EXCLUSIVE: Ocean Grove's Dale Tanner Shares His Fave Songs From 'Black Label' EP And 'ODDWORLD' Album

Last weekend the collective past, present and future of Melbourne Oddworld purveyors Ocean Grove converged for the first leg of an extremely special run of shows, with the band’s Odd Label headline run taking place in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Boasting the 2015 EP Black Label as well as the band's most recent album, 2024’s ODDWORLD, performed in full, the tour is also celebrating the group's full circle creative moment, with Ocean Grove joined each night by founding members Luke Holmes and Matthew Kopp, aka Running Touch, along with support courtesy of Diamond Construct and DREGG.

Releasing their sophomore EP Black Label a decade ago, Ocean Grove landed in the ARIA Top 50 while also garnering praise for the EP’s sharp innovation that would pave the way for their breakout 2017 debut full-length, The Rhapsody Tapes. And most recently unveiling album #4 last year with ODDWORLD, Ocean Grove dipped back into their roots and channeled their creative identity into a defining new era, reuniting with Holmes and Kopp returning to the foreground alongside Dale Tanner, Twiggy Hunter and Sam Bassal in the process. 

Praised by Metal On Tap for their carefully curated setlist and "turbulent energy, raw passion and genuine love for their fans" after the sold out Sydney show last weekend, with Australian Music Scene declaring of the Melbourne show, also the band's biggest headline show ever: "this wasn't just a setlist, it was a celebration". Ocean Grove's Odd Label tour will conclude this Friday 30 May in Adelaide, with the venue upgraded due to overwhelming demand (Adelaide fans, don't sleep on this final show!).

And just before Ocean Grove returned to home soil, recently on the road in North America supporting Thornhill, vocalist Dale Tanner joined The Soundcheck's Tiana Speter live over Zoom while taking in a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field to unpack some of his own personal favourite songs from both Black Label and ODDWORLD:

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DALE TANNER'S FAVE SONGS FROM BLACK LABEL EP (2015):

1. B.L.U.D

My first favourite song from Black Label would have to be B.L.U.D. And it’s funny actually, one of the biggest reasons for that just literally walked past me, it almost gives me goosebumps! I’m in Chicago as we speak watching a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. We’re touring in the States at the moment with Thornhill, and Jacob [Charlton] and Ethan [McCann] just walked past me and we gave each other a nod on the way to get a hot dog or a beer. And it’s funny because previously I was made aware that these boys grew up coming to Ocean Grove shows - and they actually covered B.L.U.D for their school music competition, the equivalent of Red Faces or talent show, that sort of thing. And it’s kind of amazing that here we are after all these years, we’re here together on the other side of the world and we’ve been brought together with a united respect for one another. I love their music and I really appreciate what they’re doing. I've watched their show every night on this tour so far and just thought: wow, what an incredible band. I absolutely love their music! And I think the fact that they grew up coming to Ocean Grove shows and covering a song like B.L.U.D, we’re talking a decade ago…this is a beautiful thing! I’ve heard that song performed now during soundcheck a few times, and when I hear it I’m like: no wonder people are asking for that all the time when we play live. People want to hear B.L.U.D! That song is a fucking banger, so that one definitely has to be on this list. Sam [Bassal] actually wrote this song, we were on the way to his house and he was worried if he didn’t have anything written that he was going to be in trouble. I shit you not, he wrote most of B.L.U.D in the 30 minutes to an hour it took us before we rocked up to his house. That was just what came out of his brain. And I was like: dude, this is clutch.

2. You Know Something We Don’t?

Next up would have to be You Know Something We Don’t? because it features my homie Zach Britt. That was such a beautiful experience. When we recorded it I drove and picked Zach up, he was living east, so we had a good two to three hour drive on our hands to get to Sam’s in Melton. I picked Zach up from where he was living at the time and I drove him all the way out to Melton to record the vocals for this song. And I feel like it was one of those first moments where we really connected. It felt like a friendship was already there, but that just felt like a confirming moment. We rocked up to Sam’s house, I think it was a Tuesday or a Wednesday night. It was around 9:00pm and Zach just stepped up to the mic and let rip on those vocals. He didn’t give it too much thought and we hadn’t really discussed too much about the lyrics beforehand. He just improvised a little bit and I really appreciated that. No auto-tune or anything like that, he was just like: let me rip on the vocal!. I’ll always admire and respect him for that. I thought it was such an amazing moment that was captured on the record, just Zach being Zach. And his voice is so incredible! Obviously people know him from Young Lions and Dream On, Dreamer, but for him to appear on that song - that was such a special moment and an acknowledgement of a friendship and the respect that we held for one another. That song is also super fun to play live, I loved playing it on bass but I’m really excited to perform it vocally on this upcoming tour. I’ve never done that before so I’m really looking forward to it. And if all goes well, hopefully we might be able to get one Zach Britt up to perform with us, maybe in Brisbane. We’ll see how we go with that, fingers crossed!

