Loud and Quiet presents Midnight Chats.
Evening listeners, Welcome to this new episode of Midnight Chats. Before we start, let it be known that it is tough being on the cutting edge of hard hitting journalism here every fortnight doing our podcast. It really is. The conversation you're about to hear starts with a discussion about when it's okay to throw a snowball at a child who's thrown at you, and ends with some powerful chat
about vegetables that look like evil cartoon characters. So we have gone for the big serious stuff this time, and more of that in a sec. Thank you for downloading or streaming this new episode of Midnight Chats. Last time out, Stuart was chatting to Old Jay. Do check that episode out if you haven't already. I'll be honest. They were a lot funnier than I was expecting. Really really enjoyed it,
and they sounded like good company. If you're one of the hardcore that have been with us since the early days of Midnight Chats, first off, thanks very much, but also sorry because you might have heard this before. We have had some new subscribers recently, so I did want to quickly just explain what it is we do here on our podcast, it's Midnight Chats. We're mak a new one every fortnight. They go up on a Thursday at midnight,
and our guests are musicians. We like musicians we think are interesting in conversation that has a late night feel. Sometimes I host them, I'm Greg and sometimes it's Stuart, my colleague, and yeah, that's it in a nutshell. We also make a magazine here where we're based in London that comes out every month, and in fact we've just put out a new issue and Serpent with Feet is on the cover if you're listening to this in the UK.
We have also just launched a new subscriber offer for the magazine where you can gift a mate three issues for free for nothing, which we think is a pretty good deal. If that sounds like quite a good deal to you, there is loads of information on a website about it. That's where you can sort it out. It's Loud and Quiet dot com slash subscribe, that's the place to go for that. Okay, that's the sales. Pitch over
and onto. My guest on tonight's podcast, Courtney Barnett, dropped by our offices in East London to record this conversation. It was at the beginning of March, which is a while ago now. She was on tour playing in her partner Jen Kloer's live band. It was really cold that day, I think, perhaps even as cold as minus twelve or something like that. Anyway, there was four or five six inches of snow in London. The schools were closed. It
was quiet, it was empty. There were mostly people skiving off work, pretending that they couldn't get there, that kind of thing. But we were chatting because Courtney has a new album out. It's called Tell Me How You Really Feel, and it's going to be released in the middle of May as the follow up to the Australian's very successful debut Sometimes I Sit and think and sometimes I just sit. That was an album that saw her nominated at the
Grammys at the Brits. She toured all over the place and it threw her into a world that I get the impression she definitely wasn't expecting but deserves. Nonetheless, Anyway, Courtney was lovely and the conversation you're about to hear kind of goes all over the place. There's some stuff about Courtney's needy and angry but lovely sounding cat bubbles.
We talked about going to the cinema and where the best place is to sit and whether you should make any noise with the snacks that you take to the cinema. The Breeders come up because Kim and Kelly Dial from The Breeders, who Courty's a huge fan of, appear on her new album The Typewriter that Courtney wrote some of the lyrics on for this new album. And also we finished things off by talking about Roast Dinners because the
final track on the album is about roast Dinners. One final thing this will only make sense if you get to the end of the podcast, which I hope you do, But the evil cauliflower that Courtney is describing is actually a lime green Romanesque broccoli cauliflower. Now, if you've never heard of that before, I hadn't google it, and it will make sense because it does look very evil. So listen to this podcast and then feel free to search for some evil looking vegetables. That's exactly what I did,
So there you go. Enjoy we episode forty seven of Midnight Chats with Courtney Barnett and we'll see you next time. I've just checked and it's twenty six degrees in Melbourne today. Oh toasty. Right here in London as we sit down to record this, it is something like minus five I heard on the news. I'm guessing you've never seen London like this before.
No, I've seen a bit of snow kind of maybe in Chicago when I've been there, but I think I think this is the most the most I've ever kind of been a part of. So it's it's quite exciting for me.
Presumably you didn't get a lot of snow in Melbourne or Sydney growing up, so is it still got like a charm factor? Do you think, oh snow, that's nice? Oh yeah, oh snow? Is it pain?
No, it's so romantic.
Yeah, we've got a bit of snow like you know, up in the mountains, but it wouldn't snow in the in the city, in the city, so it's like the movies out there.
Yeah. Did you have to go on like a family holiday or a school trip or something to actually go and see some snow going up in Australia?
