Would you say you’re a desert person?
I enjoyed living there a lot, but, you know, I’m not there now, so I can’t really claim it. [Laughs.]
How are you finding LA?
I’ve really been enjoying it. I adopted a dog and I really love hiking; I love the proximity of friends and restaurants and social life and work, but then, you know, 20 minutes up the hill, you can hike for two hours. I went to Mount Baldy for the first time a couple of weeks ago, which is only an hour away, and it was so crazy and stunning.
Photo: Lindsey Byrnes
What is your musical community like in LA versus Melbourne?
I think it’s kind of constantly changing. Even at the moment in Melbourne, everyone’s kind of going through their own life journeys and changing the way they’re doing things, so even Melbourne looks really different than when I lived there. I always just kind of had these little pockets of friendships in different places everywhere because I’ve been touring for the last 10 years. I guess the good thing about LA is that it’s such a busy place that lots of people seem to end up here, or come through here, or live here for a while, so I’ve got some good music friends here, which is nice.
I love that you worked with Waxahatchee on a song for Creatures of Habit. How were you first introduced to Katie Crutchfield?
We toured together in 2018, so I reckon we must have met a year or so beforehand, and we were doing a lot of the same festivals and stuff, so we kind of became friends over the years. When I wrote that song “Site Unseen,” I thought that her voice would be so perfect for the high harmony, because her range is so beautiful. I just asked her if she’d be up for it, and she was!
Did the songwriting process feel different at all for Creatures of Habit than for your previous albums?
I guess I always kind of start in a similar way, but it did feel a bit different. Maybe it’s just because I’m different and, you know, years had passed since I’d written a new song that I really was excited by. I think my kind of writing process is always morphing and changing and evolving, but it’s normally me sitting at a desk or sitting with a guitar or sitting at a piano.
What were you listening to the most while you made this album?
I think I tend to listen to older things. Maybe subconsciously I’m scared that I’ll, you know, take something in and regurgitate it too obviously, but I was listening to Paul McCartney, and I had this record called Midnight Love by Marvin Gaye, which I had on vinyl in the desert. I try to gravitate more towards vinyl than streaming stuff, so I found myself putting on the same records a lot. Midnight Love was one of them, and there’s a couple of Harry Nilsson records that I was listening to. Depending on the mood of the song or the inspiration I was looking for, I would kind of find something to get me in the zone. I get overwhelmed by all the choices with streaming music and it’s just too much, so it’s nice to just pick up an old vinyl that you or someone else bought and just sit with that.
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