Sydney’s Winston Surfshirt have offered up a trio of stunning tracks for the latest instalment of Rolling Stone’s ‘In My Room’, a series in which artists perform from home following a couple of years which have seen live shows become a rarity.
Ask any fan of Australian music and they’ll undoubtedly agree that one band you need to see live to truly appreciate their majesty is Winston Surfshirt. An eclectic, versatile, and smooth-as-silk outfit that have been doing the rounds for a few years now, it’s been almost impossible to escape their feel-good tunes, their mesmerising jams, and their blissful compositions.
Of course, if seeing them live is your jam, then these last few years would have been rather disappointing, with COVID and its related restrictions certainly limiting the amount of touring that this well-travelled band have been able to do.
That said, they’ve not exactly been lazy during these past years. While their album Apple Crumble arrived in 2019, they since followed it up with a few singles, and even a lockdown set of covers, fittingly-titled Cover Your Mouth. However, it was in October that fans received their latest taste of the group, unveiling their latest single, “Complicated”, featuring the talents of Young Franco.
Speaking of the collaboration, Winston explained that he had “been a fan of Young Franco’s beats for a while, and known him for a couple of years with many mutual friends but we never worked on music together, which I thought was a crime.”
“I hit him up in March this year and jumped in the studio with him for a day,” he added. “We flicked through a few beats of his and when I heard this one it hit me instantly, felt like me and fit perfectly with the third album that was already nearly done.
“I think the gist of the words were written in the first couple takes of messing about, the chorus just happened and stuck, and it took about an hour of singing before the song was pretty much done. An upbeat tune that somehow forces you to dance.”
Truly, it was rather simple to see why “Complicated” was well-received, and it resonated with listeners the world over. Now, a couple of months on, Winston Surfshirt have returned with a new remix of the song, sharing the Flava D remix today.
To celebrate the release of the new remix, Winston Surfshirt have been kind enough to share with us an exclusive performance as part of Rolling Stone Australia’s ‘In My Room’ series. Recorded late last year, the three-song set captured the Sydney sextet as their slick and sensational best.
Kicking things off with a version of the mesmerising “Complicated”, the group soon showcase their versatility, moving into an impromptu jam that they call “Jam Hound”. But undoubtedly, the set’s highlight comes at the end, as they move into a performance of “Get To Know”, which was originally released as a collaboration with Cosmo’s Midnight a few years back.
Following some lyrical prompting from Winston, the group power through the track showing just how seemingly effortless their funky sound is. Smooth instrumentation, slick beats, and sensational bass lines complement Winston’s stellar voice as they combine into one truly powerful performance.
Check out Winston Surfshirt’s performance in the player above, or by heading over to Rolling Stone Australia’s Instagram page. In the meantime, their latest single, the Flava D remix of “Complicated”, was released today.