3. I Told You To Smile

And a final favourite from Black Label would be I Told You To Smile. This one was such a special song largely because the music video was so fun to create. You can probably tell by what’s going on in the music video just how much fun we were having, this is us in a mode of pure youthful spontaneity. We were like: let’s just make the craziest, funnest video. This song is psycho, I remember we had a System of a Down album, I’m pretty sure it was Steal This Album! on a burnt CD in my car. We were going around in my ute, a lot of the shots are actually in my ute that we did a lot of Australian touring in during the early OG days. And we had this System of a Down record spinning, we’d play the first couple of songs to get us pumped up, and that was playing while we had a camera on the dash filming us for the clip. We were also in one of our mate’s garages performing that surgery scene where I had all this surgery stuff. My mum was working at the Cabrini hospital at the time so I was able to get my hands on scrubs and things like that. It was constantly like: how the fuck did we do that?! But we managed to have all of that, and it was just such a fun video to create. We were being so experimental with the types of shots that we were shooting and the colour grade, that sort of thing. And the one and only Thomas Elliot shot that music video, we did a lot of our early videos with him. He’s a good friend of ours and that just stands the test of time. I Told You To Smile is such a chaotic and brilliant summary of Ocean Grove. We’ve never done another song like that, and I think that really stands out for me as a result.

DALE TANNER'S FAVE SONGS FROM ODDWORLD (2024):

1. FLY AWAY

First up for an ODDWORLD favourite song, I can’t go past FLY AWAY. It was the first song we released off the album, the very first single, and it’s been received so well. I think what inspired that was that we needed to come out of the gates with something so over the top and noticeably nu metal from this era we’re trying to pay respect to and give an undeniable nod to. That mentality was mixed with the video that we did with Cian [Marangos], he’s done the last nine or 10 music videos, and he absolutely crushed the last few sagas of Ocean Grove. We came out of the gates with FLY AWAY and we had all of the members of the Oddworld Collective in this video; somewhat obscured, but you can see them, everyone’s there. It was such a fun video to record and the song just goes so hard live. We’ve been opening with it on this tour in North America currently, we walk out and it’s the first song. And it’s been so empowering seeing people in the crowd either being blown away by what they’re experiencing for the first time, or there’s people in the crowd singing those lyrics, singing the chorus from FLY AWAY back to us. It’s just so beautiful to witness that considering it’s only been out for a few months.

2. STUNNER

Next up from ODDWORLD would have to be STUNNER. It’s a fun song and we haven’t played this one live yet. And this is the thing about this tour coming up in Australia, this will be the first time that a song like STUNNER will ever be performed live, and we cannot wait to see what it’s going to induce in the crowd. We think it’s that kind of “ace up our sleeves” sort of song that is going to go harder than any other Ocean Grove song, almost ever. We can’t wait to see how crazy crowds will get to this song and how many people we can get bouncing in unison to that riff. And I think this song has been a collective favourite amongst all of us. A lot of fans come up to us saying that it’s their favourite song too, guys, girls, young, old, it does not matter - everyone really seems to resonate with that one. There’s a really good feeling in the camp about what will happen once we unleash it onstage. 

3. OTP (feat. Adult Art Club & New Babylon)

For a third song…this is tough. It’s definitely between SOWHAT1999 and OTP, and I’m gonna have to give it to OTP. I think this song is brilliant and I love that Luke [Holmes] took it upon himself with that song to just purely give all of himself on that. I listen back to it and think: that is just a very nasty OG song that I’m proud to not be part of vocally, it’s purely Luke. OTP is definitely quite unique and it’s something that we haven’t necessarily ever done before, and it rounds out the album in a really, really cool way. It also solidifies the OG collective mentality where it’s like: this isn’t just about what it’s been like with the last few records where maybe someone like Luke’s input has been a little bit more in the background. This is our way of showing that we still very much want him involved, so much so that he essentially has his own track. And I think that, for me, is why this song really stands out on the album.

ODDWORLD Honourable Mention: SOWHAT1999

And I have to give an honourable mention for ODDWORLD to SOWHAT1999. I really can’t wait to perform that one, I think it’s an absolutely brilliant song, and that was a collective creation as well thanks to Twiggy [Hunter] and Sam [Bassal] and everyone involved. It came together really nicely too, so it definitely needs a mention!

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OCEAN GROVE

ODD LABEL TOUR

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS:

DREGG + DIAMOND CONSTRUCT

TOUR DATES:

(Friday 23 May - Valley Loft, Brisbane SOLD OUT)

(Saturday 24 May - Oxford Art Factory, Sydney SOLD OUT)

(Sunday 25 May - 170 Russell, Melbourne)

Friday 30 May - Uni Bar, Adelaide

TICKET INFO HERE

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BY TIANA SPETER