Poison Oak, from Australia, are set to release their new single, Hope You Like The View, on April 25 2022. We’ve had the chance to have an early listen, and we’ve shared their bandcamp link above so that you can take a listen too and make a purchase if you like what you hear.
If you’re a fan of Blink 182, then it’s pretty likely that Hope You Like The View will be right up your street.
Poison Oak have managed to create a well crafted 3 1/2 minute punk / alt rock song with some lovely layered vocals and some rather fab sounding little positive riffs on the guitar between the vocal lines. The whole track is well written and well scored.
The song has some great rise and fall throughout and with a lovely build at around 2 minutes where the guitar riff repeats over and over and the drums just keep building underneath and then into the chorus. Almost immediately after this, the guitar and drums do the same but with a bigger build to the end. Very creative stuff!!
There really are some superb sections in this track – we like the sections with just that repeated guitar riff and the hi-hat. We have a feeling that Poison Oak are pretty fun to watch live.
Punk tracks are often known for their rawness and lo-fi production and that’s the feel that we get about Hope You Like The View. This is not a bad thing for a punk track and we would encourage Poison Oak to make sure that they’re approaching indie radio stations and building a solid fanbase in their home town. There’s plenty of opportunities for punk in today’s music industry but Poison Oak may find that they have to get creative in finding these opportunities. This isn’t that dreadful “cookie cutter” stuff that is churned out and lapped up by the masses! This is for a smaller, but enthusiastic market.
From a production perspective, we feel that the overall master needs a huge boost in the top two octaves, at least. Currently, the only thing that we’re hearing in the top end is the sibilance in the vocals. Boosting the top two octaves, followed by a single band compressor in the 8-12kHz range will help to add some brightness whilst controlling the peaks in that range caused by the vocal sibilance.
Poison Oak have written something really quite exciting here. Hope You Like The View has some wonderful 90s punk/pop/rock elements, a great hook, catchy riffs on the guitars and some lovely rise and fall throughout the song. This is the first we’d heard of Poison Oak but now we’re itching to hear more.