New Normal - 1 of 3
How are you feeling today, with the record being out finally?
N: It’s a real mixed bag of emotions and a long journey that that gets you to this point, but it feels good to have it out. Starting to get like people hitting us up and sending us love and stuff. It’s a nice feeling.
A: I'm pumped. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while. We kind of announced that we finished the album like two months ago. So people have known it's coming for a little while so it's been just heaps of anticipation on all fronts.
Can you tell me about the time it’s taken to get here?
N: It’s been a really crazy time for us. I guess about six weeks after we released Bardo State, the last record, and maybe like two months after Adit got married someone very close to me, someone who I really love and treasure, was diagnosed with cancer. And everything just kind of turned upside down overnight. I kind of had to step up and really take on the kind of carer role for that person and assist them with navigating that whole journey.
We had a gig booked the United States that we had to cancel, which was like a real bucket list thing for us, but we had to just can it. But we had just had the album come out and we had a massive national tour booked and we had to kind of weigh up whether to go ahead with all that or not.
And we wanted to honour the record we've made and keep the wheels turning on what we've been working on building over all this time. So we went ahead with the next couple of years of touring and it's just been a crazy time going back and forth between that role and that environment of like being in the hospital and helping someone through really, really dire times, being in a very quiet sober, somber environment and dealing with some really heavy stuff, and you know supporting someone. And then kind of going back out on the road and being in a loud, noisy, not sober, not somber, celebratory place where all the attention is on you and you're the center of attention. And just navigating all of that for me has been very difficult.
And then as if that kind of wasn't enough for us to be dealing with, I don't know how much later … Two years? Eighteen months?
A: Less than a year even, like 8 to 10 months after that my brother was diagnosed with cancer. And that was just before we started the Grey Space tour. Nick talks about that initial news happening six weeks after we dropped the album, so that’s like peak promo mode. In the lead up while we were rehearsing for our national tour, which is the biggest tour we've ever done, you know, Enmore Theatre and 170 Russell – big venues. Before getting to all the festivals and things like that.
Juggling that with the kind of news that usually stops your life … was definitely a struggle. So ten months after Nick found that news out I found out my brother had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. February 2018. And it was while we were on a writing trip before we did the Grey Space tour. We were away [in Currarong, a couple of hours down the coast]. We were writing tunes and Nick was still dealing with him stepping into this sort of like carer role and the challenges of that. One of the songs that’s actually on the album, we wrote on this trip, Yearn For You.
That week was really nice for us to kind of get away step outside of Sydney put ourselves in a different headspace, just be super creative and not have to think about life or anything else. Then pretty much the day I got back my dad calls me and says that my brother has been diagnosed with cancer as well. So that was like pretty shocking and that's again a couple of weeks before we were about to start the Grey Space tour. So that was pretty heavy news to kind of deal with.
Somehow those two stories, both people who are incredibly like close to us. It’s not like you’re just supporting them once a week, or you’re in [then] you’re out: it's like everyday kind of thing. That ended up shaping what the last couple of years looked like while we were also trying to do our careers.
That sort of thing is probably like a common thing for people who face serious illness who are younger. There's no good time to fall seriously ill but I think when you're younger and you've got your whole life ahead of you, you're still building that life [and] it's definitely a different kind of experience.
It sounds like there was a lot of compartmentalisation that had to happen between the two.
N: There was a real sense of moving between two worlds and for me, like … sorry, I'm probably gonna get a bit emotional a few times throughout this conversation, but … There's a strange thing when you make – [A hands him a tissue] thanks man – when you make records like they often become like a sort of forward manifestation of what the next couple of years of your life will be like. Because the songs almost become like mantras and you're repeating them and it's that message you're putting out in the world. And it wasn't lost on me that our last album was called Bardo State and … the idea of the bardo is all about being caught between two lives on Earth and you know looking back on it I do feel as if like in some strange way it kind of foreshadowed what the next couple of years would be like for the two of us at different points, moving back and forth between two lives. And trying to like not lose yourself and your shit [laugh] in that in that process. It's definitely a lot of compartmentalisation. Because also like we when we're out on the road and when we're making music together or doing the things that we do together, like, you know, you’re still experiencing those massive highs and loving doing what we do. And there's also … a few thousand people have paid for a ticket and they've come to see you and so there's a sense of wanting to live up to that and just wanting to do that justice as well. So that to a certain extent you have to be able to put some of that personal stuff aside if you are struggling. And then also when you come home and you're comforting someone or being with someone who is really sick, there's a there's a sense of … you want to bring them like stories and positive things that are happening in your life and in the outside world outside the hospital and stuff, but … you can't come home and be like, ‘We had the best time and got real wasted and we did this!’
A: That gets tackled in the first song, Against the Wall, where Nick’s like asking, how you feeling? Which is sort of like a theme of that first track. It's good to remember that everyone has to compartmentalise to a degree; everyone's got like their own struggle that they go through. You go to work and you kind of leave any like a relationship drama or things like that. People have different ways to cope with it. The way that we experienced it was … it's heightened by this by this sense of being public-facing and going up performing to people –
N: The sort of energy and intensity of those environments as well.
