MAX AURORA & THE SOUTHERN LIGHTS weave nostalgia with warmth on debut single ‘HOW I MISSED HOME’

Press Shot: Jackson Hayat

Perfect for fans of City and Colour, The Beths and Middle Kids, Max Aurora & The Southern Lights demonstrate a natural charisma and warmth on the track. ‘How I Missed Home’, laid down at Marigold Recordings with Jon Grace (Bakers Eddy, Dear Seattle), was inspired by Dutch sailor Laura Dekker, who was one of the youngest people to sail around the world in 2012.

With ‘How I Missed Home’, Max Aurora & The Southern Lights present a bittersweet and nostalgic moment, imagining Dekker’s perspective through the lyrics.

“‘How I Missed Home’ is euphoric, yet bittersweet indie rock, with hints of mid-2000s pop-punk. …The swelling riffs mimic the waves, as the song tells the story of a point in her trip where Laura is longing to divert from her planned path, and return to Aotearoa/New Zealand, the home her family left when she was very young.”
MAX AURORA

Written during Melbourne’s extended period of lockdown, the desire to escape was a real one during the Max Aurora creative process.

“Longing for escapism during lockdown in a particularly stressful sharehouse, I found this documentary so inspiring that I wrote the song immediately after watching it. The writing process began with hearing the riff in my head and then tuning the low E string of the guitar up a semitone to F to create the riff. It’s kind of a weird thing to do, but it worked very well for this song. The rest felt like a breeze to write, because I got so easily swept up in the feeling of the song, of missing home, having not seen my mum (who lives in Canberra) for a while, because of lockdown.”
MAX AURORA