Yeah, I remember I lived in so Yeah, I grew up in Sydney and I remember we went on a school trip to Canberra, like where Parliament is. It's between Melbourne and Sydney, but closer to Sydney. So they couldn't choose where to make Australia's capital, so they made this little make belief place. It's called the Act. So yeah,
I saw a bit of snow there. But actually there was this weird when I was eighteen, Oh yeah, eighteen, I got you know, glandular fever, like so I was I was home from school for like a week, and which I was upset about because I loved school.
Nerd and this is.
In tazzy and I was sleeping on the couch that's like the pull out couch in the launde room, and I woke up one morning I was really sick and fevery, and I woke up and it was snowing everywhere, and that never happens there, Like we've got Mount Wellington where it snows, but it wouldn't snow at like you know, ground level, and it was really beautiful. I've never forgotten this because then my mum came up and was like, good morning, and she was like, I've got some sad
news to tell you. Your your grandfather passed away. Overnight and I was like really sad, but it was this really beautiful, weird moment, like of something so surreal, and I've never forgotten it. I always think about it now when it snows. So anyway, there's a little side note, side story.
If you had a snowball fight today not today, have happened before?
Yeah, differentely when we probably as a band on tour getting over excited with the snow.
The reason I asked because this morning I woke up and where my flat is, there's like a little car park and it was full of snow and it's some families that live next to us, and one of the children of the families threw a snowball at me and he's about six years old. And I didn't really know what the etiquette was with that. But do you throw a snowball back at a child? Like what?
What?
I didn't really know whether to engage in a snowball fight, because you don't. I sort of wanted to competitive, but I also didn't want to throw a snowball.
At a child that I don't get arrested.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's tricky. Don't know about the snowball etiquette. I have no idea. Is it nice to be back in London? I mean you've spent you've been We've been here on kind of various trips over the last few years. So is it somewhere that you always when you look at the the sort of list of places you're going to be hitting up, is it always like, oh, we'll be back in London. That'sol.
Yeah, it's you know, I guess because it's that kind of a major, major kind of spot. We've come here definitely. Yeah, spend a lot of time here, done a lot of great shows, and made a handful of great friends in London, and so yeah, it feels like that kind of that home home spot in this area.
So that's always nice.
Right now, back home in because you're based in Melbourne. When you go home, right and that's like roasting hot, it's like midsummer. So how do you feel Does it feel like you're kind of like depriving yourself of summer right now? Or do you not mind? Is it too hot back home?
Yeah?
When I left it was we had like forty degree days, Yeah, which was really crazy, But that's really not that normal.
I think that normally in Melbourne we.
Are it's normally kind of just average. It's never crazy hot, like as crazy as Sydney or Brisbane or Darwin in it's so like tropical. But Melbourne's kind of traditionally, you know, you always take a jacket with you just in case, kind of material. So I feel like the last couple of years, I've kind of chased summer around the world, luckily doing festivals and touring, and I probably deserve a little bit of winter.
I've not been to Melbourne before. I've been to Sydney very briefly. But what's the perfect day back home in Melbourne for you in terms of what you like to do.
I'm normally just hanging around home when I'm home. It's a really nice little spot. And then I've got a warehouse where we run Milk Records from, which is kind of a five minute drive, but normally I walk and it's about thirty minutes through the Mary.
Creek, which is really beautiful to walk along.
And yeah, I normally kind of get up, have coffee, maybe make a piece of toe with Virgie.
Might.
Classic so Australian, and then yeah, put headphones on and walk over to the warehouse and listen to musical podcasts or when I was writing, I was kind of listening to demos and stuff like that. And then I kind of work from the warehouse most days, either doing like Milk Records stuff really boring kind of packing.
Jobs from the day to day detail of running a record label. Like you just mentioned that you might be stuffing envelopes with the latest releases, but you might also be working on the accounts or talking to an artists that you're about to release or something. So what are the things that you love getting heavily involved with with running your own record label or is it everything?
Well, now I think Jen Jen and I do, yeah, a majority of the kind of admin and then we have a couple of awesome kind of warehouse in charge of the shop people. And yeah, Jen is better at the kind of admin talking to artists, talking to organizing things. I'm not the greatest at checking my emails. I've still got emails from like last year that I need to get back to and I always mean to, but I just I'm just no good at it, so it's not
my strength. But I love, I actually really enjoy doing the kind of boring folding T shirts and making everything really neat and tidy and just stacking things, and so
Jen doesn't like that, and I do. I do like it, and you know, stamping things and designing, designing shirts and stickers, and it's so nice having that space because we can just kind of it's quite multipurpose as well, like, yeah, we can have rehearsals there and have little kind of screenings and mini shows, and it's just really nice to be able to kind of use it as a community kind of space.
