THE bigger the better, Bendigo band Four Lions decided when it started work on new album Wide Awake.
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The rockers' fifth studio album launches next Thursday and frontman Shann Lions said it was the sort of sound that could bounce around stadiums.
"I knew what we could potentially do with this band and I've always loved the idea that we could do it full-time," said.
"So I thought I'd have to write the biggest possible songs I could, and hopefully they will resonate with people."
The album is being described as something like early-nineties Oasis songs performed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
Shann said he pulled apart records by both acts as well as The Killers, Kings of Leon, INXS and U2 as the band worked on the album, but the final sound was still clearly that of Four Lions.
Wide Awake was supposed to be finished a year-and-a-half ago but the rings of steel that have locked down Melbourne for large chunks of the pandemic had stopped band members getting to their Preston studio to record.
COVID-19 lockdowns have left the band in something of a strange position as the launch date nears for an album so long in the making.
"The weird thing is that not a lot of people have heard it so far," Shann said.
The video for single Brave New World is among the album's snippets featured so far on social media and seems to capture the energy of a country that is starting to reopen after years of pandemic, even if it is about something else entirely.
"I had some personal circumstances in my life. Music is art so I try not to elaborate on that too much. People can listen and work it out," Shan said.
"But when your circumstances in life change you have either got to dwell on that or make some positive changes."
The song is about the cacophony of emotions that come in that moment.
"There's that lack of self-belief but, at the same time, doing it changes that trajectory and suddenly you end up going 'I can do this, I have to do this'," Shann said.
Four Lions is hoping to play a concert in Bendigo to share its music in December, but a national tour similar to that which accompanied 2019 album Hard Days will depend on how and when state borders reopen.
"We just don't know what will happen in to the future," Shann said.
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