Track By Track: Nat Vazer Goes Deep on 'Strange Adrenaline'

Melbourne/Naarm-based indie rock artist Nat Vazer has released her second LP, Strange Adrenaline, the follow-up to 2020’s Is This Offensive and Loud? Vazer will be playing a bunch of in-stores around the country to coincide with the album’s release – find all the details below. Vazer has given us a detailed breakdown of the album’s ten tracks, reflecting on trauma, new experiences, habitual escapism and grappling with one’s place in the world.

Nat Vazer: Strange Adrenaline

1. Rumours

Nat Vazer: ‘Rumours’ paints a picture of recurring trauma. It’s like a creature that was born in innocence but keeps re-manifesting throughout your life in different ways. In my head, the song is set in the dark and seedy backstreets of Hollywood, like something out of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood – a place where nothing is what it seems and there’s a second landscape that lives beneath all the nice facades and beautiful people.

2. Strange Adrenaline

Nat: The phrase “strange adrenaline” jumped out at me late one night while reading a Patti Smith book. I thought it captured that feeling you get when you’re on the brink of something new and terrifying but extraordinary. The song is about vision, guts and pursuit of the unknown.

3. Addicted to Misery

Nat: ‘Addicted to Misery’ is a portrait of a time of feeling low, explored through a conversational journey. I like the running guitar line because it reminds me of the feeling of going somewhere and escaping something at the same time, like when you arrive at a new place or exciting destination but you immediately start to mentally escape – a bad habit of mine.

4. Maniac

Nat: People tell me I’m a crazy driver. It’s probably true. That was the early inspo for ‘Maniac’, alongside the notion of blindly trusting someone you love to be there and not lose control.

This was the first song I wrote on the album. It was originally written on guitar but playing it on piano opened up new territory for me. I’ve been playing piano since I was five – strict Asian parents – but had never explored songwriting on the piano before, so it was cool to discover new freedom in an old familiar instrument. That kind of dominoed into a few more piano songs on the record, which has been really fun to explore.

5. 2am Diner

Nat: ‘2am Diner’ is a story about two lovers at a late-night diner and those who are ruled by emotion. It’s violent, intimate and unpredictable, speeding through the rain and taking what you want. It’s where the lonely people go to feel the dizziness of freedom.

6. Born

Naz: ‘Born’ is about recognising the temporary state of everything around you, and a reminder of the small chances you get to take in your life. I remember writing this shortly after reading a book called Lennon Remembers, a collection of Rolling Stone interviews with John Lennon over many years. The song kind of poured out of me right after reading the book, and then out of nowhere I started crying like a little kid again and I still don’t know why.

Feeling “Like a stranger in the city I was born” is how I’ve felt most of my life, not really fitting in anywhere. Growing up in a broken family and moving around a lot, I never really felt a deep connection to a specific home or culture. I think a lot of people are in a similar boat and probably know that feeling of forever grappling with your place in the world.

7. Like A Burning Violin

Nat: You just woke up. You’re too late. The places we grew up in are not what they used to be. The planet is dying. The pace of everything is so fast now, we’re spinning out of control and there’s no time to enjoy the last of it.

8. Wilson’s Prom

Nat: The first poem that really stuck with me in high school literature was this classic by Robert Frost called ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’. It’s written in the voice of a person who walks home one night, passing through these amazing woods that are filling up with snow. And even though they’re so enchanted by this scene, they can’t stop for a minute to soak it in – they start to worry about all the places they’ve got to be, promises made to friends and all the things they need to get done. They keep moving on and on and on.

That ending really disturbed me – how we can be swept up in this hurried flow of time and never get to do the things that we owe to ourselves. So, the song kind of revolves around this idea of obligations versus desires.

‘Wilsons Prom’ is short for Wilsons Promontory National Park, a famous coastal wilderness park on the southeast peninsula of Australia. It’s where my dad used to take me and my brother whenever our family was in strife, so it reminds me of a temporary place of relief, like the woods in Frost’s poem.

9. Fading from the Party

Nat: ‘Fading from the Party’ is a vignette about not loving yourself enough to let yourself be loved by somebody else. It’s about fear of freedom and finding your way back to your inner child.

10. All That’s Left is Love

Nat: ‘All That’s Left is Love’ is about the messiness of living and loving. The lyrics, “Passing through a field of stars,” made me think of a kids’ lullaby, like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. I scribbled down “Ever wonder what you are” because it reminded me of how we’re all made of the same thing, searching for the same things.

‘All That’s Left is Love’ is the last song on the album and the last track I recorded at Sauna Studios. The very second the recording was completed, I got a text message saying that my uncle had passed away. He was the person who introduced me to The Beatles and funnily enough, the song ‘All You Need Is Love’.

Nat Vazer’s Strange Adrenaline is out now – stream and purchase here