By Poppy Tohill

Have you ever considered sharing your most personal experiences with the entire world? Well come this Friday 14th July, that’s what Emma Cameron, the rocking front-woman of kiwi band Decades is about to do, when they release their long-awaited full length debut album, The Truth And Other People, so we sat down with the cheerful front woman to discover just what truth this album reveals..

“I’m feeling a little bit anticipatory,” Cameron responded when asked about the upcoming release of the band’s debut album. “We’ve been working on this for a couple of years now so the fact that we’re releasing it just doesn’t feel real,” she admit. “I’ve kind of been in denial about having to talk about the record and what it’s about, but after spending the past few months figuring out the track listing, getting all the artwork together and suddenly having a release date, it has stressed me out quite a lot, because now it’s very real. Of course we’re very excited about getting the record out there and touring it though, because we’ve only ever done an EP, so this is a huge milestone for us!”

“Our guitarist Liam is the main songwriter in the band, so the majority of the songs on the record are his, along with a few co-writes and one of my own songs,” Cameron acknowledged. “So the first song we worked on in the studio was Terrified, but Liam didn’t feel comfortable telling our team what it was about, so I took the approach of telling him what I thought it was about in relation to what I was going through. Basically a rough subject, but I left my partner of seven years for someone else that I had met and accidentally fallen in love with,” she confessed. “So for me, Terrified was about the night I told the new lover my feelings in the hope that he was reciprocating them. After telling everyone that story, Liam basically started writing songs about my experiences, from my perspective.”

“The track-listing is actually in the order of events of my break up,” Cameron laughed. “So it’s almost a concept album in that respect. It’s the entire story from me feeling frustrated with my ex to meeting someone new. Then breaking up with my ex and him demanding the truth from me about what was going on and admitting to him that I had feelings for someone else, followed by my tailspin of blowing out and partying every night,” she concluded.

“The album ends with a track called If It Kills Me, which is a triumphant war cry of proving that I made the right decision, because at the time everyone made me feel like I had thrown away everything.. So now you can see why I feel so anticipative of releasing it and having to talk about it with people,” she declared. “It’s quite a huge and personal thing for me and it’s kind of almost touching on infidelity and cheating, which didn’t happen, but it could be construed that way, so I’m quite anticipative of how people receive that as it’s a bit more complex then just your regular break up record!”

Opening up a greater understanding of the band’s most recent single The Right Mistake, which featured in the Spotify NZ Viral Charts, Cameron admit that was almost the name given to the record. “It kind of sums up the whole story,” she acknowledged, “but a couple of days out from having to submit the name and artwork to our label, we felt like the name should be a bit more abstract.”

When it comes to what Cameron wants people to take away from this record, she confessed, “It has been a long time in New Zealand since there’s been a woman-fronted rock band, especially one that has realised an album at a commercial level. A few months ago when Fur Patrol were touring, I went along to their show and while watching Julia Deans on stage it hit me that I had never seen a woman fronting a rock band in the flesh and there needs to be more of that. So I’m hoping people dig that fact and what’s going on here and that the music might inspire some younger girls to pick up the guitar as well. I hope the subject matter of the album doesn’t piss too many people off too,” she laughed. “I hope people can connect, because I think the whole falling in love with someone else thing is a lot more common than what is talked about.”

Recorded at Tom Larkin of Shihad’s Melbourne based studio, Studios In The City, Cameron filled us in on their creative process for this album. “We started writing at home on our own in about November 2015 before heading over to Melbourne for five weeks for pre-production and recording with Tom, then the whole process of mixing it, deciding on singles and getting our team together to help us release it has taken that long,” she laughed. “But it’s all turning out to be worth it,” she gleefully concluded.

Following this Friday’s release of The Truth And Other People, Decades are set to head off on a national tour, so we found out what challenges they’ve faced when putting this live show together.  “We didn’t find it hard to translate the instruments to the live stage, because the record is actually pretty raw, but there are other elements to the recordings,” Cameron admits.

“We’re using backing tracks for the very first time, for those extra little sub-drops on guitar and harmonies we can’t manage, so that has kind of been a scary challenge,” she confessed. “It has been funny learning to sing along with them actually, because you really can’t fuck it up or it’s super obvious. Then we’ve had to re-visit how that works with putting our set together and having those songs staunchly set out because we’re so aware about complying to the backing tracks.”

As for the rest of the year following the tour, Cameron revealed, “We don’t want to have a quiet end to the year. If 2017 is going to be this crazy at the start, it should be this crazy at the end!” she concluded with a laugh..

So definitely stay tuned for more Decades excitement to come we say!

Decades debut album- The Truth And Other People is out this Friday (14 July) via Warner Music

ALL OUR TRUTHS tour – featuring Decades, Skinny Hobos, Dead Favours and Bakers Eddy

Friday 14 July - Gravity Bar, HAMILTON
Saturday 15 July - Galatos, AUCKLAND
Saturday 22 July - Meow, WELLINGTON
Friday 28 July- Blue Smoke, CHRISTCHURCH
Saturday 29 July - Refuel, DUNEDIN

Tickets on sale Thursday June 1 at 12pm from www.wearedecades.com