Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird

“Music is a universal way of communicating, but it’s also just making a bunch of sounds. Some days I'll be hunched over a piano, studying some complex jazz theory, and then five minutes later just have this childish notion that I'm just making noises. It’s simultaneously the most complicated mathematical scientific process and the most infantile experience. It can be both of those… so playful and nourishing whether you're writing it or in front of it.”

 How was the EU/UK tour? Any major mishaps?

The shows all went miraculously well for most of us, but Fran has been doing a psychology degree for the past three years and her exam period fell right over the tour. I’d be listening to podcasts or going for a run to explore the city we were playing, and she’d either be in full sensory deprivation mode with her headphones on studying or doing exams at 4:30 in the morning after a show. At stages she didn’t know what country we were in.

Outrageous behavior, what a powerhouse! Does tour fatigue impact motivation for the project, or even to launch into next writing and recording period?

It’s a double-edged sword. It does take a lot out of you. But I’m also deeply invested in the other things that I do – I teach at a creative writing school for kids and teenagers which I adore. I don’t think it’s this eb-and-flow where music’s the big thing and everything else is recovering from that. It’s oscillating between other projects which also require energy. I'm always grateful to be musically exhausted because I have other creative avenues to go into for a few months at a time. 

But then the other side of the sword is, even though touring is exhausting, you’re amongst the band continuously for weeks and weeks, just constantly playing your instruments and sound checking, so it’s a really creative time as well. I'm writing a lot while we’re touring. It's the same when we’re in a recording studio, most of the ideas or the seeds for the next record come out in studio sessions for the current album, because we’re just messing around and experimenting. So it’s simultaneously exhausting, but really creatively, like, lucrative as well. 

True, so a little bit of that new material it can be quite organic?

Yeah it's kind of a mix. A lot of the time the initial seed will come from something I'm just jamming around with in a studio session. I'll be recording a song for one album and then you just like have some little moment and you're like “Oh, shit! Like, that's cool. Maybe that’s something for the next album.” I do most writing by myself at home, it's pretty unromantic. I deliberately don't really keep a studio at home. I just have a piano, like a very simple keyboard and a guitar with virtually no effects pedals or anything. I'd just like to keep it really unadorned and it all faces a blank white wall. Not to take any of the romance out of it, but to me it’s kind of like desk job stuff. It's just like looking at this wall and sketching out the songs in a lot of detail before we then take them back to a studio. 

How has that process changes between albums New Romancer and Smiles of The Earth?

I think a lot of that was just what the songwriting was about. New Romancer was just this heartbroken record, and up until that point I'd just been a really insular writer. I'd been involved with other creative projects and realized I had, like, quite a controlling voice, which is not always like something you want in the room. But for me, that was the initial sign… I need to be writing my own stuff.

I've always had this intense creative energy, you know? I want control of what I'm creating. And that's what drove the first two EPs and albums for Cousin Tony's. Don't get me wrong, the other band members brought a lot to the table, but I was coming in with fully formed songs, you know? But then things started changing. I moved out of that heartbreak phase, started feeling more open, you know, emotionally and creatively.

But that was also a point where that existing line-up had been together for a while. And I was just like, oh, this is definitely Cousin Tony's Brand New Firebird. It's not going to change again. And we've played a lot now. And everyone's just got such a unique voice. I'm not really getting them in as, like, session musicians to bow to my vision. Everyone's got their own vibe, their own style. It was like, "whatever Pete can do with this guitar part, it's gonna be better than what I could come up with, or whenever Fran can sing on this, it'll be cooler than something I'd come up with”.

There was this tipping point, you know? Like, I read this Jack White interview where he talks about wanting to be the worst musician in your band. And I was like, "Yeah, man, that's it!" Pete's a way better guitar player than me, Matt (bass) is like our favorite musician of all time, and Nick and Fran and Ollie, they're just on another level. I was humbled, man. And I realized, it's not about me trying to outdo them, you know? It's about making space for their talent.

