New Zealand band Mild Orange share new singles "What's Your Fire?" and "Hollywood Dreams", taking from upcoming third album, 'Looking For Space', and announce US dates coming up in early 2022.
Formed in 2018, Mild Orange are made up of childhood mates, frontman Josh Mehrtens and lead guitarist Josh Reid, with bassist Tom Kelk and drummer Jack Ferguson. Their internet-cult following has reached fans from Cairo to Cape Town, Lima to LA, Seoul to Sydney, London to Ulanbutar giving them close to 50 million YouTube views alone. Together they create energetic, summer-bummer psychedelic rock complete with compelling lyrics and are known for their relaxed and buoyant sound. Their music has racked up close to 50 million+ YouTube views combined and on Spotify millions of streams including 16 million+ alone for their breakout single, ‘Some Feeling.'
Today the band is sharing these two songs,m "What's Your Fire?" and "Hollywood Dreams" along the announcement of US dates.
"We recognise that everybody's 'fire' is going to be different, so we would like to leave this song up to personal interpretation, whether that 'fire' be political, societal or one's personal motivations.
For me, 'What's Your Fire?' came from a time in my life where I was trying to figure out who I am, or who the person I want to be is. It asks oneself some intense questions, though hopefully helps oneself find light in the idea that there is always something that you can do to improve yourself or
the world around you - no matter how big or small.
It's when we ask ourselves these questions that we consider a potential answer.
After spending two albums carefully organising the framed photos and applying an even layer of paint, Mild Orange felt the urge to tear apart the four walls that defined their bedroom pop sound, capturing the wilderness that lay beyond. And rather than be deterred from that goal by a pandemic and lockdown that left the New Zealanders stuck on their island, Mild Orange used that time to envision a new world. “Colourise”, the first track off the quartet’s fittingly titled third album, Looking For Space (due February 11th 2022 via AWAL), feels like the gate to the land of Oz, a portal behind which hypercolour and fantasy unfolds.
We have been playing it as an encore at our concerts and festivals in NZ for over a year now, and since then, it has been a highlight of our live sets with it always being the main takeaway from the set when we talk to fans after the show."
That collaborative vigour and childlike imagination should come as no surprise for a band in which two of the members didn’t even realise they’d once been childhood friends. Halfway through recording Mild Orange’s debut album, Reid told his mum about how he’d been working on a new project with a guy named Josh Mehrtens. Her response: dusting off some old photo albums.
“We had been best friends at ages three or four years old, but then we both moved to different towns,”
Reid explains.
“My mum had these photos of us playing together when we were kids, and we had no idea that we even knew each other.”
That synchronicity powers the majestic heights of “The Time Of Our Lives”, a rippling track that finds Mild Orange globetrotting via song, even when they’re not able to physically. Opening on a Radiohead drum machine glitch and expanding to a dizzying cloud of neon and fog, the track is inspired by Mehrtens’ memories of skateboarding throughout Japan love of adventures. When it came time to put together a video for the track, Mehrtens wanted to interweave their new kinetic sound with a renewed physical expression--and immediately connected with a video of pro skater Kento Yoshioko.
MILD ORANGE TOUR DATES 2/16 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right 2/18 – Toronto, ON – Baby G 2/19 – Chicago, IL – Schubas 2/23 – Oakland, CA – Starline 2/24 – Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy 2/26 – San Diego, CA – Soda Bar