A: – but at the same time you also remind yourself that it can't be a chore. It's also a privilege that people came out. It's just a crazy complex mix of emotions and that's essentially what we were trying to communicate on this record. And I think we did that. And as you can see a lot of those emotions are still raw and it's not like there's a neat bow tie there … it is still like an ongoing process. And that's the idea behind the title as well. You can always be searching for this normality in your life or this time when everything's going to be perfect in life, but often it's not like that.
The title track kind of sets an intention or a dedication for the listener
N: That song always had this really beautiful kind of meditative calming quality to it. And so I knew in my mind from very early on that I wanted to end the record with that.
I pieced that song together over a long period of time whilst we were going through all the things we just talked about and the poem or spoken word which is on there kind of came two years or so after that initial diagnosis and everything for me. I went overseas to America, finally when things had kind of calmed down enough and things were safe enough at home that I felt that I could go away for a period of time. I went to America and I went to Minneapolis to the festival that we had had to cancel going to, and while I was there, like the first day I was there, I went for a walk and it was this beautiful sunny day and I found this spot in the middle of Minneapolis in the Mississippi, there's an island and it’s this really, really old part of the city and it's got these beautiful old houses and they're painted in these amazing colors. Everybody lives on that island has a lot of money so they've got these really fancy gardens and stuff.
I just found this really like calm spot with a bench just surrounded by trees and stuff and I just sat down and put that beat on and just kind of scribbled and that that poem came out of me. I felt that I wanted to use that format because I found that the restriction of like having to write something that was a rap and fitted really rhythmically over a beat was too constrictive for what I was trying to get across and so that's why I picked that format. But also because I did want to give the sense of really speaking directly to the listener. And you know in a funny way what I like about that poem and why I'm proud of it and why I felt it was the kind of thing to finish with is in my mind, you know at the same time I'm kind of talking to and wrote that for the person in my life who I love and who I supported through that journey. [It’s] for the listener, for anybody out there who's struggling with things similar or different to what I've been going through, and also to myself. In my mind, the way it's written, it can be addressed to whoever needs it, whoever needs to hear it. And I just liked the idea that if somebody out there was struggling that they could put that on and that it might help them to just calm down and feel a little bit better.
I was really wary of it being … I didn't want it to be cheesy and like everything's going to be alright, because sometimes everything isn't going to be alright, or it's not going to turn out how you would like it to – and in fact most of the time it won't. But what's important and what I've kind of learned over the last couple of years and what I'm still trying to learn is that you have to accept, things happen in life, and shit doesn't turn out how you thought it would but you can still be happy and you can still be grateful and be appreciative of what you have. Even if it isn't what you thought you would have. And that's something that I've talked a lot about with Adit over the last couple of years and something that his advice and his perspective and his friendship through this time has helped me to get closer to that.
Shouts to the Dalai Lama as well and the Art of Happiness which is a book that Adit gave me for my 30th birthday. And it's a really difficult thing to grapple with but it's a pretty fundamental thing in life and I suppose I feel as if I'm still learning that and still putting it into practice and I didn't want that song to feel like, Hey, I figured it out. I've sorted it out. I've got the answers. Here they are. Because I don't and that's not how life works. But what I guess the last couple of years has taught me and speaking with friends like Adit and also watching the person who I supported through this and their attitude and the way they have carried themselves has shown me that's all you can really do and fall back on is bringing that perspective and that hope and optimism and acceptance in the face of adversity to your life. The best thing you can do for yourself to try and give yourself the tools to cope with what life throws at you and to be happy and find happiness.
And so I tried [laugh] to convey all that in the form of this song and we decided to put it there at the last moment. And I do like the idea that people out there right now listening to the record for the first time and there's so many different emotions and highs and lows and ups and downs and there are angry feelings and sad feelings and all the rest of it and what you arrive at at the end is not like a, yeah. We made it and everything's okay. But more of what I feel is kind of like a mantra or meditation almost that you can put on and listen to and then it might just help remind you of that ongoing process of acceptance
I was in that in that moment, in the park in Minneapolis, I was very present. I was on the other side of the world in a place where nobody knows me and I guess it was just one of those moments that that kind of hits you and I feel really proud of that song. It's one of my favourite songs off the record of one of my favorite songs that we've ever made.
I hope and I believe that it will help at least someone out there in a moment of weakness or darkness, you know. It’s probably going to help me too, to come back to it and listen to it. I've had a few moments to it already. I remember the morning that we finished the album, that was like the last thing that we did. We’d been on this studio bender for weeks doing like 12-, 14-hour days in the studio. And the last morning we had this deadline we had to meet and it was 8:00 a.m and poor old Adit was sitting there with me like chopping up different takes of that fucking poem and we finished it and printed the song and the sun was coming up and I remember walking home and listening to that song and I went to the park in Newtown, sat on a park bench and just cried and reflected on everything that the two of us have been through to get to that point to make that tune. It's a pivotal moment on the record for me.