Club Halifax Embrace the Beautiful Mess of Being Human

Gundungurra and Eora (Blue Mountains Region and Sydney) trio Club Halifax have released their hotly anticipated debut album, Bugs.

Following 2024 EPs A Reflection and BRAIN MATTER and 2025's To The Core, Club Halifax's debut is a 10-track collection of songs channelling indie rock, Midwest emo and nostalgic landscapes anchored by vocalist Bree Greasley's confessional lyrics and Cameron Browning (drums) and Cameron Hopcroft's (guitar) stylish melodies.

Keen to find out more about what went into the making of Bugs, The Note spoke with Greasley about the record, the significance of the album's cover artwork, the influence of Coldplay and her favourite touring memories.

For those unfamiliar with Club Halifax, tell us a little about how you got started and what you're all about. 

We got started because Cam (drums), Hop (guitar) and I were already playing music together in another project. It was really fun, but then it just kinda fizzled out. A year or two later, Cam and I happened to run into each other in Woollies. I think we were both missing music quite a lot and wanted to play again, so we said, "Fuck it, why don't we do that?". We basically formed in a supermarket aisle.

Community and bringing people together is something super special to us, especially with live shows. When you go to a concert and you really feel it, you walk out thinking, "Holy shit, I've just had the best time". There's a sense of nostalgia that comes with live gigs, especially the really impactful ones, and that's something we aim for. 

The relationships we make with other musicians and people in the community are important too, especially when we travel to different places. That connection with people is a big part of what we do. It's also about us having fun. It's been hard, though. You really have to foster the friendships and connections you make, and it's not all fun. But putting effort into those relationships, through being a band and with each other, is what makes it worthwhile.

If you had to describe your sound in three words, what would they be?

Nostalgic, cathartic, frisson. 

You've just released your debut album, Bugs. How excited are you to have the record out in the world for people to hear? 

We're stoked it's out in the world. Making it felt like a core memory. I was super, super excited, and I cried when I listened to it after it came out. I don't usually cry when we release stuff, but this one was different. When we were recording, we were immersed in nature and being really real with each other. 

As excited as we are, we're all feeling a little bit of sadness too, a kind of melancholic nostalgia. It's a project we've held onto so tightly and reminisced on, and now we're letting it go. That's definitely freeing, but it's a hard feeling to explain. It's not quite bittersweet, but it's close.

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The cover of the album features a small entomology display of bugs that reflects the title. Is there a connection between bugs and the songs on the album?

I love this question. Literally speaking, 'Bugs' is the title track. I'd been sitting outside feeling anxious and the muse visited me. I was able to write this whole story really fluently, and it's so special when that happens. Around the same week, I went to see Cam, and he'd written something. We put them together and they matched up perfectly. Most of the time you have to work for songs, and that's part of the craft and part of why you love it, but this one just came together. It felt more like a piece of art. It's meant to make you feel a bit anxious, haunted and uneasy, without you knowing it's coming.

The opening line is "It’s on me like insects at night, guided by my phone light", and I really love that image. Where I was living at the time, we had no fly screen, so as soon as I was on my phone late at night, I was getting smashed by bugs. It's like anxiety that’s constantly present. Are you going to escape or not? The bugs represent that.

In a broader sense, the album is more of a soundtrack than a concept album. It's a collection, like lots of different bugs. They're all so different, which reflects the songs on the album. Everything is interconnected but has its own personality. It really feels like a collection.

Talking about the band's influences, you posted a slide to Instagram with what you were listening to during the creation of Bugs, and it's a really diverse range of artists. One album highlighted is Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head. It's a fantastic record, but since Coldplay have become the butt of many jokes, it's been severely underrated. What is it about that album that captures your attention? 

To be honest, I only discovered that album later. I started with Viva la Vida and only went back to A Rush of Blood to the Head in bits and pieces. But the more I listen to it, the more I hear us, and where we come from, especially in the way Cam writes. It's the emotion in it that I can't quite describe, and that's exactly what we wanted. It's such a blend of different emotions, and it’s a hard one to put into words.

Cam adds: I didn't really listen to music with intent until late high school. I overheard a couple of classmates listening to Coldplay, and I don't know if it was the timing or whatever was going on for me at that point, but something triggered an emotional response I'd never really gotten from music before. A Rush of Blood to the Head became the first CD I ever bought. I did a deep dive into Coldplay and got hooked on those first three albums, and that one most of all. A lot of it has influenced how I write music, in the way the emotion drives the songs on Bugs.

When it came to creating Bugs, how did the band go about writing and recording the release? Is it a collaborative approach amongst the three of you? 

Cam and I do a lot of the structure and put a lot of the songs together, but they almost all start out nearly as folk songs. Occasionally Cam sends me a demo that’s fully formed, but most start out super raw. Then Hoppy comes in and adds so much of his own personality to what we've both done. It's so him, and it's so important to the sound. His guitar parts are so good, they bring so much life to the songs. He's also so particular about the music he likes and doesn't like that we can never pick how he's going to shift and change a song.

