Overpass

Live Nation Presents
Overpass
In their short history, Birmingham’s overpass have inspired an ever-growing fanbase with songs pulsating with youthful
exuberance and the vulnerabilities of young adulthood. Their shows have been just as life-affirming, providing a
dopamine burst of wall-to-wall singalongs and an all-in-this-together communion. As they approach the release of their
debut album, ‘Elsewhere, Always’, overpass are primed to take that personal connection to much bigger audiences.
For a record made with such confidence and conviction, the dichotomy of ‘Elsewhere, Always’ is that it is born from
uncertainty. It’s a maelstrom of twenty-something existential confusion, an approach neatly encapsulated by its lead
single, ‘Union Station’ - arguably their first song to truly have the arena-filling, airplay-hit potential.
‘Union Station’ was inspired by hearing a conversation about our dog-eat-dog world. “The idea of life being one big
competition freaked me out a bit. I never wanted to fight for jobs or houses or compare myself to everyone else,”
begins vocalist/guitarist Max Newbold. He compares its Springsteen-ish imagery of a fictional train station and its
endless destinations and possibilities to “the place you run to when you’ve mentally checked out, even if you’re doing it
with a half smile and a bit of self-awareness. It ties into the album’s message: growing up clueless, making mistakes,
and realising that not having it all figured out is fine.”
That restless, vagabond anxiety simmers throughout the record. Hitting the sweet spot between the band’s anthemic
core and driving rhythms which echo The War On Drugs or Tom Petty, the melancholic ‘Is This Real?’ faces the lightning
bolt realisation of “being worn out by life’s pressures as they all become a bit too real.” And such stresses inevitably
lead to the insomnia described in ‘Sandman’, with Max’s sleep-deprived lyricism complemented by its woozy, off-kilter
contrast between its Slowdive-tinged shoegaze wall-of-guitars and its deceptively airy hook. Naturally, romantic
affliction isn’t far away either, with the soaring ‘Fall In Love’ feeling like a modern take on the kind of alt-rock balladry
that ruled the airwaves in the ‘90s.
Yet for all its turmoil, ‘Elsewhere, Always’ is also a record eager to map a course towards a brighter future. Or as bassist
India Armstrong adds, “I think the record has a lot of romance in terms of your longing and desire for something else:
the next place you want to be or the next thing you want to do. There is hope that you can get to the place that you’re
looking towards.” So when the album waves goodbye with the elegiac beauty of ‘Heaven’, it does so with nods to Jeff
Buckley, Bert Bacharach and Jeff Lynne - and with the optimism that, perhaps, everything will somehow be alright.
It’s a philosophy born from the universal reality of the post-teen life learning curve. As Max notes, “Ten of my mates
feel exactly the same, but we’re all in different…