Waterparks’ Awsten Knight: “I wanted to make Greatest Hits sound more grand and expensive, and just massive…”

Waterparks
(Image credit: Jawn Rocha)

After a century-plus of music’s evolution, the concept of ‘originality’ has started to feel obsolete. If a sound exists, or has the potential to, trust that some agile producer has already found a way to make it bop in 4/4. In the 21st century, innovation is less about what you can invent than what you can do with the elements at your disposal. In recent years, we’ve seen death metal with horn sections, electronic ska, even classic rock written by artificial intelligence. Sometimes I wonder how John Lennon would’ve responded to dubstep.

The point is: genuinely anything is possible. And that’s the core ethos on which Texan pop-punk outfit Waterparks is built. Eschewing the typical monochrome garb and reliance on themes of angst and anxiety, the trio embrace eccentricity with exhilarating aplomb – both in visual and sonic aesthetics. There are hallmarks each Waterparks album must adhere to – plenty of sass, swagger and singalong-suitable hooks – but the filters through which they’ll spin those are powerfully polychromatic; trap beats, guitar solos, ballad-esque piano runs, breakdowns, bass drops – so long as it suits the tune, they’ll find a place for it.

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Ellie Robinson
Editor-at-Large, Australian Guitar Magazine

Ellie Robinson is an Australian writer, editor and dog enthusiast with a keen ear for pop-rock and a keen tongue for actual Pop Rocks. Her bylines include music rag staples like NME, BLUNT, Mixdown and, of course, Australian Guitar (where she also serves as Editor-at-Large), but also less expected fare like TV Soap and Snowboarding Australia. Her go-to guitar is a Fender Player Tele, which, controversially, she only picked up after she'd joined the team at Australian Guitar. Before then, Ellie was a keyboardist – thankfully, the AG crew helped her see the light…