You have a brand new album out; tell Beat readers a bit about its direction.
The new record is a kind of slow-burn, hypnotic folk / dissonance experience. It’s full of detuned guitars and broken pianos and rain and shadows. Someone said there was evil mathematics involved but I never was aware of that.
You’re launching it at the NSC next week, how are you feeling about that?
I’m feeling a little tender around the edges and kinda stretched in good ways. It’s been that kind of a year. It’s been a long time between albums so I get to be all nervous and hopeful again. I hope I get the words right. I’m always excited about playing with the people in my band – they are incredible musicians the lot of them, and they play my songs so well.
It’s been a six year break in between albums for you, why so long?
There’s a bunch of reasons but fundamentally, that’s how long it took to get this set of songs together that made sense as a collection of music and said the things I wanted it to say. I’ve got another two albums of material recorded but it’s all over the freaking shop so I had to be patient and wait it out till the right things came up. I make music pretty much every day of my life, but a lot of it is not for me. Some of it is producing or mixing for others, some of it is for film and TV. Some of it is just experiments that don’t work out.
Tell us a bit about the album’s writing, recording and general evolution over that time.
Oh Jesus that’s too long a rant. Suffice to say I tried a bunch of different things and my tastes changed as the years went by – what stuck is what you hear on the record.
What else did you get up to during that break?
I surfed a lot, had a second child, had cancer, made some beautiful albums with some amazing singer/songwriters, fixed up an old house, watched a friend die, lived out the back of Byron Bay for a few winters, played soccer for Korumburra, made some music for some TV shows, built a studio, played in Paul Kelly’s band and worked on my South Gippsland bogan / indie muso persona.
You’re off on tour up the East Coast thereafter, looking forward to that?
Shit yeah let’s go!
