Australian band Atlas Genius plays The Met in Pawtucket on June 17
Michael Jeffery, left, and his brother Keith Jeffery, of the Australian indie-pop band Atlas Genius.
By Scott McLennan
Special to The Journal
Published: 16 June 2013 12:01 AM
By focusing on small details, Atlas Genius has gotten a pretty big response.
“I wanted to focus on the minutiae and write about the smaller parts of life,” says Atlas Genius singer, guitarist and songwriter Keith Jeffery. “I’ll leave the big statements to the likes of Bon Jovi.”
Atlas Genius is having a breakthrough year with the February release of its full-length album “When it Was Now,” which houses the hit “Trojans” and fueled enough road work and interest to finally allow the Australian indie-pop band a headlining tour of the U.S. after previous visits opening for Imagine Dragons and Silversun Pickups.
Atlas Genius is at The Met Monday before wrapping up a string of U.S. dates in July and heading back to Australia for what will be the band’s first proper tour of its country of origin. “We go home for three days, see our families, then leave again,” Jeffery said when reached in transit between Columbus and Nashville, noting that music is now a “24/7” endeavor.
It didn’t start that way for Jeffrey and his brother Michael, Atlas Genius’ drummer. The two built a studio to work on songs, pulling in money playing covers at local bars. In the summer of 2011, the brothers posted the song “Trojans” online to little fanfare. But the music blog Neon Gold found the song and wrote a glowing review that caught the attention of management companies, booking agents, and record labels.
The song became a hit in Australia and migrated to alt-rock programs carried on U.S. satellite. “It was the first song we finished,” Jeffery says of how the lean, urgent “Trojans” became the band’s calling card. “We didn’t expect this reaction to it.”
By early 2012, Atlas Genius had a deal with Warner Bros. Records, which primed the pump with an E.P. released a year ago, and then put out the full-length “When it Was Now.” The 11-song outing is beguiling as it combines artistic flourish with broadly catchy melodies. Lyrically, Jeffery stays true to his aim with songs that manage to hit pop’s favorite targets of romance and angst with stories that seem sprung from small bits of conversation or fleeting observations.
“Life is never absolutely terrible or absolutely amazing. It’s usually OK, with some good and bad. My lyrics reflect that middle ground,” Jeffery says. “I feel I’m successful if I’ve written a song that feels like something you’d see in one day.”
These days, much of what the band sees is through a windshield, but Jeffery isn’t complaining.
“We’ve seen a lot of America and a lot of Europe,” he says. “It’s a privilege to do it.” But clearly the band will be coming at its next album from a place far different from the isolated environment where it created its first batch of songs, and Jeffery is preparing for that.
“It can’t help but change the music,” he says of how current experience will affect the next Atlas Genius record. “I know I’ll just write the best songs I can. It’s interesting being a fan and watching a band grow, and different when you’re doing it yourself. I think a lot of bands get slower when they grow. When a band gets to the stadiums, you can see how it has changed.”
Scott McLennan can be reached at smclennan1010@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottMcLennan1
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