Track x Track: Newport - Growing Pains

Emerging Boorloo-indie pop artist & producer guides us through the journey that is his impressive debut EP

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Image credit: Victoria Campelo

A few weeks after we premiered the music video for Newport’s single Get Back To This, the Perth-based indie pop chameleon on the rise has readied his debut EP, Growing Pains.

While not strictly a concept album, Growing Pains does plot a course through the full life cycle of a relationship, from the giddy highs of the honeymoon phase all the way through to the heartbreak that comes when things don’t work out - and everything in between.

Across seven cuts, Dylon Newport explores these themes through a number of genres and styles, fusing hip hop influenced beats with breezy, lofi indie pop flavours where mellow guitar lines sit alongside sparkling synths.

Newport explains “The EP was made whilst an entire relationship happened in my life. From start to end; there’s a hint of every part of it in this EP. Anyone who has experienced any stage of love will hopefully be able to resonate with a song or two or hopefully more…

This is a real coming of age chapter for me and the overall project. I feel like a completely different person now in comparison to the beginning of this EP.”

To celebrate the release of Growing Pains, Newport was kind enough to take us through it, track by track - have a listen and get to know:

Handmedowns

I wrote this song when I was in peak honeymoon phase with my partner. The idea for “you wear my handmedowns way better than I could” came from an actual conversation we’ve had many times. Whenever she would try on any of my handmedowns, I’d always jokingly say they looked better on me, so in a way this song is really just a confession. It’s me being completely honest. But not just about who wears my clothes better. It’s about my whole range of emotions and how I genuinely feel about the relationship. It was a moment of letting my walls down and being vulnerable enough to express that I “don’t ever think I could fall in love with another face or another name”. This song is like the first time saying I love you.

ukulele song

This is the first song I made in the relationship. Every time I listen to this track it gives me a rush of nostalgia. I think it perfectly reflects who I was at that time. Very naïve, excited and with a lot of love in my heart. The song was written on a ukulele that my mum had bought me for my birthday only a few days before, which I think is why I chose to talk about her in the song with the lyrics “might call up my mum and show her how proud I am”, and the song is about exactly that. Telling my mum how proud I am of myself not only about the relationships I have created but the life that I have built for myself. I'm really happy this song made it into the EP, it’s a personal favorite of mine.

notoveru.

I put a lot into 'notoveru’, I think it makes the track really potent, and I hope that transfers to everyone listening. I feel as though I learnt a lot about trusting the process with this one, because it was just a 30 second snippet for so long. Everyone, including me, had so many versions in their head of how the rest of it should be. I never thought I’d even have drums let alone an entire EDM outro, but I learnt that, in the end, the song will make itself into what it’s supposed to be rather than what you want it to. Come to think of it, even the first session with all its difficulties was really about trusting the process, because if I didn’t stick it out I wouldn’t have made one of my favourite songs to date. So, if you're reading, I beg you to trust the process. If something pulls you in and calls for you to manifest it. You owe it to yourself to see where it goes. Trust the process.

I wanted to play off the whole concept of film photos. When I talked to the team about this, view masters were brought up and I thought it would be sick to have the video look as though you were viewing film from a view master, hence the doubled-up videos. I also felt as though the outro takes you to a different place than the rest of the song so that is why I decided to have a photo burst there. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I think it sets a good tone for the new chapter that is Newport.

Get Back To This

I'm sure everyone has felt as though their past was better than where they are now, and that is definitely how I felt when I wrote this. At a glance, 'Get Back To This’ sounds like another love song but it's not just about a past relationship. It about an entire way that I used to live. An entire mindset that I used to have. I was really trying to get back to a better time of my life. This song is for anyone who feels like they are longing to go back in time and experience a part of their life again, anyone feeling like the perfect version of themselves is slipping away into the past.

Maybe I

This has to be the quickest written song on the EP with most of the lyrics written in the two hour session we had. I felt like I was a pimp when making this song, just puffing my chest and talking about how I don’t need anyone in my life. Although in reality I was totally head over heels for my girlfriend at the time, it felt nice to put on the persona for a song. If you ever feel like walking tall and talking your shit, ‘Maybe I’ is definitely the song for you.

cat & mice

‘cat & mice’ was the first song I made on the EP; I made it quite a substantially long time before any other song, and I never knew when or where to put it. So it had just been left in my hard drive collecting dust until I had finished making the rest of the EP and realized it was a perfect fit. The song is about fears of falling in love with someone. The possible deception, heartbreak, loss of self, etc.

I’m not sure what compelled me to write this song when I did, because I had no real feelings of this at that time, I hadn’t even met my partner, nor did I have any sort of relationship with anyone. It’s surreal how well it fits into feelings I have now and things that I have been through since. It’s almost as if my subconscious always knew what was going to happen and wrote it for future me (Present me now). For that reason alone, I felt it definitely needed to help tie up this EP.

Talk Slowly

‘Talk Slowly’ feels sonically different to everything else I’ve done so far. It is the epitome of ‘don’t overthink shit’. It’s mixed feelings of being in love with someone and also feeling heartbreak. The first verse is all about doing things together, and the second verse is written with slightly different wording to show that I am trying to relive moments without you. This is one of those songs that sounds like a feel good pop rock tune, but actually has a darker meaning behind it when you dive into the lyrics. I love this song so much, I put it on every time I get into the car, I’m so glad it's finally coming out and I can't wait to hear what people think about it.

- Newport, December 2023