New Normal Transcript - Per Question
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.