Trophy Eyes: “We were doing something that made us really happy – that’s the epitome of success”

There’s a parallel universe where John Floreani is retraining in cyber. More specifically, he thought about going back to school and studying IT. There’s another where he’s gone travelling, and he’s mooching around, learning languages, meeting people – “Like Brad Pitt in Legends Of The Fall or something,” he jokes, “doing outrageous things like being a sailor, or a carpenter in Italy for a year or whatever.”

These are the things John might have found himself doing if Trophy Eyes had broken up. The cracks began to form in lockdown, starting when they parted with the manager they’d had on board since they formed in 2013. They self-managed for a while, but none of them felt they really had a managerial mindset. Throw in some of the world’s most rigidly enforced pandemic restrictions in their native Australia, keeping them in separate cities with no in-person contact, and things looked bleak. As the album cycle for 2018’s life-affirming, romantic third album The American Dream dragged into its third year, the Newcastle quartet – completed by bassist Jeremy Winchester, drummer Blake Caruso and guitarist Andrew Hallett (who has since been replaced by Josh Campiao) – were forced to admit Trophy Eyes no longer brough them joy. “It was really sad to think, but it was just causing us heartache, [seeing] 10 years of hard work evaporating in front of us.”

They decided the album they had begun writing in 2019, which would become Suicide And Sunshine, would be their way of signing off – “Our last chance to fulfill ourselves musically and artistically, to get some closure and do good by everyone and ourselves,” in John’s words. Progress was slow during the two years spent locked inside, and inspiration for the frontman was so far away that he quite literally had to manufacture it. He’d stand in the shower wearing a shower cap to mimic the sound of rain and walk home too close to the edge of the pavement so he could feel the air from the cars rushing by on his face. Things eased, however, as restrictions lifted and the band were able to decamp to Thailand, where they’d recorded all of their albums to date, alongside longtime producer Shane Edwards.

Something about being back into the same room in the slow-moving paradise of Thailand unlocked the feeling of magic they’d been lacking. It helped that the songs came to life in a particularly organic way, with the band tracking their parts live, an approach they hadn’t taken since their 2014 debut album Mend, Move On. “It reinvigorated everything, and it rearranged our perception of success,” says John. “Instead of it being a transactional thing, we were doing something that made us really happy – that’s the epitome of success. Once we heard some of the songs coming together, we were like, ‘Oh shit, we’d be insane not to [keep going].’”

Even if Suicide And Sunshine had been Trophy Eyes’ last album, it would have been a beautiful, accomplished ending. Though they’ve always delivered potent emotion, this time around, John’s stories cut deeper than ever, with a wider, more existential scope taking in all of the bittersweet symphony that’s life and its infinite capacity for wonder and joy, tragedy and horror.

John had in the back of his mind a photo, taken by Michael Collins, a command module pilot of Apollo 11, of a shuttle returning from the surface of the moon with the Earth behind it. “[It’s] a photo of everything that we know to have existed – every human story. I started to obsess over what a human life is, how many billions of people on that little blue planet that have lived and died that we don’t know about,” he explains. “How much love and pain and happiness and loss in all those millions of little moments? I started to imagine them as flashes of light. I really like to read about science and space and stuff like that as well, and the idea that everything is light, that really played into that.”

Suicide And Sunshine is fascinated, as much as John himself is, with time and memory, and the granular details of life that could mean nothing or everything. The concept comes alive in the likes of the wide-eyed Life In Slow Motion, with an expansive sound that feels like it could fold around you, which considers the twinkles of beauty amid the chaos of life – signs in number patterns, and the small things from a kind smile to a hug hello that make the everyday sing. There’s just as many flashes of light from John’s own life, such as in Blue-Eyed Boy, which tells the story of a friend who had fallen on black days in the depths of addiction, but whose titular blue eyes speak of a hidden resolve.

Meanwhile, People Like You sees John excavate his past, growing up poor in an area where most of his peers were much more affluent. “It wasn’t till later that I knew we were poor, not till I was in my early 20s,” he recalls. “I think the way I treat people is different [because of that]. A lot of people might disrespect someone because they’re homeless or dirty or they can’t afford things, and I feel like people talk to those people differently. Growing up poor makes you more aware of people’s stories.”

The album’s most agonising flash of light comes in the form of the song that gives it its title, Sean. The song details the day John found out his friend had died by suicide and its odd juxtapositions, like the weather being sunny, and summery Top 40 hits playing on the radio in the Uber he took to a gathering of Sean’s loved ones. Its most gut-wrenching detail, however, is the regret over last thing John had said to Sean while he was still alive: ‘You do this for attention / Or you’d have killed yourself by now.’

“I really didn’t want to write a song where people could feel sympathy for me, because that just makes me feel sick,” John says when asked why he chose to portray himself so unsparingly, even when it put him in an unsympathetic light. “I had to expose myself, because in my mind, that was how the story went. I’ve got no problem showing that side of myself because I think it’s a human thing. Everybody has that thing that they wish they didn’t do.”

At the end of it all, John’s grateful that Trophy Eyes made it here while remaining in tact. “My favourite thing in life is just to be moving,” he concludes. “If this lets me continue to move, I’ll be incredibly happy.”

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