Did it just evolve like that? Were there places that you look to that you saw were doing similar things that influenced you?
I think when I first kind of had the idea, which seemed quite grand and maybe a bit impossible, it
was along those kind of lines. And I just liked the idea of doing the work and learning how to do the things you didn't know so that you could kind of do it yourself or get people you know, involved to kind of share talents and just as a kind of means, you know, of necessity of just kind of not having the money to outsource like expensive more expensive you know professionals, I guess, And so that's kind of how it started. And then yeah, I saw I got to go to the Nashville third Man, and it
was really inspiring. It was it was kind of everything I'd imagined in my mind in this really cool, colorful place and just really thoughtfully kind of designed and created.
And there's heaps of Melbourne.
Labels like We've got our friends run this label called Poison City. It's a shop front as well in Fitzroy and it's only small, but you know the kind of ethics and morals behind it, and just the passion I think is I'm always so much more attracted to that.
I don't know, the other kind of like not as exciting side of music, of all the all the other stuff, but the more creative side and just sharing that passion with people I think is really it's just when you go to those little shows and you see people just over the moon with what's going on. I love I love going to those to those things.
I think people maybe have like a really glamorous view of what it might be like to run your own record label. What are some of the most sort of menial, unglamorous things that go into actually doing it.
Maybe that kind of stuff I was talking about before, which is not like it's unglamorous, it's just yeah, maybe we always have a funny idea of what the music industry is.
I know I did growing up.
It was a lot more kind of shiny or you know, the evil side of it, which you're kind of told about. But it's really cool being able to just have that kind of platform that we can make art from. And I think that the you know, to keep the rules pretty loose, like it doesn't need to be music doesn't need to be made in a certain way or released in a certain way. We just kind of get used to the methods that everyone does. And you know, it's nice.
We've got a couple of artists, you know, we can kind of sell their prints that they make or just I don't know, just.
So they've got like creative outlets. You can not be limited just to putting out their latest seven inch or whatever.
Yeah.
I just like that kind of idea of being able to to use the platform for for whatever your creative kind of idea. And then we've, yeah, this beautiful community has kind of built around us from all the bands and people who buy the music can come to the shows, and there's no real label of who those people are. They're always so different and I love that they just connect with with the band and the idea.
I think there must be a lot of satisfaction to basically having created your own job by starting your own record label. You're obviously making music and running a label in parallel. But in the future, do you sort of think you'll do you sort of for see yourself carrying on and running the label forever because you've you know, you're cultivating something. Now, do you do you always see those two things working in tandem?
Ah, I think yeah, at that moment, I kind of do.
I don't.
See yeah, in the in the kind of near future, I think that that. I mean, we've kind of talked about, yeah, finding someone who who really is really like minded and and can kind of help do the bits that we maybe don't know how to do as well, or you know, so that Jen and I both kind of you know, make music obviously, and it can really get like eighty percent emails and twenty percent songwriting sometimes. But I think the balances is kind of fun.
You've obviously been on the road a lot so far this year already in fact, like playing in Gen's band, and now you're kind of coming to the point where you're going to be you're sort of talking about your new record with that coming out in May. As part of that, you obviously traveling to different places and doing things like this, having interviews and doing that sort of thing. But today you went to the Cat Cafe And what
was that like? Just for people that don't know what that is, that is a cafe full of cats, Yes, pretty simply. What was that like?
Yeah? It was it was It was nice. It was fun.
You know, the cats seem very happy and everyone there they definitely go to too great lengths to keep the cats happy and safe, which is nice because I'm a cat lover.
Yeah, yeah, I do. Bubbles Bubbles, Yeah, is it Bubbles a hero?
She is?
She okay?
And what's Bubbles like?
She's great. She's kind of.
Needy and angry, but she's really she's really considerate, very warm and loving. She's always always looks after me when I'm sick or sad.
It's Bubbles like when she's angry.
Oh, just biding and clawing, and she's pretty aggressive.
Yeah.
