We’ve come across the brothers Gibson, Adam Gibson (Modern Giant, The Ark-Ark Birds) and Simon Robert Gibson (Disneyfist, Sneeze, Modern Giant) in the contemporary indie supergroup The Aerial Maps before, and we are truly honoured to bring you an exclusive listen to their new project together, Great Sandy. The collaboration is launched with the debut single ‘Now Often Feels Like Then’.
The name of the project is a perfect reflection of the uniquely antipodean flavours these two brothers bring to their music: a jingle jangle sound that seems to have within its very genes the salt water of the oceans, the dry dust of the deserts and the beautiful endless horizons.
‘Now Often Feels Like Then’ is a reimagining of a song originally released by Simon on his 2020 album ‘The Great Ongoing’, but with lead vocals from Adam, deploying his distinctive spoken-word style delivery to deliver an affecting song about the passing of time and getting older.
The spoken vocal style and themes always makes me think of an antipodean John Cooper Clarke: a dry, crisp delivery in a strong local accent touched with humour but threaded through with a deep veracity and profound compassion. In this track, the soaring chorus is filled with yearning, blessed with the distinctive filligee of Alannah Russack’s backing vocals (from the legendary Hummingbirds and The Aerial Maps).
According to Adam Gibson, the song explores the intersecting notions of time, memory and ageing:
It looks at the idea of how we can often be fully aware that time has passed and we’ve aged onward into life but also thinking about the concurrent feeling we can still feel as if barely a moment has passed and indeed “now” can often feel like “then”. As if the years can easily drop away and all the dreams you had when younger still remain as fresh and as vital as ever, regardless of age.
There is a delicate poignancy that imbues the track with an exquisite melancholy – the aforementioned John Cooper Clarke’s intensely passionate delivery in an Australian accent, over an instrumentation that could come from The Church or R.E.M. with its gentle arpeggiated flow. The chorus echoes the famous phrase from Australian veterans delivered at war memorials, while the distant trumpet provides a enigmatic frill to the sound.
True to the message, the accompanying video is a simple collection of poignant memories over time – filled with a certain sadness for the inevitable passage of time, yet strangely comforting with the knowledge of survival and resilience:
‘Now Often Feels Like Then’ is out on Monday, 10 March 2025 and available to download and stream via all the usual sites and through the link below:
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