Melbourne has a rather special love affair with The Cat Empire’s enigmatic frontman Felix Riebl and his latest record, Everyday Amen, gives directly back to the thriving music culture that so fervently supports him.
Riebl shared his excitement with us as his new album creeps toward its release date (Friday 25 November), explaining that his “experiences internationally and this very intensive burst of life, colour and movement from one place to next” inspired the vibrant sounds throughout the record. He explains: “The contrast of that experience carries with you, and when you come home, it stays with you, combined with the sort of sublime of everyday moments in the domestic world that you live.”
Riebl’s album collides experiences at home and abroad: Everyday Amen signifies this through a plethora of quiet and subtle sounds romanticising life and movement, before ending in a colourful and emphatic uplift, giving listeners an insight into Riebl’s outlook.
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The unique singer’s love for orchestral sounds is evident through his music, highlighting his excitement in supporting backing musicians. “I think there were about 18 or 20 musicians who performed on the album, it was a very free-flowing and wonderful album to make,” he says, reserving special praise for Andy Baldwin, who produced the album, as well as Ben Edgar on guitar, Danny Grader on drums, Ryan Romano on bass and Ollie McGill from The Cat Empire on keys.
Riebl will be performing on Tuesday 29 November at Melbourne Recital Centre, a performance he says “is going to be wild and orchestral and a fantastic rhythm section is performing with me, it’s a great room and I love the Recital sound.”
The pandemic hit musicians hard, and Riebl is quick to note how it impacted his ability to release the album earlier. “Coming out of COVID, I recorded this album in the summer of 2018. Before I went on tour, we recorded it all in about two weeks. It was a very kind-of explosive, free-flowing session where we didn’t second guess ourselves and didn’t spend a long-time making decisions.” He didn’t want to release it during the lockdowns in Melbourne as it was “not that sort of album.”
He also confirms that the rumours are very real – The Cat Empire are set to come back, Riebl announcing the group is “in the midst of making a new album at the moment.” He’s currently working in the studio with Grace Barbae and Nelly Romani – both playing in the shows that the group has just announced. “The original lineup of the campaign has changed, and that was an amazing 20 years but The Cat Empire is becoming something that I think is going to be a totally wild project, it’s the spirit of the band and the songs that we play are going to be very much of that.” He emphasises that the new album they’re working on is with a fantastic group of musicians highlighting it as “one of the best albums he’s ever done.”
Riebl is also a composing member of another highly-expressive group, Spinifex Gum – an Australian musical collaboration that features Emma Donovan and award-winning ensemble, Marliya. The Cairns-based ensemble of First Nations teenage singers combine their vibrant voices to generate awareness of political and environmental activity across the country.
“I was involved in a trip with a very young choir called the Gondwana Indigenous Children’s Choir and we went to the Pilbara,” Riebl says, saying it’s an honour to work on a project that “keeps on giving”. “I heard them sing and there was talk that I might be involved in writing a song or two. We discovered that I sort of fell in love with the sounds of this, and that then over seven years of spending [time] in those trips to Pilbara and to Cairns, it turned into a really fantastic collaboration.”
Boasting a massive lineup of talented musicians from Melbourne, Riebl says Everyday Amen will be a fan’s favourite, that ultimately sources its vitality from Riebl’s enthusiasm for his home in Melbourne.
As both The Cat Empire and Spinifex Gum inspired the record, fans can expect a mixture of the familiar and refreshing, when he takes to the Recital Centre stage. Book tickets here before they sell out.
This article was made in partnership with Melbourne Recital Centre.
