BRISBANE band The Trams play Ipswich for the first time this weekend to herald the release of Sweet El Nino, the first single from their upcoming album.

Trams guitarist and songwriter Tony Moore says he wrote Sweet El Nino about climate change.

“It’s about changing polar ice and the disaster facing polar bears, but without forcing opinions on listeners,” Moore says.

“It asks the question: ‘If a polar bear came for Christmas and told you the ice was thinning, what would you think?’”

The song scored a place in the Brisbane radio station 4ZZZ Top 20 on the first week of its release.

It has echoes of ’80s pop and the new wave sounds of Talking Heads and Orange Juice, with choppy guitar and an infectious dancefloor groove.

Moore says: “For humans, a change in the weather cycle might mean just another sunny day at the beach, but that’s not so for the creatures watching their habitat disappear.”

Joining Moore in The Trams are songwriter, author, and journalist Noel Mengel on keys and guitar, bassist Mark McGregor (Kan Kan Chaos) and drummer Bobby J. Toms.

The Trams’ debut album, Late Rain, released in 2022, received airplay from independent radio stations for songs such as The First Time, a funk-fired tune about exploring New York for the first time, and Boy on a Bus, a song about the friendships made in music.

A former Queensland Times chief-of-staffer of 18 years, Moore says there are lots of references to Ipswich in his lyrics, especially the song Haunt the Mines.

“That song is about the Box Flat mining disaster,” Moore says.

“The lyrics allude to Aberdare, Swanbank East – the coalmines that I remember from my days working on the newspaper.

“It’s spoken from the perspective of a little boy sitting and talking to his dad about his life in the coalmines, and the father then talking to the ghost of his granddad and doing the same.”

Before their literary careers, both Mengel and Moore were contributors to Queensland’s vibrant music scene through Moore’s bands This Five Minutes and Dog Fish Cat Bird and Mengel’s band Curiosity Shop.

The Trams’ second album, due for release next year, also features songs with a strong local flavour; Somewhere Around Here is a crunching guitar-pop song about returning to a hometown to find how much it has changed, while Sense of Fashion focuses on the lure of city nightlife and the changing waves of youth fashion.

Sweet El Nino is available now on Bandcamp and streaming services.

The Trams play Banshees Bar on Saturday, December 2, with The Lozenges and Vacant Rooms.