Instead of resisting the urge to echo elements of his core influences, Grobler came to embrace them and thus St. Lucia was born – a fusion of addictive pop and the occasional exploratory, experimental flourish. After the success of his first album, When The Night, 2013, it’s now difficult to imagine his fun, danceable sound without these influences.
But Grobler probably wouldn’t have been able to reach this conclusion if he weren’t such a compulsive writer. From recording simple melody or beat ideas as voice memos on his phone while walking down the street, to mixing songs in the studio – he’s always working on something. And although he produces pop music with old-school influences, he’s forever fighting for the ideas that are more progressive and non-traditional. This is something he’s particularly proud of with his new album, Matter.
“I think the biggest challenge is just doing something that is catchy but doesn’t feel contrived,” he says. “Because I think a lot of pop music can feel contrived – you can just so obviously hear that it was written by a group of people in a room. And there were definitely a couple of songs off this album that were done that way, but I took a lot of time and a lot of care to make sure that there was enough of my own stamp on the song.”
While When The Night was the result of careful writing and recording in Grobler’s New York studio, Matter presented new challenges from a writing perspective, as he needed to get inventive while on the road touring.
“Basically what I had to do was create a really good demoing situation on my laptop, so most of these songs were initially written in the tour van or in the tour bus. It was interesting actually, because those limitations kind of created a special energy on this album that didn’t really exist on the last one.”
It’s not hard to see what he means by this energy – the album’s emotion range goes from elation to frustration. Grobler says “existential angst” made its mark on the lyrics as a result of getting older and living far away from home, while songs like Rescue Me speculate about stress and the universe. But it’s not all serious – Game 4 U started off as a joke song about falling in love with your computer, until making the final cut with new lyrics. The album features an impressive number of writing collaborations as well, ranging from dance anthems like Dancing on Glass with Tim Pagnotta (Sugarcult), to the more aggressive beats of Physical with writing team Captain Cuts (who’ve worked with Walk the Moon, Tove Lo and Grouplove).
The album comes out this weekend, but things aren’t slowing down for Grobler. There’s a US tour on the way, and some exciting collaborations lined up, including with Alex Metric (who remixed September from When The Night) and Norwegian producer Lindstrøm. He’s also interested in doing more production work after producing American indie-pop band Haerts’ debut album.
Grobler originally named the St. Lucia project after the vacation town of the same name in South Africa, drawing on the “exotic, hazy, summery” feeling it evoked. However, it’s now been 13 years since he left his home country and he’s well and truly settled in New York with his wife and keyboardist Patti.
“[Patti] always says that the only place in the whole world other than Taiwan where she doesn’t feel like a foreigner or an outsider is New York. In South Africa we still have this racial tension and there’s still a lot of separation and segregation between the races and all over the world you still have that. In New York you still have that, but it’s more like all these people from different cultures are pushed together and that’s the way it is, and no one thinks twice about it.”
So as he continues to write and produce music, his current location is having more influence on his stylistic personality. “I definitely feel like there’s less of a tropical feeling to it now. There’s definitely still an escapist element to it – it’s very lofty, big, adventurous music that’s almost like a sci-fi film. I feel like it is interesting because there’s a lot more desert imagery in promotional shots so there’s a lot more cacti. For me it definitely has a bit more of an American ‘70s/‘80s west coast feeling.”
BY ERIN ROONEY
