When writing lyrics for Chasing Ghost’s third album, founder and vocalist Jimmy Kyle was led by one guiding principle. “I used a gauge of, what would I want to say when I’m 80 and didn’t have the courage to say when I was younger? Well, that’s what you’re going to say,” he tells Apple Music. “Why give you anything less than that? When I take my mask off, it invites you to take your mask off. And if I don’t do it, why would you? It’s called Therapy for a reason. You’ve got to be honest.” A proud Thungutti man, Kyle has written passionately about the First Nations experience in White Australia on previous releases such as 2011’s Confessions from a Phone Booth and 2021’s Homelands EP. It remains a theme on Therapy—Kyle regards “Amnesia Everybody” as a sister song to “Summer”, Homelands’ ode to the 1856 Towel Creek massacre—but is balanced with a more introspective and vulnerable approach informed partly by his experiences with therapy. “It’s the first time I’ve seriously worked with a therapist to work through a weight of things, and here’s the cathartic expression of that,” he says. The thematic shift is accompanied by a willingness to abandon the “arbitrary rules” Kyle had in the past imposed on the band’s sound. With ARIA-nominated producer Stevie Knight (Stand Atlantic, Sleeping With Sirens) by his side, Therapy boasts a bolder, fuller, modern punk-rock sheen that emphasises the material’s more anthemic characteristics. “I think most musicians eventually feel that space: Where to from here? Well, where haven’t we been?” Kyle says. Here, the singer takes Apple Music through Therapy, track by track. “Burn the Boats” “‘Burn the Boats’ is about the end of my previous relationship. It felt like the opportunity to reflect on getting therapy, figuring out how I felt about it. Figuring out where to from here, and how to process the transition of having a view of where you think you’re going, but then it pivots and changes.” “Amnesia Everybody” “The song is taking a shot at the massive gaps in understanding of what’s occurred in our history. It’s sort of taking the piss out of people that have chosen to put their head in the sand and victim-blame Aboriginal people rather than confront what anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner [called] the cult of forgetfulness around how Australia’s origins have come to be. Although people aren’t responsible today for what’s happened, they are the beneficiaries of it. And in being the beneficiary, sometimes it’s uncomfortable for people because they worry what it says about them, or their inaction says about them.” “Ten Feet Tall” “Ten Feet Tall’ is the sister or brother song to ‘Burn the Boats’. ‘Burn the Boats’ is the fallout, and ‘Ten Feet Tall’ is picking myself back up. It was written around the first conversations I had with my therapist—that [explains] the lines, ‘Write it down, write it down/And tell me everything you know/And all the things you’ve figured out about me’. So, yes, it’s about getting back up after being knocked down metaphorically, but it’s also about leaning into the idea of therapy.” “My Bingayi” “‘My Bingayi’ is about the conversations I’ve had with people of all different ethnicities and communities, all different pay grades. It’s about men who are committing domestic violence. It’s about, what would all these alternative skills be that you could learn so you didn’t have to use violence? I had to have these conversations with them where I couldn’t enable or say it was OK, but I also didn’t turn away from the conversation. It was about trying to get people to change their behaviour rather than lecture them about what they already knew was wrong.” “Hurting Years” “That song is about the [2020] fires that had gone through the country and absolutely destroyed it; the floods which then came and swamped the place; and then COVID and the lockdowns. It was one disheartening, soul-crushing hardship after another. And during that same period we had so much civil unrest around the world around Black Lives Matter. They were the hurting years for me. So ‘Hurting Years’ was capturing that moment and honouring those who endured and survived, and taking stock of the people we lost to suicide, the people who were lost in fires and floods, and the weight the country felt.” “Flowers” “A friend who passed of suicide, I thought we’d got through the worst times. I spent a long time looking back at all the things I’d done wrong or missed or could have done differently that could have stopped it. So this song is about when your friends who are not doing well shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Nah, I’m all right.’ Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth and don’t hide it. Let’s do something about it.” “IWPTEK” (feat. Emmy Hour) “It stands for ‘I Wouldn’t Profess to Ever Know’. A couple of members in my family and extended family have been on their own journey as trans people, and figuring out their gender identities. It’s been a real insight for me, and an eye opener. A lot of people want to rush to have an opinion, and as a family member my opinion was, our job is to love our family member and let them figure out who they are. No matter what I will be there for you. You’re my family and I love you. The rest is your business to figure out.” “Eating Paper” “‘Eating Paper’ is about the fallout from ‘Burn the Boats’. When you have a long-term relationship and you separate, there’s a tendency for people to want to take sides. There were people I thought were going to be around that weren’t. It was a real slap in the face and a real wake-up.” “Chamomile Tea” “My insomnia was so bad that at one point I remember being on the edge of my bed every 45 minutes over seven or eight hours and just wanting to cry because I couldn’t sleep. And really struggling with it. Obviously that rolled into my personal life because I was irritable and emotionally and mentally fatigued. It’s about overcoming insomnia, but taking the piss out of myself about being a jerk, being intolerable to be around.” “Trick or Treaty” “Some people think Treaty is the end of the world. The dominance and control they’ve had is really comfortable, and if we were to change that by sharing power and having more Aboriginal representation there’s this overwhelming fear that it’s not the Australia that some people knew. It’s a conversation to that but it’s from an emotional place; it’s from a different perspective. Would you stand next to us and leap into something different? [It’s also about] the struggles of a contemporary life for a young Aboriginal person.”