So, yeah, there were a bunch of reasons, but I just knew that if I stepped back and let the band shine, we'd create something truly special, you know? Like, the most elevated, transcendent album we could make happened when I got out of my own way.

Yeah, totally. Obviously, each album's going to sound different and feel different to yourself and to the consumer, but I really felt that listening to Smiles of Earth when it first came out.

Thanks, man. And yeah, like, you know, there are some somber moments on that record, but it's generally pretty joyous. And I think that's just the product of six really close friends, it sounds kind of like friendship to me. It sounds like six people having a really good time. And that has always been the overarching feedback from our live shows as well, even though there's a bunch of harrowing Nick Cavey ballads in the middle, everyone’s feedback is just, “you guys look like you're having so much fun singing those songs” and we are! We really, really are and that's how it feels to be in a studio. Genuinely, there's so much love in the band and we let that into the recording studio on Smiles of Earth. It’s not trying to be like overtly happy or anything but there is definitely a lot of joy and euphoria in the record because it just sounds and feels like what the band is.

Any other inspirations for that feeling?

As vague as it sounds, I just like having a “bigness.” I listen to so much different music and I really admire, like, things that are quite minimal and subtle and classical and jazzy, but the music that tends to come out of me is, like, pretty maximalist. It's big. I like big textures. I don't really listen to bands like this anymore, but when I started Cousin Tony’s it was the likes of M83 and MGMT that I was listening to, people that sounded like they were just having a lot of fun in the studio and trying to make sounds that were big and colourful and synaesthetic. 

Hard to argue with that sub-era of music. It was and still is a big sound. Did it play a part in your early journey into music?

It’s probably 10 years ago now, but right before I started Cousin Tony's I was doing an advertising degree but writing music in all my spare time. I was literally crying on my way to Uni because I felt so out of balance with myself. Then I saw Bon Iver twice in one week. They played at Sydney Myer Music Bowl and then Golden Plains two days later. I remember that first show, again with like the “bigness” thing, the amount of textual information in that sound was the closest thing I could ever describe to like how it feels to be me, or how it feels be a human. 

I know that's how a lot of people can feel, but that’s how your favourite music makes you feel. I didn't know someone could articulate this feeling or these feelings so clearly. Seeing that the first time was amazing, and then seeing it two nights later there was an actual light bulb moment in the middle of the show where I knew I’d have to start writing music. That was obviously, like, pretty transformative. It changed the course of my life within like a week. I went and pulled out of my degree…

Oh, shit. 

Yeah. I mean, like I'd been having this conversation for a long time, but then it was just something like in the middle of that show, watching this guy do it. The second time I saw him, I was right up at the front. There was a human quality to him all of a sudden where I was like “I don't think I'll ever get to that point, but you know, this guy is two meters away from me, but I now need to go on this like huge fucking journey for 10 -20 years to get to that stage.” 

And yeah, like literally quit Uni that week and recorded my first batch of songs which became the Queen of Hearts EP. I recorded that in Sydney, and flew it straight to Melbourne like the next day with just like a CD of the raw mixes and submitted that to the VCA as an audition tape to study composition and then got into that course. It all happened within like a month, and I just completely flipped my life around.

That stems from listening to so much music… but that was like as close as I could imagine to having a light bulb moment. It’s a bit of an old example but like nothing's ever really going to top that for me. 

I’d be surprised if anything did! When can we expect a few hints of what's to come?

We're halfway through album number four. We started last year and then began touring half way through. Now we are starting to look at doing the second half. But that'll still take us the next few months.

I feel like we're due for more music, but I really like taking our time with albums and especially with the song writing. I don't know if that’s something I learned. I have always just naturally taken my time with music especially with Cousin Tony stuff. Everything we've done prior to that just took its time and I didn’t really, like, sign off on a song until it was perfect to me. It's fun to relearn that lesson, to go slow and get things right. I've proved to myself that this is my style, and it is the style of the band. you know, and again, it's not the correct approach. The next producer or songwriter might sit down and tell you the exact opposite. But for me, patiently is how I want to do things. And so that's how we're doing this record. 

Can’t wait mate, thanks for the chat!