Australian indie-rockers The Rions are heading back to the UK for their latest tour, bringing their infectious energy across the pond once again. The band’s debut album, Everything Every Single Day, recently hit number one on the Australian Albums Chart and has been nominated for Album of the Year by Triple J, marking a huge milestone for the four-piece.
The Rions are fast becoming one of Australia’s most exciting young exports. I caught up with Noah Blockley (vocals, bass) and Harley Wilson (guitar) ahead of their Bournemouth show to chat about life on the road, the growing issue of rising concert ticket prices, and our mutual love for Sam Fender and The 1975.
So if someone’s never seen you live before, what should they expect? What kind of energy are they walking into, and what are they going to go away thinking?
Noah: “I guess it depends on how many shows we’ve done that week! But no, we always try and keep the energy up. We’ve been mates for so long, so the chemistry on stage usually works pretty well. And we just have a whole lot of fun. Most of the songs on this tour will be pretty upbeat, so they’re going to be fun to dance to, and it should be exciting.“
That energy does come across on everything I’ve seen online so far. I haven’t caught you live yet, but fingers crossed soon. I can imagine the live shows are wild. I wondered if the UK audiences react differently to certain songs than your fans back in Australia?
Noah: “Yeah, it would be interesting to see because we’ve only been over here once and done the tour. And we didn’t have a lot of the songs that are on the set list. “
Harley: “Time will tell!”
And when you do get a breather, how do you spend your downtime in between shows? Have you got a list of sites you want to see? Anything you want to explore on this side of the world?
Noah: “Yeah, I think it’s always just cool to see the local areas.”
Harley: “You’re keen to be in Manchester again.”
Noah: “Yeah, always keen to be in Manchester.”
Harley: “Yeah, I’m actually keen as well, I really enjoyed Manchester the first time we went so it’ll be cool to go back. And then Amsterdam at the end of the tour, one of the coolest places I’ve been in the world so far, so it’ll be really nice to revisit Amsterdam a couple of days off there.”
Manchester’s great, isn’t it, all the music culture and history and everything, it’s so fascinating. Have you been to Liverpool yet?
Harley: “No, but I really want to because I want to go see the Cavern bar, whatever it’s called, The Beatles venue.”
Cavern Club! Liverpool is not too far from Manchester, so if you can nip over, I’d recommend it. I love it there.
Noah: “We’re super close to Abbey Road at the moment. Yeah, we should be there at some point.”
Have you recreated the album cover yet?
Noah: “No! We’re like a 15-minute walk away.”
There’s still time!
You’ve been together since your school days – how has that long friendship shaped your chemistry and your music and your connection when you’re touring? Because it’s not the glam lifestyle that people sometimes think it might be. So when you’ve got those down days and low moods and things, how do you pick each other up and support each other?
Harley: “I think the whole job and the music is actually kind of more as a result of the friendship to begin with, not the other way around. So… Yeah, we’ve all been best friends since we were like 12 years old and already hanging out every day, years before we ever toured. So by the time that kind of started, it was, you know, no issues were spending a lot of time together because we know how to do that and we know how to balance and give each other space. So, yeah, no, it’s absolutely fine, and it shapes it in a way where it just never feels like we’re working at all. It’s just literally a holiday where you GET to play shows in the new places you get to visit for the first time. So it’s like everything fun about an actual holiday except that we, I’m not going to say we make any money because it’s so expensive to be here, but it’s fun to TRY and make money.”
It is beautiful. Congratulations on not just everything you’re achieving, but sticking together as well. That’s definitely something super special.
Thinking back, was there a band or an artist that you saw live when you were younger that you thought, ‘Yeah, I want to do that’?
Noah: “I think originally it was Lime Cordiale, because that was one of those bands that we saw at the Enmore Theatre, the first ever band that we watched live as a band.”
Harley: “It’s interesting though, I think that it was kind of a long time before we ever saw anyone live that we had already had that impression of, you know, it’s achievable, and we want to do it. And that was from, funnily enough, The Beatles. Watching the documentaries and hearing about their story and how they were young when they started, and all this stuff. And we were thinking like, well, we see ourselves in them, although we’re Australian and not Scousers. And then it wasn’t until years later that we saw bands like Lime Cordiale, these guys are actually from the same town as us, therefore, it’s even more within our reach. It realistically inspired us, but The Beatles inspired us in a dream kind of way.”
Noah: “Yeah, we’ve also been lucky to kind of see a lot of live music since we’ve been a band. So notably, The 1975 and Sam Fender were two shows that we were like, yeah, this is incredible.”
I thought of The 1975, funnily enough, they’re one of my favourites too, but talking about you guys being mates from school, and it being the original line-up, you’re still so close. It’s similar to their story and look at their journey, headlining Glastonbury just this year and everything..
Noah: “Also, Coldplay, we went to a Coldplay show, which was awesome.”
Yeah, they sold out 10 nights at Wembley Stadium, 80,000 capacity, it’s insane. And again, they’ve been going like 20 odd years, haven’t they? They just seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I like that we seem to have passed the ‘it’s not cool to like Coldplay’. I don’t know what happened there. I was never part of that group!
Harley: “Hating bangers for no reason!”
Yeah. Same with Nickelback, actually. What’s going on? Why are we told to hate Nickelback?
Harley: “Well, I don’t know. I think there are just so many memes about Nickelback. I think it’s just the uniqueness of how he sings in the era of the opposite of timeless, you know what I mean?”
Speaking of timeless – smooth – your cover of Paramore’s Ain’t It Fun for Triple J’s Like A Virgin is incredible and we’re all lapping it up, both sides of the world. How did you decide on that song, and were there any other strong contenders that nearly made it?
