It’s an unfortunate fact of life that you can’t really take a mental vacation without also uprooting yourself from the surroundings you’re hoping to escape. For Aussie rockers WANDERERS, that was an idealized vision of life in Malibu while holed up in a hotel in nearby Los Angeles. While frontperson Dusty Lee Stephensen remained cooped up in that hotel, he ironically found the inspiration for the band’s new single which sounds as breezy and blissful as the beachy getaway the song addresses, with Stephensen’s falsetto weaving in and out of funky instrumentation accented with wailing sax.
“‘Malibu’ represented much more than a geographical location to me in the moment of writing the song, in a run down LA hotel room,” recalls Stephensen. “It became the metaphor for a lot of the elation I’d felt on our first band trip to the U.S. I really did feel on top of the world, regardless of the chick from The Ring lurking outside my hotel door, or the fact I couldn’t hire a car and was nearly out of money…and as frustrated as I was that I couldn’t actually be there, in Malibu, just the idea of it existing summed up what I’d experienced on that trip, which—contrary to the stories I’ve told here—was utterly incredible.”
Watch the desert-set video for the track below.
