A Quick Chat with Ra Ra Viper

'Ramona Again' tackles a heavy subject but has an upbeat feel. What made that contrast work for you?

For Ramona Again, the lyrics came after the instrumental aspect was written. This therefore was not a conscious effort to make the track more upbeat; it sort of just happened. In saying that, it feels quite fitting for this track, as although it is a heavy subject it also focuses on extracting positives from a negative situation and in a way the instrumental sort of reflects that.

The song is built around memories. Was there one moment that particularly inspired the track?

There is a core memory that is referenced within the first line of the song “It’s a short ride blackwall reach” which is a spot on the river in Perth. I wouldn’t say it inspired the track as a whole, but it definitely emphasises the notion of reflecting on positive memories with the ones you love and in this case it also puts a location to the memory.

You reference Grace Cummings' Ramona in the lyrics. What does that album mean to you?

Grace Cummings was an act that we saw at Wave Rock Festival in WA when we played there. It is safe to say that we were all in awe when we watched her, the way she went about her performance was absolutely amazing. That then led to us following her and listening to her albums including “Ramona” which have inspired a lot of our tracks.

Did writing the song help you process what you were going through at the time?

Writing music is such an amazing tool and way of expressing emotions to us, even if it never gets released it can be a great way to process difficult times in your life. There is definitely an element of that to this track, we have all had tough experiences of people close to us getting sick and of course writing this song helped face the issues.

What do you hope people think about when they hear 'Ramona Again'?

This is a tough one, as we have said it is a deeply personal song and it is purely a reflection on how we have remained positive during a tough time. In saying that everyone is different and they will interpret the track different to us. We hope that people can think about a tough time in their life and then find some sort of positive that has come out of it or that were involved with that scenario at the time.

With RA RA arriving today, what does this song tell us about the record as a whole?

Ramona again definitely has a nice spread of what is coming within the album, it has the up tempo and energetic rock feel whilst also being emotional and lyrically driven. It has high and low moments throughout, and we like to think it takes the listener on a bit of a journey! That is what we hope for anyway!