The Oddfellows’ Hall is the eighth full-length release from Australia’s The Ocean Party. As a six-headed song writing partnership, the members of The Ocean Party have been together more than a decade, honing their craft and exploring their musical and personal worlds. The Oddfellows’ Hall is the work of six life-long friends who enjoy the connection and comfort of being able to dissect their life experiences together through their music. With each member approaching landmarks in their life the album can’t help but reflect a cross section of late twenties anxieties, excitements, freedoms and losses. At the point of recording the lives of the six members were in neat contrast: expectant parenthood versus dissolution of a long term relationship; commitment to new ideas of the self versus returning to a foreign country twenty years since emigration; living in your car versus finding your place. As is typical of the band, The Ocean Party opted to record the music in a concentrated space of time and for their location chose a community hall they had spied while touring. The Oddfellows’ Hall in the rural New South Wales town of Yass lent a familiar homeliness to a band whose ties wind back to high-school in rural Australia. Set up in the open space of the 1880’s wooden-floored community hall the band introduced each other to their material for the first time and came away a week later with The Oddfellows’ Hall.
To celebrate the band will hit the road this November and December with good friends Cool Sounds - also releasing a new record of their own, Cactus Country - along for the ride.