Soaked Oats Shares Third Single & Video, ‘Headline Opinion'

With two Number One Alternative Radio hits under their belts with previous singles, ‘The Way It Works’ and ‘Something’, Ōtepoti/Dunedin four-piece, Soaked Oats return with their call-out track, ‘Headline Opinion’.

Lead vocalist and lyricist, Oscar Mein, comments pithily, “Headline Opinion is a song about the news. How we serve it, how we consume it, how we regurgitate it, how we serve it again and…”

The track is accompanied with a video of old newspaper headlines & clippings compiled by Mein gathered from decades of old microfilm.

‘Headline Opinion’ is the third single from Soaked Oats’ upcoming album, Working Title to be released November 18th, 2022 on Australian indie tastemaker label Dot Dash/Remote Control via Rhythmethod Distribution in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Coinciding with the album release, Soaked Oats will be playing a one-off show in Melbourne, Australia on the eve of the album release to celebrate a legendary venue, The Curtin, on Thursday 17 November. Back in Aotearoa, Soaked Oats will be playing a one-off in-store performance at Auckland’s iconic, Flying Out Store on Saturday 19th, November. Album release shows across Australasia to be announced for 2023 on the album release day.

Previous singles include ‘Something’, the music video for the track has acclaimed director Martin Sagadin (Aldous Harding, Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams) giving their eye-catching and inventive interpretation of the song.

The music video for first single ‘The Way It Works’ was compiled from CCTV footage of the band’s recording sessions in the deep south town of Haast in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Soaked Oats percolated into existence in Dunedin, New Zealand in 2017. Catapulted by their fast-evolving songwriting chops, the band’s profile and fanbase are on the rise. The group have become known for endearing performances and live shows that have granted them access to tours and festival appearances throughout the UK, America and Australasia.

Having released a chapter of e.p.’s covering the important issues of Stoned Fruit (2017), No Slip Ups (2017) and Sludge Pop (2019), the band were cooking with gas playing the bigger festivals including The Great Escape, Laneway, Rhythm & Vines, and WOMAD. Alongside a three-week tour of the U.S. in 2019, the band have been welcomed so warmly across the ditch in Australia – they’ve toured there five times with two more tours in the works.

With their debut album, Working Title, Soaked Oats delve wider into the worlds of their beloved songwriters, drawing influences from funk, psychedelia, electronica and hip-hop to deliver their strongest piece of work yet.

Written and recorded over the last eighteen months, the New Zealand four-piece group’s first full-length album explores the contrasting ways we perceive and interact with the world, how we define ourselves through work, and the subtle shift from viewing objects in the world as fixed ‘things’, to experiencing them as processes and interactions unfolding.

Produced by Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams, The Chills), engineered by Tom Bell (David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights), and mastered by Christian Wright (Abbey Road Studios, Fontaines DC), the album delves into new sonic territory, with inspiration coming from 60’s psychedelia and dance-rock among others.

The majority of recording took place in a community hall in the remote township of Okuru, Haast, situated on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where the coastal road ends at the foot of Mt. Aspiring National Park. Partly in response to that isolated landscape, Working Title has unfolded as a more introspective offering from a band that are known typically for their cheerful sound.

Being a community hall in a small township, there was an open door policy, and visitors were frequent, including a local school group, a Hare Krishna who had boyhood memories of the hall parties of yesteryear, and kind locals that would turn up with delicious freshly caught kaimoana (seafood). The visitors saw their beloved community hall transformed into a music studio with a blanket drum room and recording gear encircling the band. The gear was transported via multiple van-loads across the island in a five-hour haul from the iconic recording studio, Chicks Hotel, in Port Chalmers, Otago.

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