STACK September 2017 Issue 155

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While the album is full of harmonies between
the siblings, My House Your House presents one
of the only times on the album when the Stones
sings the same melody line in unison, with no
harmonies. “I really like it,” Stone ponders. “It’s
kind of off the books… it’s so easy to jump in and
say ‘let’s do the fifth’, try a harmony. [In unison]
is kind of just leaving all that behind, and you’re
purely just singing what it is. When you start
repeating a line over and over again, its meaning
becomes stronger. You’re not trying to do
anything else but sing the line because it draws
more energy to it, in a way.”
Angus says it’s strange to have sold out the
Snow tour before the album is even released –
“in a perfect world I’d love to release the record
so people can soak it up, and then do release
dates” – but he’s overwhelmed by the faith it
symbolises. “It’s really special – these people
haven’t heard it yet,” he says. “I really believe in
this record. I think it’s something that’s going to
change things in the way people hear [us] write;
it’s really establishing a new level for us. But it’s
almost like you’ve got this secret, and it’s about
to drop, and it’s a really cool feeling that [fans]
have already committed. I’m stoked those guys
believe in us before they’ve heard what the
record’s going to be.” ZKR
because its cantankerous old mind is just as
fallible as a human’s. “Beats from a computer
– the ones you create in ProTools or Ableton or
whatever – those are really rigid and exact,” he
says. “The thing about the organ beats is, across
six minutes, the timing actually moves. It’s not
a metronome. You can’t programme anything –
you have to play everything live, around it. And
I guess it’s cool in that way – you get a lot more
liveliness and energy in the real world.”
The organ’s sweet, whistling tones appear
on the album’s title track with a little swoop to
each note; that sweet ease drifts across the
entirety of the album, with sometimes direct
and sometimes abstract lyrics evoking the
pastoral feel of the landscape in which it was
made. There’s a spoken monologue in Make It
Out Alive, in which Angus channels some sort
of contemplative Cohen Brothers character – a
technique he says he began exploring with
Marinade, a song he wrote for his solo project
Dope Lemon – while in Who Do You Think You Are
he repeats the strange line “Clean as a hound’s
tooth.” “I don’t know, some of the things that
come out of my head,” he says. “Hounds… they
rip meat apart and it’s quite savage. But their
teeth are always polished… I guess it’s a sort of
play on that savagery.”
Right at the beginning of the teaser clip for
Angus & Julia Stone’s new album Snow,
Julia’s standing in the doorway of the siblings’
NSW Hinterlands studio holding a steaming mug
of tea, and behind her the little wedge of wooden
cabin looks like it can’t possibly be more than 10
by 6 foot big. “There’s two rooms – there’s the
control room, which is divided by a wall which has
a fish tank in it, and you look through it to the jam
room, which is the bigger room,” Angus Stone
explains. So sort of like that scene in Romeo +
Juliet where the lovers first see one another?
“Like that, but you’re looking through at grubby
musicians. It’s not as romantic. It’s very quaint
but it does the trick.”
At this mini-haven amongst the foggy rural
loam the two Stones wrote and recorded the
12 tracks which make up the album, with a
third honorary participant: an enormous, double
keyboard organ. Its distinctive sound permeates
the record both melodically and rhythmically, as
Angus says they often used its inbuilt drum beats.
“I bought it out of a newspaper for 150 bucks.
That organ pretty much became the phantom
member of the band – it was an essential part
of this record for sure.” More so than any other
kind of programmed instrument could ever be,
034 SEPTEMBER 2017
visit MUSIC NEWS
What was the recording process
like bringingViolent Soho's Luke
Boerdam in with Dave Parkin?
How was the shift in dynamic
from your previous work with
Dave?
It was like having a fifth
bandmember in the room who
could detach himself easily from
the songs to see if we could
improve in any areas. It was a
new dynamic, that's for sure, but
I felt we all gelled really well...
it felt like a bunch of friends in a
room recording an album. He did
manage to push us out of our
ANGUS
& JULIA
STONE
Snow by
Angus & Julia
Stone is out
September 15
via EMI.
continued
TOURING
21/09 - 29/09
TIRED LION comfort zones a little in terms of
our usual TL structures.
You’ve spoken about growth
(personal and as a band) a lot. If
Dumb Days were recorded two
years ago how would it have
been different to now?
I honestly think if we recorded
it back two years ago, all songs
would have been in drop D and
had some sort of Smashing
Pumpkins rip, haha. Glad we
waited it out...
Japan is an angsty, snarling