Do you get the impression that when she goes out, she's causing trouble? Like the other day, I was visiting my wife's family and I heard my wife's mother shouting very early in the morning on Sunday morning. And it's because their cat had brought in a pigeon through like into the bedroom and like put it on the carpet and seemed very pleased with itself. Yeah, as if like, look what I've done. This is brilliant. Why don't you think that that's impressive?
Yeah, that was a gift.
Yeah, but unfortunately the pigeon was still alive and did get released. Was okay, Yeah this Bubbles ever do anything like that?
No, I think she's too slow. Yeah she she doesn't. She looks like she's not very nimble. I'll show you quick photo. Sorry for anyone that can't see, but she's a she's a lilac Burmese.
Oh wow, she looks a bit angry in that photo.
She looks like a criminal mastermind.
Yeah, yeah, no, she's I think she's a pacifist, you know. She she sits out in the garden and the birds kind of tease her, and she just wants to get some sun on a Yeah.
Yeah, who looks after Bubbles when you're away.
We got a handful of of great friends who who love her, and they live in sharehouses and I think they come and stay at our house and look after her.
She looks after them cat protection. When you get home, is Bubbles generally pleased to see you? Or is Bubbles like, where the hell have you been?
She's pretty Yeah, I think she's happy. She doesn't play it too cold.
Yeah, you started this year heading out on the road quite a bit. What are you like? I mean, it sounds like being at home is great because obviously, you know, you're running the label and very busy with all that side of things. So are you type of person that really enjoys being out on the road or are you constantly thinking about being at home or do you can you enjoy both those things?
Yeah, I enjoy birth.
I think it's and I've definitely, you know, learned that the balance, the balance of those two things is so important because too much touring, I think can kind of drive you crazy. And you know, everyone in my band, including myself, you know, has a partner, so to be away I think can be obviously difficult on relationships. Yeah, I think finding that balance of music home, family, because yeah, that stuff's obviously so important. I love I love being
able to tour the world. It's such a huge kind of privilege and for those songs to connect with people so amazing. But yeah, families is really important and spending that kind of quality time. Yeah, it's nice making the balance.
How do you think back on the period now where when you released your first EPs and the debut album, you were touring so much, felt like you played a lot of show. So do you think back onto that period now and be like, Wow, I'm almost not sure how I had the stamina to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it blows my mind because I'm quite a lethargic person most of the time. And it's almost like it's like a sink or swim kind of thing. Just kept on, kept on swimming, and it's so exciting. I think I'd never been overseas before before. Music kind of took me, took me around the world. And yeah, for the kind of small parts of tour that can be tiring or annoying or whatever, it's pretty minimal compared to the kind of opportunity and environment and people that you can meet, I think, And.
That period obviously took you around the world, played probably hundreds of shows, even took you to places like the Grammys, which was well, what was the Grammys, like because I mean I imagine that was quite a severe experience.
Yeah, it was pretty surreal.
Just I guess a place I never would have thought I would have end up, and you know, I might never be invited invited back, So it was like.
A strange I mean, it was great.
It was great to be Yeah, just to be kind of considered as as whatever the word is, like a nominee, someone who I just feel like I don't really fit the mold of what that world is maybe, So it was you know, it's kind of nice to think that my music can transcend somehow to another world where I thought maybe I didn't, I didn't kind of belong.
But yeah, did you kind of enjoy the night because it was fun? Yeah.
Earlier on I was watching them, I was looking it up, and I watched the video where you were walking you were on the red carpet and you were speaking to a guy, very enthusiastic reporter. I think his name was Tyler, and it just looked that like American entertainment world, it is so sort of energetic and kind of hyperactively excited about something like the Grammys and there's all these people
coming down the red carpet. It looks manic, and yeah, I don't know whether, like I wasn't sure whether you sort of found the whole thing kind of curious, interesting, or just like bizarre.
Yeah, I guess a mixture of all those things. It was pretty bizarre, I guess for me because it's, yeah, not my world, but I guess yeah, it's some people that is their their world, and that's cool too.
I love there's a bit in it where he said like, oh, do you want to collaborate with Alsia Keys and Beyonce or something? And I was just like, and you were just you seem to be just like wow, I don't know.
Yeah, sure, I'm looking for him.
So once that sort of period had come to an end, you played your last show in support of the debut album, did you you headed back to Melbourne? And what was that experience of kind of decompressing from that sort of two or three year on the road period, Like, because it must be strange when you wake up on that Monday morning or whatever and you're like, Okay, so this is the point where I'm supposed to start writing more music or whatever, Like, what does it feel like?
