'Transatlanticism' Changed My Life - The Maine | theMusic.com.au | Australian music news, gig guide, music reviews

Phoenix pop-rock titans The Maine will be hitting Australia next month, joining forces with State Champs, Hot Milk and Paperweight for one of the biggest pop-punk tours of the year.

Since first entering the scene in 2007, the band have released eight critically acclaimed records that have not only pushed boundaries sonically but have seen them break into the mainstream world.

After first garnering attention on the Vans Warped Tour, The Maine experienced a steady ascent since the release of their debut Can't Stop, Won't Stop, in 2008, racking up multiple Billboard top 40 records and receiving widespread acclaim for the quality and adaptability of their musical offerings.

While they first captured the world's attention with their neon-lit pop-punk stylings, the band have continued to evolve, moving toward an ever more sophisticated and literate rock sound, with 2021's XOXO: From Love And Anxiety in Real Time showcasing a level of maturity and songwriting nous rarely found in their genre space.

With such a diverse yet pop-friendly sound, you'd be forgiven for pondering who the groups biggest influences are. In the lead-up to their impending visit to Australia, we spoke to vocalist John O'Callaghan to find out for ourselves. During that chat, he revealed that Death Cab For Cutie's Transatlanticism changed his life and the way he thought about music, foever.

The Album That Changed My Life: John O'Callaghan, The Maine

"The album that changed my life would be Transatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie for numerous reasons. The biggest reason is probably being where I was in my life when I heard it and how impressionable I was. I must have been either a freshman in high school or a sophomore in high school, so I was in the gnarly battle that was puberty navigating high school. That was the first time that I probably recognized a tinge of sadness that was in me and I felt like Ben Gibbard was somehow saying the things that I was feeling. I had never done music of my own prior to our band. Prior to being in a band, music was always just a form of catharsis in a different way because I was hearing from these artists that I wasn’t alone in feeling the way that I was feeling."

"The beauty of music to me is being able to associate your own meanings to songs and lyrics and stuff like that. The title track on Transatlanticism specifically, I remember hearing it for the first time and having that, sort of, out-of-body experience, that sort of euphoric yet melancholic feeling all at once. And it reminds me so much of getting stoned and being “edgy” and rebelling. It was just the culmination of a lot of those teenage feelings and feeling like that again like I wasn't alone and feeling alone. And I think I carried that a lot into the lyrics that I write. And Ben Gibbard, he's got such a knack, just like some of my favourite songwriters in lyrics, he's got such a knack of saying the mundane or the obvious in such a way that you have never heard before. And because of all of that, that's why I choose that album."