“When the three of us get together, we love putting smiles on peoples’ faces and seeing them dancing and having a great time,” says Sarah Grace Buckley of Australian sibling trio The Buckleys. “Music is so powerful, and making people happy and making memories is definitely a place that we want to be.”
With the release of their debut album Daydream, The Buckleys have essentially been doing just that. Reaching over 4.5 million fans on their virtual world tour this Spring off, of the release of two singles “Money” and “Breathe” alone, Sarah (20), Lachlan (19) and Molly (17) have been drawing in audiences worldwide with their feel-good, fun-time self-coined “Hippie Country.”
“When I close my eyes and conjure up an image of the term, it’s a bunch of hippies in tie-dye T-shirts and velvet flared jeans at a music festival, looking at a stack of Marshall amps on the stage,” says Lachlan of the term. “It allows us to be anything we want it to be. There are a lot of elements in that term, and it’s just about us melding and making something bigger out of it.”
“Hippie Country” is an apt term to describe The Buckleys’ music. With a melding of pop, country, Americana, and indie rock, Daydream is an album filled with all the sun, sparkle and wide-eyed excited that these young singer/songwriters embrace with open arms.
“The idea of freedom is a strong theme throughout the album,” explains Sarah. “The songs ‘Breathe’ and ‘Woodstock69’ are about yearning for it. But it’s also about the freedom of the music. The three of us have been so grateful and happy that we’ve been able to be free in what we can make, and that we are authentic.”
It’s this authenticity and liberation from the everyday stresses of life that permeates the album. From the smiling feel good country pop of the opening title track “Daydream” to the propulsive bluesy rock of “Crazy Like You” to the dreamy Fleetwood Mac/FM radio vibes of ”Til You Can’t Go Back,” Daydream strikes all the right notes and wraps itself in the “Hippie Country” blanket.
The effervescent singles “Money” which topped the Australian Country Music radio charts, the emotionally vulnerable “Breathe” which Sarah describes as a “musical prayer to the world,” and the playful “Leave Me Hanging On” all capture different colors of The Buckleys. “To feel that sense of freedom in our music is also important,” Sarah continues. “People who listen to the album will know that is something that is important to us.”