Yeah?
I almost can't remember what the what that kind of period was, like I just kind of got back into the there's always stuff happening, you know, And I think we did. Yeah, I was writing, and then I was just working and catching up with friends and family and kind of I guess what I would normally do when I'm when I'm home, And we kind of had some Milk Records projects, which you know, became the next kind
of thing to work on. And then I did Gens album, and then me and Kurt started talking about our our thing, and I kind of made a bit of an effort to try to like what we were talking about before, how you never do things in your own city, or we do, Like I think that we go to a lot of like indie rock shows, which is, you know,
you're in your own little bubble. But yeah, trying to got a friend who works at a theater company, and every now and then she would get free tickets to a show and see if we wanted to go, so we'd go along, go along to some theater and I think I kind of booked us a couple of tickets to the Ballet and and like, oh I love it,
like I used to go as a kid. Yeah, yeah, we went, we saw like some some like a string quartet, and I don't know, just doing things that we always kind of talk about doing but are too lazy to do and or you get too trapped in your own thing. And Jen and I kind of work aholics as well, so it's like, oh, we'll just we'll just keep on working and this thing until nine pm.
And then you know, it's like.
There's just no boundaries of work, I think in some arts practices.
Or just the kind of industry.
So yeah, just making a bit more of an effort to spend quality time, and yeah, treat ourselves to because I get so inspired by by things like that going to the cinema. And I used to get really anxious going to the cinema, so I never wanted to go. And then when Jen and I got together, she liked it, so we'd go on dates to the cinema, and now I love it again.
Yeah, always that you didn't enjoy about the cinema, Oh, I think just like is it people like rustling around and just the fact that you're wear the fact that there's a lot of people watching basically the TV to get that which is just stressed.
No, I love that I love the weirdness of that concept. I uh, I just don't I need an asle seat. Oh yeah, so if I if I would go and like get trapped in the middle, I didn't like that.
My wife likes to sit in the front row.
Oh yeah, okay, I'm not sure.
About that because I mean, there are obviously legroom benefits you can stretch out, but saw next saw neck. And also it's it's no good if you're going to see a three D film because you're wearing the glasses. You can't you don't get any of the three D.
Yeah, you get to see So.
I swear people some people do just come to make noise just to deliberately annoy other people, even if I have got some, I don't. I'm not. Do you take snacks. I don't really taken.
I do Jen love snacks.
But we have this, we have this constant battle because she doesn't care making noise, and I'm really self conscious of making noise for other people.
So you're really carefully past that backet.
I like when in once with a.
Chop top.
Yeah you know, yeah, everyone that's truck ups right, And I didn't eat it because we got in and the first part of the movie was so quiet, and I was too afraid to open it and then eat it because it's all the crunching, and so I just sat there with it and she she was like you.
Why didn't you eat it? Like why do you care so much?
And I'm also cinema, Like, sweets are really expensive, aren't they. Yeah, you buy to treat that it is a tree. It's part of the experience. Sometimes I buy. Sometimes I do go to the shop that's next door to the cinema, buy some popcorn and hide it in my jacket. And I'm always a little bit worried about getting busted as you walk in to give your ticket, as if they're going to say, like, we are aware that you're carrying. It's always a little bit. They always have a little
bit of the fear. I've never been caught. What was the last film you sortly loved?
Oh?
We saw the other day in Cologne, Germany. We saw the new Black Panther film, which was great. It was you know, English with German subtitles.
Not the other way around. That was great.
I keep meaning every time I'm away, I really want to. I always mean to go and see like a film in French in France, in French with English subtitles and just sit there by myself with like a little red wine or something, and but yeah, I always forget. Before that, we went and saw Call Me by Your Name. Yeah, I didn't know much about it and we kind of randomly picked it as a little date night film. And yeah, it was perfect.
I've not seen all of the Oscar contenders yet. That's one of them, isn't it for best film? I thought it was superb, really really good.
Yeah, the chemistry, it was very sensual. The whole film was really Actually he was in Ladybirth. That's another film I saw.
Yeah, yeah, is that good. Yeah, I like that a lot, so many films.
The greatest thing about having to make that big flight back and forth to Australia is catching up on lots of films.
