The Go Set

Not many bands survive 20 years. Fewer still mark the occasion by delivering one of their greatest albums.

Twenty years down the line and The Go Set still sound as fierce, as vital, as the first day they set foot on a stage.

The Geelong-based band has always squeezed out the sparks from the place where rock'n'roll collides with the spirit of Celtic folk. Now they bring all those forces together in the studio for an album that celebrates those years together, their 8th studio set, ' The Warriors Beneath Us', which will be released on March 17 via FOUR FOUR / ABC Music.

Kicking off the album is ' West Into the Sun', a tale of young men sent to colonial wars. "Young men fight and young men fall", it's a signature The Go Set style song with thumping beats and a rousing chorus, the first taste of new music from this beloved Australian band in nearly 3 years. The song features the bagpipes that have always been part of The Go Set story, and the result is a soaring rock tune that sits somewhere between punk-folk and the anthems of Midnight Oil.

The band's singer and chief songwriter, Justin Keenan, who has been there every step of the way, for every broken-down van and sweaty night of glory, knows all about that.

"We have done it the hard way," Keenan says. "I don't know a band that has slept on as many floors as we have. We have done 1500 shows and played in 27 or 28 different countries, and you are always building from scratch every night when you do that."

But as bands often discover, the struggle is what makes the greatness too.

For a band that always paid its way on the strength of their live performances, a global pandemic presented a different kind of hurdle. It was also the making of The Warriors Beneath Us.

Keenan says: "We weren't playing live so revenue was down but during Covid we discovered we could record ourselves at home without being on the clock in a big studio.

"An idea for a song would come from me and we would send it around to our home studios. We could add, subtract, layer, and that became the creative process. That was new for us. We didn't have a budget but we had all the time we needed to make the record we wanted."

And it sounds just like The Go Set, with all the energy they create whenever they are in a room together.

To mark the release of the album, the band will hit the road for the first time in 3 years, something Keenan and his bandmates are more than ready for. He explains, "It's exciting to be reconnecting with people and getting out on the road. We've had limited opportunities over the last couple of years and we're really excited about sharing the new material at these shows. It was something I think we may have taken for granted a while back, but a couple of years of lockdowns and unprecedented difficulty has actually made us realise how much we truly appreciate each other, playing live, and sharing our music with people around the world".