Juanita Stein: “I think it is a very authentic album, and I think the Howling Bells fans will respond to that. People who like Howling Bells will love the new music.”

Juanita Stein: “I think it is a very authentic album, and I think the Howling Bells fans will respond to that. People who like Howling Bells will love the new music.”

A self-titled debut album in 2006 was critically acclaimed. The more expansive Radio Wars followed three years later, with The Loudest Engine and Heartstrings following in 2011 and 2014. But they then went their separate ways. However, after twelve years away, Howling Bells are back with a brand new album. Strange Life, which will be released on February 13th, will be their first studio offering since Heartstrings twelve years ago.

“Why not?” Juanita Stein, the lead singer of the Australian indie band, told me over Zoom when I asked why they got the band back together after so long apart.

“There was no hiatus planned,” Stein continued. “We didn’t focus on an extended break; it just kind of happened. I think playing the Revive Live shows a couple of years ago kind of kick-started the engine again. I then started writing a bunch of songs that were very clearly Howling Bells songs. They were not solo album tracks. It just snowballed from there.”

When Howling Bells went on that unplanned hiatus, Stein released four solo albums, including that incredibly emotional, heartfelt Snapshot. A 2020 release that explored the grief of losing her father. A new Howling Bells song Melbourne, expands on that a little further.

In terms of her writing style, Stein believes not much has changed since the last Howling Bells album.

“I don’t know if my writing has changed,” Stein says of how she writes. “We formulated our style from very early on. We set an artistic path for ourselves, and we will follow that forever. We can learn more. We can get deeper in respect to our relationship with our lyrics. But for the most part, I have been highly motivated by melody. So, if I pick up the guitar and start writing a song, I am immediately guided by that. I know that it will be a good song. You strike gold when the melody is there. That guides you through to the lyrics. Then you have a complete song. That has always been my method. That hasn’t changed much at all.

“From the beginning of the band, it has always been me writing the songs, and then I give them to Joel (Stein), and Glenn (Moule), and they will then put a specific stamp on the songs. If I record them as a solo artist, they will sound a certain way. But if I give them to Joel and Glenn, they immediately become these ravaged, urgent, howling preachers of the song. That doesn’t happen when I am by myself.”

The music business is ever-changing. Despite the barriers to entry being a lot less problematic in the modern digital age, making a living from music is now far more difficult. “The only reason you start in the music business in 2026 is that you are obsessed with it,” Stein says of where the music business currently lies. “There is no other reason to do it at all. You just have to love playing music. You have to be very good at multitasking because you have to do so many other things to survive in the world. It was probably very different twenty years ago.”

That debut album in 2006, which first produced that haunting sound, was described as extraordinary by NME, with Anthony Thornton writing, “Its true brilliance is revealed over the course of several listens.” But the three albums that followed didn’t quite reach the same critical acclaim, despite their sound getting more ambitious. But as Thornton says about that quite exquisite and deep first album, all three albums that followed deserve extensive listening to fully appreciate them. Radio Wars, especially. The opening five tracks ooze musical perfection on an album that is vastly underappreciated. The dark-melodic track Cities Burning Down sounds even better than it did at the time. It is an album that has aged incredibly well. Stein is now at peace with how their albums were initially perceived, despite the harshness of the critique.

“The only thing that has changed over the years is that I have a lot more perspective on how the albums were received at the time. We were being guided by honesty. We were writing, recording, and playing music with no alternative motive. Between the first and second albums, we were just very ambitious, and we wanted to try something very different. It was a very haunting sound. On the second album, we wanted to experiment a lot more with a few different sounds. I think we were punished for that. I can only see that now, fifteen years down the line.

“I think the industry was very punishing in their response to Radio Wars. The first album was very well received. Part of the industry was receptive to Radio Wars, but the rest I can only explain as punishing. They were very cruel about it. When I look back on that now, I try not to be too hard on myself. At the time, I saw it as a failure of sorts. I think it’s a wonderful album. People still tell us today it’s their favourite Howling Bells album. Over the years, I have been a lot kinder to myself. I am now able to hear the music for what it was.”

Howling Bells will release their fifth studio album next month with Strange Life. With four songs already released, including the quite wonderful Melbourne, the band looks as though they have retained all of what made them so unique in that indie-heavy period at the start of this millennium.

“It’s very true to our sound,” Stein says of the new album. “What you have heard so far is very indicative of the rest of the album. I think working with Ben Hillier helped retain that identity because he is such a wonderful producer. It’s very important for him that the artists he is working with retain that authenticity. I think it is a very authentic album, and I think the Howling Bells fans will respond to that. People who like Howling Bells will love the new music.”

The new album isn’t about trying to ‘sell out’ in the chase for chart success and mainstream acceptance, it’s about something a little more pure and personal.

“If you are playing the kind of music that we are playing, there has to be a realistic expectation. If I am releasing songs like Unbroken and Melbourne, I can’t release music that doesn’t sound like that. I can’t pretend to write music just to please people. It would make me nauseous. There is a realism within the band that we make music like this and put it out; it is hitting a very specific demographic. You just hope that the demographic is loyal and is still interested in coming to the shows, buying vinyl, and the merch to help us survive.”

After a sold-out comeback gig last year, Howling Bells are back out on the road in March in support of their fifth studio album. “The tour is selling well, and I think it will be a lovely thing to do with the new music,” Stein relayed to me. “We have played some of those rooms before, and it will be great to return to those rooms, pack them out and do what we love to do best, which is play music.”

Photo Credit: David Titlow