I was filmed slightly the words not sorry, but I do kind of feel for artists that over in the UK where you were coming from Australia, because you can't just like pop pome can. Yeah, you are actually got to go back to the other side of the world. Yeah, when you get on the plane, do you just gorge on films? Is that your thing? Is that how you get through that twenty four hour journey.
Yeah.
I've tried to do other things, like I try to work, or I try to write or read, but everything is too hard, I think, and I hate reading being when everyone's sleeping, being the only one with that really bright light on, and.
It's like the cinema imlet.
I can't. I've never woken up the person next to me if they're asleep and I need to go to the toilet, I can't do it. It's too awkward.
I need the aisle. Yeah, yeah, same as the cinema.
I can't just have a panic attack if I'm stuck in the in the not aisle.
It's making me feel nervous just thinking about now, like tapping the stranger on the show. Can I go to the toilet?
Yeah, you just got to jump Clive over.
We've not really talked about your new album yet. Your new album is called Tell Me how You Really Feel? Is it tell me how you really feel? Or is it tell me how you really feel?
Because I was reading it earlier, I.
Was know it feels like the kind of title that you could The words are ambiguous and cold in different ways. Is that a deliberate thing.
That's kind of the intention. Yeah, I think it. Yeah, at different points in my life, you know, it's me asking the question, and it's other people asking the question of me, and it's earnest and it's sarcastic, and yeah, I think it can be all of those things.
The ten songs that have ended up on this new album, were they the ten songs that you wrote for it, or did you sit down and write some songs and stop writing those songs and write some new ones or how did it all come?
Aboun?
I wrote a handful that I probably threw away, but normally, normally I try to stick with them and turn them into, you know, better versions of themselves. But yeah, I was writing a lot of kind of folk songs. I guess I was playing around with my little harmonica, and some of them kind of kind of edged in, like walking on eggshells.
I don't know.
There's one other song we recorded that didn't end up on the album. I just felt like it didn't fit, and ten songs felt quite symmetrical.
Nice you wrote the lyrics on a typewriter, Yes, some of them. Yeah, that been made into a bigger thing than I actually is. Yeah, Okay, made this new album using just the type.
Yeah, everyone's asked me.
Yeah, I got given a typewriter of an old friend, and I wrote, my mom, you know, used to write on typewriter as.
A kid, and I loved it.
I would always jump onto her typewriter and write stories before we you know, got a computer, and and so yeah, I got this new one and just loved it. And I kind of I think I I use just different just to to trick the brain into productivity, like to
jump to different writing stations. And yeah, I'd write like an hour on typewriter or something, and you just see how it changes the rhythm and the speed kind of slows you down a bit, and it's a bit clunky, and you kind of come out with these half half written sentences because your fingers can't keep up with your brain.
And hard, isn't it?
Typewriter?
I like? I like it? So it was.
It was a good, a good kind of part of the whole exercise.
I guess I've got this vision of you typing your lyrics and kind of as if you're in a sort of newspaper office in Chicago.
The green visor.
Yeah, exactly, just like type away and you know, not that one like kind of pulling it out, chucking over your shoulder into a waste paper bin basket behind you. I mean, it's it's a collection of songs that definitely have a sense of like frustration and definitely like to term nation and vulnerability and sadness and whole collection of different feelings. So was it a was it an album that came easily to you when in terms of the subject content, or was it a real kind of inward look at yourself.
I think the ladder it.
Yeah, a lot of it was kind of just dwelling on and trying to kind of really get to the bottom of a lot of those just a lot of those kind of behavioral patterns that I would I feel myself, you know, practicing forever since I was a teenager, kind of the same thought patterns of negativity or just those kind of self esteem or even just that pattern of apologizing for nothing, just that weird kind of apologizing for
having an opinion for existing. It's I think I realized how kind of damaging it is to my self esteem, so I tried to kind of catch myself doing it. And yeah, so I mean that doesn't really answer your question, But that's a snippet of the stuff.
It was kind of all all that stuff.
That is up there, and but then the kind of bigger I don't know, the world. I think I was feeling a lot of sadness for the world, which yeah, sounds a bit pathetic, but instead of doing something about it, and you know, being sad doesn't feel very very helpful. I think that was me trying to kind of find a way to turn that sadness and.
Anger, like a lot of anger just for the.
Kind of inequality of everything and kind of all those things that I don't know, we're just really upsetting me, I think the last couple of years, and trying to find a way to turn that into some sort of positive and useful thing instead of just swallowing.
