“Thank you for doing that,” he says. “Seriously. American journalists do not research before an interview, ever. It’s terrible here. I mean, there’s no real worst question they ask and I really don’t want to talk shit about anybody, but I think American journalists are really lazy. I don’t think they take the idea of being a journalist very seriously. So many times I’ve been interviewed by people in the States and it’s so obvious that it’s just some kid who works for the magazine, doesn’t give a shit at all, has a stock list of questions that they ask everybody and don’t try to engage who they’re talking to, they won’t try and get anything interesting out of you.”
In truth, I’m a little amazed by this. While you don’t exactly get up in the morning primed to pry the darkest secrets from friendly strangers, you do certainly hope to learn something about an artist that hasn’t already been covered ad nauseum. It makes interviewing all the more entertaining for everybody. To that end, before steering towards the new album, we start chatting about things outside the world of music.
“Well, I just planted a vegetable garden this morning,” Orrall laughs. “I’m really into gardening. I don’t have time for anything else, really. I have time to do my garden because I have roommates who look after it while I’m on tour. I do a lot of disc golf; I’m kind of obsessed with it. It’s my way to blow off steam. I don’t know if you really have a big disc golf culture in Australia yet. I don’t feel like it’s big anywhere yet. It’s kind of weird, but it’s also the perfect sport. It’s the perfect sport if you don’t want to commit to much or be too involved, because it’s free and buying a couple of discs is like twenty bucks a piece. Plus you really just play it with your friends while you’re walking through the woods, drinking a couple of beers and throwing discs around. It’s pretty awesome. It’s like this weird game of skill you can do whilst hiking through beautiful forests, getting drunk and stoned with your friends.”
Sounds exactly like the kind of game most Australians would embrace with open arms. It also seems like entirely the kind of relaxation Orrall would need. Between the exhaustive touring for which JEFF the Brotherhood are renowned (though lately they’ve been scaling back the amount of time spent on the road) and the frustrations of not having the album released as planned, finding some relaxation is high on the to-do list.
“Whenever a record’s done, we head out and tour that for a year, sometimes eighteen months,” he says. “We won’t really sit down to write again until after that. I don’t like to write in the interim, so in maybe a year from today I might sit down and start writing songs. For a while there we were putting out a record every year, just tour, tour, tour, tour, tour, and then home for five days and start again. But I need a little more time off now.”
Wasted on the Dream is the band’s eighth album, but after being dropped by their label Warner Bros (which makes Orrall more relieved than resentful), it hasn’t been the easiest of births. Still, the end result is arguably JEFF’s best record to date. Each album has expanded on its predecessor, which is what any successful act hopes to achieve. Though, for Orrall, there is an exception.
“I feel like we’ve only once made an album that I didn’t think was as good as the previous album,” he says. “I won’t say which one, but all the others have always been improvements. I just felt like I rushed it. I rushed the writing because we were on the road too much. But this release just kept getting pushed back and back. I don’t think [Warner Bros] knew what to do with it. It was supposed to be out last summer, and I think we’ve lost a lot of money and a lot of momentum by waiting around for it to come out, unfortunately. This album was done for a year before it came out, which was really frustrating.
“We tried to make a really fun rock record,” he continues. “A record that harkens back to the day when bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana were still playing, which is a time that will never happen again. So, it’s a very nostalgic record, I think.”
BY ADAM NORRIS
