When Broods’ third studio album Don’t Feed the Pop Monster drops early February you’ll soon realise this collection of 12 songs is a completely different beast altogether.
Sure, it still showcases the siblings’ signature nuanced synth-pop, but it offers so much more than that. At times it is dark and moody but at all times it is honest, engrossing and inspiring.
“Obviously we love it because we wouldn’t be putting it out if we didn’t like it,” jokes Georgia Nott, one half of the brother and sister duo. “But it’s really nice to hear that people are really into the singles we’ve released [‘Hospitalized’ and ‘Peach’]. It’s reassuring for us because we worked really bloody hard on it to be honest.”
Nott and her brother Caleb were born into an extremely musical family in Blenheim, New Zealand and grew up singing together. “We’ve been best friends since … actually I can’t remember a time when we weren’t best friends,” she says.
In the last five years Broods have been nominated for and won a slew of awards and toured all over the world with the likes of Haim, Sam Smith, Ellie Goulding and Taylor Swift, just to name a few.
“I think the craziest thing about doing the Reputation stadium tour with Taylor last year was the fact that not only is she this powerhouse woman in pop but I’ve been listening to her since I was fifteen you know, so my fifteen-year-old self was like ‘What the fuck is going on,’” Nott laughs.
Nott is warm and unassuming despite their success, and not afraid to stand behind her beliefs, and admit that sometimes navigating the weird and wonderful world of the music industry has been tough.
“After Conscious [2016] we got dropped from our label [Capital Records] which wasn’t a bad thing because we weren’t a great fit in the end,” she explains. “We were much younger when we signed with them and you grow and you learn, and we realised we wanted to be something different than they wanted us to be.
“But there was a moment, well many moments,” she adds. “Where Caleb and I were like ‘Oh shit, how are we going to pay for this?’ It’s expensive to make an album and we were just holding onto the fact that we still believed in each other and we still had really good management that believed in us, and then when we were ready to put this album out we were like ‘Ok, who would like this? Does anybody want it?’”
Soon the LA-based Broods found sparkling salvation with the legends at Neon Gold Records. “We have previously known Derek [Davies] and Lizzy [Plapinger] … for a while, and a few of our friends are in that crew with them, so it was just a natural transition, and they totally believed in what we were trying to do, and that we wanted to do something different than the last album,” Nott says. “It was kind of amazing to have that backing but it was pretty last minute.”
Another first for the band saw Caleb take the lead vocals on ‘Too Proud’ which vocalises his own battle with depression. “Working on this album has made our relationship so much stronger, and I think because we are brother and sister, the people we surround ourselves with are very much like our family and that’s something that has made a huge difference to us being in an industry that’s complete chaos all the time. It’s really nice to be around people that you feel really love you.”
Broods’ third studio album Don’t Feed the Pop Monster is out Friday February 1 via Island Records Australia.
