Toxic Love, Midnight Calls, and a Song That Wrote Itself
Lab Rat, European Tour 2024
Lab Rat’s “Drunk”- A Raw, Unfiltered Single Exposing the Dark Side of Toxic Relationships
Seattle's grunge scene dominates music history, but just a few people out there recognize the role of Australian alternative music played in shaping and influencing the sound that blew up the US in the early nineties.
Australia’s underground seeded that first fuzzy, raw musical nerve with bands like Cosmic Psychos, Feedtime, and The Scientists. Today, Elevar travels back to the forgotten roots of the flannel and distortion that became Seattle’s battle cry.
“Drunk” is the latest single from Lab Rat, a chaotic yet catchy track time-locked in dissonant attitude. Lab Rat, the alter ego of Dylan James, began pursuing his musical dreams in the gritty punk and metal scene in Victoria BC when he was a teen, becoming the embodiment of the archetypal self-destructive rockstar. He returned to Australia, embarked upon a hard journey to sobriety, and ultimately ended up signing with Mushroom Pillow, an alternative label established in Spain in 2001.
Elevar Magazine spoke briefly with Lab Rat about “Drunk”:
What was the initial spark that inspired this song?
‘Drunk’ was written when I was with my ex. We weren’t good together. We used to be very toxic and at least once a month we would have a massive fight and break up, which would lead to one of us calling the other at 3am—drunk out of our minds—asking to pop around and ‘work things out’.
I wrote the bassline about 6 years ago and in the wake the relationship finally imploding, and the song just kind of fell out.
The Girl in question has actually heard the track since I wrote it and surprisingly seems to like it, for now at least… anyway.
When did you first start making music?
At 14, I was playing drums in a band called 'The Warning'. We were absolutely horrible and did mostly covers, but we did record and release a couple of our own singles way back in 2008.
Most artists I've known don't really need motivation to come up with music; they need to compose it to get it off their chests. Is that what this new single is?
It's definitely cathartic to an extent. I don't think artists need motivation but they do need real life experiences to be able to draw from. Sometimes it comes quickly and sometimes it doesn't. For example, the bassline in Drunk was written 5 years ago, and the rest was written in about 5 minutes last year.
You're going overseas on tour next year, right? And you've got one more show this year in Australia?
Yeah, we're super excited to be going overseas next year. It's something the whole band is looking forward to. We thought it would be best to have one last show to finish out the year and play one more time before we leave.
Check out “Drunk”, and definitely check out Lab Rat’s album released in 2001- Misguided Laughter and The Search For Sanity; it’s all very unvarnished and defiant.
Misguided Laughter And The Search For Sanity
