The Rions chase honesty and sonic exploration as their audience grows louder

They never set out to recreate a past era and yet The Rions have an instinctive spark that listeners keep circling back to. It's loose, guitar driven - a little rough around the edges in a way that cuts deeper than your standard trending indie pop. As their audience grows across Australia and New Zealand, the band is playing bigger rooms, and louder crowds, showcasing a shift from online numbers to #IRL fans.

At the centre of it sits a band that formed long before any industry attention showed up. Friendship came first. The music followed. Now, with a debut album under their belt, guitarist Harley Wilson speaks to the instincts behind their songwriting, and the drive to keep moving without losing what made them start.

Your music taps into the bright guitar tones and restless energy many people link with early 2010s indie. Which artists or records from that time shaped your sound as you started writing together?

Interesting you say that, it’s not something we hear very often, and to be honest, it’s not an era of music we consciously take a lot of inspiration from. But I will say that I grew up listening to a lot of MGMT via hearing it come out of my older brother's bedroom, so songs like Time To Pretend have always had a special place in my heart sonically I guess. 

There seems to be fresh interest in that era of indie again. Why do you think listeners are returning to that style right now?

I think the return indie sleeze, or at least aspects of it, is an inevitable response to the rise of pop music and pop stars again, in an age of hyper production and social media, there’s authenticity in the sloppyness of electric guitars and thrashy garage drums. 

You formed as teenagers after meeting at a school talent quest. How has the band’s dynamic changed as you’ve grown up and stepped into a larger stage?

We were actually all friends before the talent quest, I had known Asher since I was about 4 and Noah since I was 9, we already happened to take shape as a band and the one and only talent quest our high school ever put on came at the perfect time to give us something to strive towards, so as far as our dynamic, the stage has never played a part. We were best friends before there was any reason to truly believe we could call “playing instruments” a job. Our dynamic has just thickened over the years, having more and more opportunities or even ‘excuses’ to spend time with each other and be closer. It always goes that groups of friends in high school have to eventually fight against the different directions that life pulls everyone in, jobs, university etc. but we’ve been lucky enough to not only WANT to stay together as friends, but GET to.

Songs like “Night Light” helped introduce you to a wide audience through Triple J’s Unearthed High. What did that moment do for your confidence as a band?

By that point we already very much believed in ourselves, but I’d be lying if seeing such a huge result like winning that competition didn’t really boost morale, because at the end of the day it’s one thing to believe you can do it, and another to do it. So it was great timing with being close to graduating, and being in the middle of covid in terms of confidence for the future.

Your fanbase has grown fast across Australia and New Zealand. When you see crowds singing the songs back, what runs through your mind?

A lot of things, but one thought that is pretty consistent is that social media can only ever do so much in terms of being an indicator of how many people out there really love what you’re doing. When your in quiet periods, a lot of that reception is reduced to likes and comments, despite your better judgement, but on tour, seeing and hearing massive crowds sing the words back to you, that’s when you really think, wow, our music has traveled far and wide. It’s a very gracious feeling.

What does the songwriting process usually look like? 

I’ll usually start a song on my own and work shop for a while before I play it for Noah, Asher and Tom, and continue to build it from there, but it can look a million different ways. Sometimes we start it all together or we write something with our producer. 

Your debut album Everything Every Single Day suggests constant forward motion. What ideas or emotions sit at the heart of that record?

At the moment to me it’s acceptance, guilt, honesty and a bit of liberty. The album is about a lot of things that we’ve experienced, but underneath it all, we wanted to lean into what it means to be human, human and also young, but human all the same.

After the debut album and the upcoming tour, where do you want to take the band next?

Into deeper waters, we’re so excited by sonic exploration, and I think we have a lot to say. Without knowing a lot myself, that’s all I’ve got.