Earlier this month, The Velvet Club released their highly anticipated debut album.
Are You Falling In Love? doesn’t let up over 10 tracks, contemplating some heavy subjects: mental health battles, relationship breakdowns, friendship and solitude.
The Velvet Club’s style is old-school indie rock, full of big emotions and bigger riffs. Think The Vaccines, The Drums, and The Kooks.
Their debut full-length emerged out of frontman AJ Tilyard’s most prolific songwriting period yet, using the band’s music to contend with the unravelling of a long-term relationship.
“The theme of the album basically encapsulates this year and a half period of my life between 2024-2026 where everything seemed to come to a head,” Tilyard says. “While writing, I started therapy, and after we began tracking for the album I started medication to help manage depression, anxiety and OCD. Finally addressing these as issues I had been ignoring definitely changed the trajectory of this album, and helped shape the overall tone and feeling of the record.”
Following three album launch events this month, The Velvet Club are taking their debut album on a national tour in August, with shows confirmed in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Melbourne. They’ll be joined by rising Adelaide band Pureé along the east coast, with WA indie outfit Ghost Care backing them up in Perth. Tour information is available here.
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We caught up with Tilyard as part of our Up-And-Coming Australian Artists series to find out more about the band, their album, and more.
The Velvet Club’s Are You Falling In Love? is out now.
Rolling Stone AU/NZ: How much did music influence you in your early life?
AJ Tilyard: A lot! I was one of those kids putting on ‘concerts’ for my family or my parents’ friends (whoever was in the house) in the living room with a toy guitar. I feel like I’ve always wanted to be involved with music since I can remember! I remember watching the INXS live at Wembley concert video when I was super young, and I think it must’ve changed something in my brain ’cause I became pretty obsessed with that band and the idea of singing in a band from a really young age.
What artists influenced you growing up?
As mentioned before, my obsession with music and bands definitely started with INXS. I guess they were my parents’ favourite band, and it was so accessible in my house. Once I got a bit older in early high school, I really found myself immersed in the early-mid 2000’s indie scene with bands like Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, The Kooks, and The Vaccines quickly becoming my favourites. I probably watched every festival performance and interview there is of those bands on YouTube during my high school years.
What are some career highlights so far?
There’s been a heap of different highlights along the way! I guess the ones that come to mind first are getting a spot to play the last Zplendour in the Grass lineup in 2023, or being handpicked to open for Louis Tomlinson at Sidney Myer Music Bowl in 2024, but I think the highlights I’m most proud of would be selling out our biggest hometown headline shows at Howler and The Night Cat! Those shows were so special to us, and I think really reassured us that our music is reaching people and we are building a solid community around our band, even if we maybe feel sometimes we aren’t constantly trending on a steep upwards trajectory like some bands seem to be!
Tell us about your latest release.
Our debut album! So excited to have it out in the world. We started working on it around March last year, and it’s been pretty much all I’ve been thinking about since we started, so I’m pretty relieved to have finally released it. We’ve been a band for eight years, so I feel like all of that time that we’ve wanted to do an album but we weren’t ready as a band or able to afford it just yet is also built into the suspense of the last year and a half actually creating it.
What themes are you exploring on this release?
During writing for the record it started off as a breakup album. I had recently gone through a big breakup, so a lot of the songs were touching on that, but throughout the writing process I started going to therapy and I started medication for anxiety and OCD. So there’s a lot of the album that touches on my mental health and I guess the album, to me, represents my experience of a relationship breaking down through my lens of anxiety and OCD.
I was never writing from that perspective intentionally, but looking back now, after working through my own struggles and learning more about my own mental health and brain, I can kind of see that I was writing from a place of anxiety.
I think it’s really important to be honest and vulnerable in songwriting and this album really serves as a time stamp on my life for me, but I really hope that by being honest on the record that people can interpret the themes or perspectives I’ve shared throughout it and apply it to their own lives.
OCD is also quite an undiagnosed and misinterpreted disorder so I think it’s important to speak openly and honestly about my experience with it, and this record has been such a great vessel for those conversations! It took me 28 years to learn or admit to myself that it was affecting my life due to the common misunderstandings of the disorder and the stigma around it, so I’d like to think that this album has been the starting point for me to be more open about my experiences with it and hopefully help other people do the same!
What kind of personality traits and values do you believe it takes to succeed in the music industry?
I think being kind and friendly are probably the most important traits or values in the industry. I think the majority of opportunities our band has been given over the years has been off the back of a good experience with the artist we are supporting, or a booker we met at a pub or something! The music industry allows you to meet so many great people and we all share the same passion. We’ve met some of our closest friends through this band.
How would you describe your music to a potential fan?
I’d describe it as heavily inspired by early 2000’s indie rock, particularly from the UK. Angular and jagged lead guitar parts and big catchy singalong choruses.
I think all of those UK festival videos on YouTube really cemented that into my songwriting haha.
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Are you looking forward to your headline tour and overseas shows?
Definitely! We have always sort of thought of ourselves as a live band first before anything else, and I think it’s still the space in which our music makes the most sense! The Aus tour will be great because they’re shaping up to be some of our biggest headline shows to date, and the UK/EU tour later this year is super exciting! That’s kind of been our goal since the beginning — to take our music over there. I’ve actually never been to Europe before so I’m really looking forward to it and to see so many new places through our music.
What are your goals for 2026 and beyond?
I would really love to play some Australian festivals this summer as well as head back to UK and Europe, and try to expand our band a bit more over there and avoid our Melbourne winter for once! Mostly, though, I just want our music to reach more people after this debut album and keep growing the little community surrounding our band!
