What’s the story behind your latest song/album?
As I was writing the record, the idea of ‘lines’ kept cropping up. I loved the crossover the word has; lifelines, timelines, the lines we deliver in conversation, the boundaries we set as lines we will and won’t cross. ‘Actors’ is the moment of hesitation within my debut EP ‘In & Out of Lines’. The track is preceded by ‘Parachute’ and ‘Crowded Beaches’, two tracks appreciating balance and the ability to weave ‘in and out’. On ‘Actors’, there is a questioning of daily authenticity and of how often we give up truth-telling for reasons that hold little weight.
How has your creative process evolved over the years?
Some things have remained obsessively similar, others I’ve learned from and adjusted. I always ask myself at the starting point of writing ‘what is the groove of this track?’. That doesn’t mean narrowing a song down to a time signature or a tempo, it’s more to give it a base and an identity to refer back to when I get stuck. I’ve changed how I approach structure a lot. I used to pan songs out in my head in the usual rondo form (ABACADA) but freeing this up has been great. It’s amazing how quickly I’ll forget that while yes, there are rules, it’s fun to break some of them.
What’s one misconception people have about being a musician?
I think the idea, or at least the one I had growing up, was that you would write your song, record it, put it out and then perform it. It’s a shock how little time is spent doing these things in comparison to promotional. When you’re starting out and trying to make a name, so much time is spent on the social and promotional side of things that coming back to writing feels somehow even more joyful. Advertising is all part of the process but it’s something you can forget about in idealising a musician’s life.
Who or what has been inspiring your music lately?
Throughout my teens, I mostly listened to acoustic, Indie Folk laments like Benjamin Francis Leftwich, City and Colour and Henry Jamison where I could put on the sad boy face and sing about unrequited love. The soft spot for lamenting will always be there but I’ve come to love Indie Pop/Alt-Rock production and take a lot of lyrical and musical inspiration from artists like The Japanese House, The 1975, The Paper Kites and the later Ben Howard stuff.
Can you share a memorable or unexpected moment from a live performance?
In May, we did a single launch for ‘Parachute’ in Sydney and it was honestly one of the best nights of my life. Seeing not only people I didn’t know listening to songs that started out with me trying different chord progressions in my spare bedroom but having all these different people that I’d met throughout the years come together in one place was genuinely surreal. We had my brother come down from Queensland to play keys and a couple of the band members were heading overseas indefinitely soon after the show. It was a coming together of all these things that I attach so much importance to. I’ll always remember that night.