Ash Santilla, the former front man of Melbourne indie rock band 67 Special, who released two albums in the mid-2000s, has spent the last decade battling a range of issues that have been challenging to say the least.

Stage 4 bowel cancer plus the impact of mental health would be enough to destroy anybody’s spirit; instead, the singer-songwriter has channelled much of his angst, anxiety, and depression into creating his forthcoming debut solo album, The Darker Side of Up, and it is without question an incredibly heartfelt and emotional offering.

The opening track and powerful first single was ‘Nightcrawler’. Alongside its equally intense, visceral, and confronting video clip, the dark rock song rises from the shadows of psychological torment and pharmaceutical failure. Over the eerie soundscape of an ominous guitar pulse and hammering piano, the stentorian voice of Santilla rings loud and clear, like a clarion call from deep within, before the chorus explodes and the tension and unease of the verses is released.

Now Santilla reveals the album’s second single, the grand catharsis of ‘Buckle and Belt’. It’s a love song that delves into the complexities of devotion and the potential for emotional fragility in relationships, and one that had a lengthy gestation before being recorded for the album.

“I’ve not written many so-called ‘love songs’ in my time, but I think ‘Buckle and Belt’ is as close to one as I’ve come,” Santilla confesses.

“It’s about a person who claims he’d be everything he could for his partner, ‘the buckle, the stitching of her sharpest pant leg, the neck of her longest red dress’, but almost disclaims his devotion with a waiver that he, or his mind, may wander, and so this ‘devotion’ is ambiguous,” he explains. “In the chorus, there’s an implication that she, the heroine, knows more than she makes out. So really, both protagonists are aware of the frailty of the connection they have, because of the lead character’s implied inability to be completely committed and to not “get blown by the wind.”

Beginning like a lost piece of music from the Dirty Three, the song evolves into a beautifully soulful piece of rich and stately gospel and rock. Santilla’s commanding vocal is suitably bruised and delivered with raw, heart-laid-bare conviction. His voice elevated to even greater heights, courtesy of Olivia Bartley’s harmonies.