Harley: “Yeah, probably not as strong as that song. Like we had contenders, but they all fell short in one or two categories. We felt like we had a few boxes to tick, that being, enough pace and it would be delivered well live, and it allows Noah to show off his own vocal range and all these things. I think Ain’t It Fun just kind of sat at the top of the pack of the only one that kind of did it all, and then after we realised we could translate it well in our own style, it was pretty solidified.”
Am I allowed to know any other close calls?
Harley: “Yeah, one of the first ones was Time to Pretend by MGMT, which is one of our favourite songs of all time, but the issue is that Noah and the singer of MGMT are very different styles, and Noah can do a lot more than that song would have allowed him to do. Though it sounded good, it was just like… I wouldn’t want to change anything because it’s perfect the way it is. Not that Paramore isn’t..”
Noah: “I love that I never realised how repetitive that song was until we covered it. And I was like, yeah, this really does repeat itself. So that was one other thing that I kind of went… Yeah, it’s a little bit like… doesn’t go anywhere for us, but at the same time it’s an amazing song, so it doesn’t need to for MGMT.”
Harley: “I think it’s as simple as it was to just change the key of Paramore; it kind of opened up a lot of possibilities”
How long do you get from knowing you’re going to be doing a cover for Triple J, and how long do you have for that process of trying out songs and then confirming what you’re going to go for?
Noah: “We actually had a while. I think we had a couple of months. But it was one of those things that, up until it got really close, we were doing so much stuff at the time. We were super busy. So, like, now and then we’d go, ‘Oh, we’ve got to think about our Like A Version’ and so, we actually really committed to it about two months before and really solidified something.”
If you could choose an artist to do a cover of one of your songs, who would you love to hear have their take?
Noah:”You know what, Sam Fender. I’d love to hear Sam Fender do a Rion’s song because I feel like he’d just make it so much cooler.”
And you may have just answered it, but I was going to ask if you could collaborate with any UK artist whilst you were over this side of the world, who would it be?
Noah: “I could go on for ages. Olivia Dean would be so sick. I’d love to sing with Olivia Dean. She’s incredible. Sam Fender, The 1975, Oh, wow.”
Harley: “Paul McCartney, if he’s available. Yeah, I’m sure he’s around. Yeah, he’s probably not far from where we are.”
Noah: “Harry Styles. That’ll be sick.”
He’s one of those where I was just looking around Allianz Stadium in Sydney, and I just thought ‘we’re all here for one human’ it’s insane.
Noah: “It’s so crazy to think even when we play, obviously we’re not doing Allianz Stadium, but I was saying this recently, it’s so strange that all these people are here. Even the security guards were working that day. They’re working a Rion’s show. Merch desk people, just selling Rions merch, people working at the bar, the fans. Like, there are so many people there, all because we’re playing there.”
Harley: “And I always think about this, not in our own shows, but when there are massive bands like Coldplay, when we catch the bus or something in from where we live into the city and just see, like, busloads and trainloads of people all converging in the same place from all around the city, it just blows my mind to think about how much money a massive artist makes for businesses all throughout the city by attracting all these people, because the people need to eat and drink and catch like public transport. “
“To think that we do a similar thing, on a much smaller scale, but to think that there’s one bus coming in somewhere to a city that might have three people on it coming to a Rion’s show. Yeah. Still bizarre.”
As we’re chatting on it, what are your thoughts on ticket prices recently? Because I don’t know if it’s the same in Australia. I think it is from what I’ve seen, but it’s just getting out of hand, isn’t it?
Harley: “Oh boy. It is. Sometimes I feel for the artists. I’d never know because I don’t know them personally, but I have to assume that it’s not up to them how expensive their thing is and that the real issue is how much money it might cost to hire the venue and hire everyone that’s working there. It’s just ridiculous.”
“Like, even Sam Fender, for example, we saw him a couple of years ago, and I think I remember the tickets being like $80 or something. And at the time, I was like, That’s so much money for me, but I’ll buy it because I love him. Now they’re like $150 at least. It makes sense because he’s bigger now, but when we’re pricing our tickets, we just try to keep it as low as we can. “
“I like to keep in mind that people are already needing to pay for a million things in their lives, and to afford to go enjoy a show for an hour, it’s like they have to sacrifice dinner for a week. It’s mad, isn’t it?”
It’s everything you mentioned before as well, travel and maybe getting accommodation – it all adds up. It’s a real shame because it’s such a joyous thing that artists are doing to bring these people together, and the prices are such a dampener. We keep mentioning Sam Fender, but he’s doing good things, isn’t he? He’s doing that levy of £1 for every ticket sale going to support the independent music venues.
Harley
Didn’t he raise like a million dollars or something?
Yeah, Coldplay have done the same. It’s amazing.
Harley
Legends.
I know George Kingman as well, who’s supporting you on your Bournemouth date. He’s a lovely guy, so thanks for supporting him.
Noah: “I’m really excited to hear some of the artists that are supporting us and opening our shows. I can’t even fathom someone opening a show for us in a different country. I feel like it should be the other way around in every city. But yeah, super excited to hear them.”
Thanks to Noah and Harley of The Rions for such a fun and thoughtful chat. With their UK tour kicking off in Bournemouth this Friday and stops in cities including Manchester and Amsterdam, fans can expect the same uplifting energy and tight-knit chemistry that’s made them one of Australia’s most talked about bands. Whether you’ve been following them since their early singles or you’re discovering them for the first time, this tour promises to be the perfect introduction to The Rions’ world – upbeat, heartfelt and impossible not to dance to.
THE RIONS 2025 LIVE DATES
Tickets on sale now here: https://www.therions.com/tour
