New Music: Salarymen – If You Want Me

With their debut album Take It Or Leave It out on Halloween, Australian indie duo Salarymen treat us to a travelogue video for featured song, If You Want Me.

We first covered Salarymen – comprising songwriter and vocalist Renee de la Motte and multi-instrumentalist and producer Thom Eagleton – back in 2022, when they spoke of their admiration for 60s and 70s bands who recorded tracks in one take, as well as wanting to avoid an overproduced sound in their own music.

On If You Want Me, that results in a track that is well-produced but not overly so, one that has a noticeable 60s/70s pop attitude intertwined with its indie-meets-psych-pop arrangement. That retro theme continues in the lyrics, a teen ballad told from the perspective of adults that are older but not necessarily wiser, charting their ups and tragic downs as they look back at the story of their relationship.

“If You Want Me is the most emotional track we’ve ever written. It’s about two people who can never really let go of their past and how your world can be flipped upside down after parting ways. Thom and I are essentially playing the guy/girl who are admitting that they’ve wronged each other, and lamenting the fact that it’s over,” explains de la Motte.

It’s something that also feeds into Take It Or Leave It as a whole, as she reveals, “It’s a raw, emotionally charged album about compromise, identity, and the question we all face in relationships: how much of yourself are you willing to give up, and how much is too much?”

Fans of Beach House, Mac DeMarco, Cocteau Twins, and Tennis will love the sound of Salarymen, as should those of us that love indie music that’s full of heart and soul.

Take It Or Leave It is out on the 31st of October, and you can find pre-save options here. Salarymen play a short run of UK dates in November and December – for ticket and venue details, head to Facebook and Instagram. If You Want Me can be downloaded on Bandcamp.