BLUEJUICE

“I enjoy doing the night-shift,” explains tired Bluejuice singer Jake Stone, while punctuating his sentences with yawns. Subdued by lack of sleep Stone, and co-singer/songwriter Stavros Yiannoukas, had been up at the wee morning hours hosting Triple J’s Mid-Dawn show, yet he was still happy to discuss the finer points of the group’s most mature album to date: Company.

Does that mean the pop-pranksters are ‘growing up’? “I think definitely that’s the case. I’ve made a lot of mistakes [in life] that I can’t fix. Things that have happened that had real consequences and I’m dealing with that for the first time morally and ethically.” Stone confesses these life lessons led the group’s traditionally madcap writers towards telling more personal stories on the new record. “I don’t have a problem with monitoring how I feel and it’s fortunate that I find the opportunity to deal with these things through a fun format like music.”

Bluejuice aren’t slowing down though; on the contrary, they enlisted the help of some of Australia’s finest songwriters such as Sparkadia’s Alex Burnett and The Preset’s Julian Hamilton to help write and produce the latest album. “We like the idea of working with quality musicians so we opened up the process to other people who have experience with writing and producing for the radio.”

While the group embarked on an education in songwriting and production with Company, Stone expresses how much he is looking forward to taking the new music on the road as Bluejuice embark on a 13 date national university tour. “We’re a live party band with a fun show and we know at uni there are students who just wanna party. We just wanna have fun.”

August 10th, 8pm, UTS Glasshouse, $28.60 + BF, www.oztix.com.au