Dougie Mandagi, frontman of The Temper Trap doesn’t find inspiration in the fanciful. His songwriting – captured on the Melbourne ensemble’s debut long-player Conditions – draws from closer to home. “It's humanity that captures me,” he tells MAG. “The darker side – our failures, our mortality, the question of why we’re here. Those themes trigger me to create.” It’s all through the swirling tropes of Conditions.
“It’s the condition that we’re all in,” he says. “The condition of the world, why it’s the way it is, why it starts with us – our condition as individuals will contribute to community.” Recorded with production luminary Jim Abbiss (Björk, Arctic Monkeys), the album builds layers of atmosphere and texture atop the quartet's signature angular guitars and pop melodics. “It feels three-dimensional,” says drummer Toby Dundas. “What we had before was flat.”
