stage next year.

Q: What’s next for The Burbs in the second half of 2025 — more singles, an EP, or perhaps a full-length album?

A: More singles is the plan. And we’re hoping to find the Otway Panther.