When we went into the album process, we worked with a producer (Oliver Ashby), which we'd never really done before. We went in knowing that even though some of the songs were fully fleshed out, we were going to be changing them, sacrificing certain things and compromising on others. When we disagreed, finding the middle ground always turned up something way more interesting than either option alone. It made us stop, get more creative and find new ways of communicating what we wanted through the music. We had a blanket rule: if someone didn't like something, we changed it until we all liked it. Being in a space where we were all writing together was so special, and I think it helped us make the record we made.

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Every album tends to have a song that takes on a life of its own. Was there a particular track on Bugs that surprised you, challenged you or became a favourite during the recording process?

I like this question. 'Hyperfixate' definitely took on a life of its own, and we really had to work for that one. There were so many moments where I doubted the song, and Cam really fought for it. He was so annoying about it, and I'm glad. It was hard to wrangle. It was really pop punk, with Blink-182 vibes, and that's not a path we wanted to go down. We were adding different elements, pulling things apart, deconstructing the song and putting it back together, and solving the puzzle. It was nice to just keep going, and now it's one of my favourites on the album. Listening to it makes me proud that we stuck with it. 

'Bee Sting' was similar. It started out as a folk-pop song on an acoustic guitar, and to be honest, I didn't think anything would come of it. It now has the exact feeling I thought it could have, but it became a lot more than I ever imagined, and that’s just collaboration. It has one of the coolest drum rhythms I've ever heard. It was a really cool moment to see where it would go, because I had no idea.

Those are the two for me. 'Hyperfixate' in particular had a mind of its own. 

What do you hope listeners take away from Bugs? Is there a particular feeling or idea you wanted the album to leave them with?

I hope people feel seen. A lot of it is about communication. Communicating with words can be difficult for me, and I think we're all the same in the band. The best way we tell people things is through the music. I can get quite black and white in my thinking, which I think is part of being autistic and having different mental health things pop up.

For me, the album is a reminder that you can't have the good without the bad. It's all rolled in together, and that's what makes life exciting and an adventure. It's important to have all of it and to feel and experience your emotions. I imagine the album like the little balls in Inside Out, where all the emotions blend together. That's the best way I can visualise that you can feel many things at once, because for a long time I didn't understand that concept. This album has taught me a lot, and I hope it sits with other people in a way that helps them and makes them feel connected.

The other part is the messiness of being an actual person. I have a complex about perfectionism, but all of the songs are about that humanness and mess, celebrating feeling like a human instead of trying to be perfect. In your late 20s especially, there's so much pressure to have everything figured out, not be messy, be onto it and follow the social rules. It's terrifying not to have it figured out, and a lot of the songs on the album touch on that fear. But it's totally okay to not have your shit sorted. I just hope other people in that spot feel okay about it too, because I used to believe you really needed to have it all together. 

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Club Halifax are just about to hit the road in support of Bugs. Is there one song you are keen to play for fans from the new album, or are you just stoked to be performing on stage?

We're very excited to be performing. That's the dream for us, and one of my favourite parts of making music is singing it, coming together, having fun, entertaining and meeting new people. Getting to go to different states and places we've never been before is super exciting, and the fact that we get to tour our music is a big part of that.

I'm excited to play all of the new songs, but I'm especially keen to play 'Bugs'. We've played it before, but being able to play it where it sits with the rest of the tracks on the album live will feel amazing.

What can fans expect from your upcoming run of shows?

We've got some incredible bands and artists supporting us, and they’re some of our favourite artists, so being able to play with them and be surrounded by that community is amazing. We're really trying to create a world with these shows.

Performing is our favourite place to be. We're really proud of our live shows and how much energy we put into them, so expect lots of energy. We're going to put our heart into every single show we play.

People can also expect DIY merch, and we'll be taking a bug from the album art to each show to give away. I think it's cool that the album art won't exist anymore, but it will live on in a different form with a different person.

What have been some of your standout live moments so far, and has anything happened onstage that's changed the way you approach performing?

Our last show was a standout for us. We were having fun and connecting. It's like being inside a forcefield that you create, and then you get to extend it to everybody else and invite them in, like Violet from The Incredibles. That felt super special. You feed off the people there, but it's also [about] how much life and energy we can generate together as a band and then extend to the crowd.

Sometimes it can be hard when people are staring at you. Being autistic, I don't necessarily know what people's facial expressions mean, and that can be scary. But knowing that the people I care about are right beside me and we're making music together, everything is good. Now I'm just concentrating on having the best time I can and inviting others to have the best time they can, instead of worrying about how good I am or how I sound. I care about that stuff, but I try not to ruminate while I'm performing. I let go of it and really enjoy it.

With your debut now released, what’s next for Club Halifax?

I'm already planning next year. Cam and I don't really stop writing, so we've already written some songs, and we have an idea for a song next year that we’re really excited about. But we do want to sit in this album for a little while and really promote all the songs, because we love every single one of them. The whole point was to make an album full of singles. It’s a soundtrack, and every song is important. I want to sit in that, explain how the songs were made, communicate that and enjoy it at the same time.

Bugs is out now. Listen here. Catch Club Halifax performing across Australia from now until November. Tickets on sale here.