Premiere: Hayden Calnin and Harrison Storm unite for new single, Unfortunate Love

On their new collaborative single, two of Australian indie's best highlight each other's strengths.

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Piecing together defining names of Australia's more subtle, indie-folk-adjacent world, Hayden Calnin and Harrison Storm are somewhere close to the top. The former, previously based in Melbourne but now living regionally, has become an essential name in Australia's indie work, with his latest release, the 2019 EP A Life You Would Choose, building off a discography spanning almost decade now. The latter, meanwhile - raised in Victoria's beachside country - has had a similar trajectory, a string of singles and EPs ever since his debut in 2015 cementing his status as a go-to favourite for gentle, low-key indie.

Together, Hayden Calnin and Harrison Storm are representative of a somewhat overlooked section within Australia's live music world. They're both on the cusp of international break-outs (Calnin, for example, has his work stretched across soundtracks, while Storm has a major market growing in Europe) and back home, their audience is almost cult-like, something we've found for much of the his more collected indie world in Australia, and the other artists captured within this sound (who, for the most part, are all good friends and collaborators).

Today, however, their worlds come together. Premiering on Pilerats today ahead of its full release tomorrow, Unfortunate Love is a stirring collaboration between the two forces that highlight each other's strengths, showcasing the remarkability of both Hayden Calnin and Harrison Storm, but especially so when their worlds unite.

As expected, it hits the peaks of emotive indie, their voices occupying the limelight as they intertwine with one another above a gentle, stripped-back instrumental that underlays it, rich with the guitar work you'd expect from a collaboration between this pairing. Eventually, however, the song builds into a climactic peak, gripping with the emotive intensity that comes with cathartic release - something that both Calnin and Storm bring a lot of through their work.

"The song had existed for quite a while, but just as music," says Hayden Calnin on the single, his first since A Life You Would Choose last year. "I kept trying to find the vocal melody and words that would help surround it and bring it to life, but nothing seemed to feel right. I decided to bring in Harrison to try some vocal melody ideas and he immediately just hit the world I was looking for. Harrison had been going through a bunch of personal change in his life and as friends we have a way of trying to push each other to channel those thoughts into music. It can be pretty therapeutic at times, and I think that really comes out in this song both lyrically and melodically."

You can really feel that therapeutic release seep through Unfortunate Love's rich, intense crescendo, and it's well worth a listen. Dive into the track below with its official video, directed by Hayden Calnin, Harrison Storm and Ella Crotty amidst their Victorian home, where they have been living in isolation for much of the last month. Bring tissues, you'll probably need it.