How did you find that process of articulating that very difficult?
Yeah, and you know, I don't even know if I got there, but it was a kind of step in the right direction, I think, and I feel I came out of it feeling pretty optimistic actually from from where I was, and quite kind of empowered. And I was reading a lot and listening to a lot of a lot of different music and just yeah, just feel like pretty inspired to continue existing and making stuff.
Yeah, you've got Kim and Kelly dial on the record from the Breeders. Yeah, just tell me how you got them involved, because that's exciting.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was really really happy.
I met Kim a couple of years ago doing.
Well.
We on a phone call.
We did a podcast called Talkast, which is awesome, and and so we kind of got on well. And then we stayed in touch and just email each other regularly.
And I was in.
Town and and they dropped into the Breeders making the album in the studio and they needed some some vocals on a song, so we did that. And then and then when I was doing my album, I Kim was like, let me know if you ever need some some vocals in return for the other vocals.
So I sent.
Them this song and and Kim and Kelly sang some some oh two songs. But yeah, so that was great. I think it sounds so good. Their voices sounds so good. It's just such interesting, Yeah, just such great musicians like that. Even the harmony choices are weird, really weird, but really perfect.
A real buzz to have something like the Breeders and the record as well, it's so good.
Yeah.
The album ends with a song called Sunday Roast. Tell me about how that's about Sunday roasts and such a British thing, Sunday roast. We're obsessed. Yeah, just tell me a bit about that song.
It's kind of Australian as well. Well, you know, I guess, well, no.
We'll give you that.
Australians they have a Sunday roast.
Yeah, growing up I remember we do a lot. But anyway, recently we a group of friends in my kind of neighborhood. There was a group text that was the Sunday Roast group text, and we'd kind of swap around houses each week or not every week, whenever everyone was around, and you know, that person would cook the majority of the of the roast, big veggie roast as well, and people would bring bits and it was just this really simple
community friends catching up, being there for each other. Kind of it's pretty for the majority, pretty positive, but I think parts of kind of touch on just watching people back to the you know, the general theme, the morose theme of the album of just kind of watching friends suffer and not not knowing how to deal with things and as a friend trying to trying to navigate how to be of of assistance or be of service of some sort, and but but mostly how that can kind
of be achieved in just that kind of togetherness, which is, yeah, it was, I didn't I didn't mean to ended on the album ends, you know, on a really optimistic No. I think because of that song and the fade out kind of leaves you fading into optimism, which is which is really really nice, that kind of hopefulness as opposed to the first song, which is kind of hopeless.
So it is about Sunday riasts.
Yeah, are you good at making a Sunday roast? No?
I can't cook. No, No.
And what's your favorite part of Sunday roast?
Garlic? Just like who you're going to say?
It was not garlic.
I just love the whole Yeah, I love it.
How can you? It's got to be the roast. Potato, isn't it.
Yeah, they're good, they're good. Yeah. Broccoli love it? Yeah, Carrots, Yeah, gravy.
We'd have because a majority of us are vegetarian, we kind of we've got a good mix of veggies. What's that thing that's kind of like a coulieflower, But it's got.
A weird name. Do you know that?
Do you have that here?
It's kind of like it looks a bit like an evil you know in cartoons when there's like the good guy and then the bad guy is kind of the same but slightly more like pointed features and a bit more is an evil? Yeah, evil cauliflower. I hope someone knows what it is and.
Somebody will be able to tell us. I don't know what the evil cauliflower is.
It's really nice, so like a whole roasted one of them.
What's your what's your opinion on the Yorkshire put in?
Ah?
What's that again?
Like the battered sort of the round sort of battered. I don't know. How do you just like a pancake? Isn't it okay? That maybe is the British part of the rest there isn't sweet?
Yeah?
Yeah, kind of. And then if you go to British festivals do this thing now where they'll serve a roast dinner in a giant Yorkshire pudd in, so it'll be like the size of a dinner plate, and then everything will be chucked in, including the gravy. You see people at festivals trying to eat it. And just like dropping it down themselves.
What's that weird soup thing you guys do? Like a pie and a soup?
Do you do that here? I don't know, I don't know.
Maybe someone tricked me, I ye.
Midnight Chats is a Loud and Quiet podcast production by Emma Snook Music courtesy of gold Panda. Search Midnight Chats on iTunes for more episodes and to subscribe. For more information, visit Loud and Quiet dot com.
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