Avalanches

The Avalanches talk about the cosmic origins of their new album, "We Will Always Love You," which takes inspiration from NASA's Voyager space probes, and includes guests like Rivers Cuomo, Mick Jones, Perry Farrell, Leon Bridgers — and a sample of Karen Carpenter.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Inside the Studio presented by iHeart Radio. I'm
your host, Joe Levy. Okay, it is December. We have
almost made it through and certainly this year has been

(00:22):
um and I'm trying to figure out how I could
put this without cursing for the next forty or fifty minutes.
But let's just say has been a difficult year. But
it does bring us something special as it winds down,
and that is a new album from the Australian duo
The Avalanches. It is called We Will Always Love You.

(00:43):
It's here and it's spectacular. And this is only the
third album The Avalanches have released since their debut Since
I Left You, twenty years ago, and and and each
one of these albums is pretty much amazing. My friend
Sasha fair Jones likes to say there one of the
only groups to bat a thousand in the twenty one century,

(01:04):
which I guess is actually a little easier if you
average one album every six or seven years, but still
part of what makes it so impressive is that each
one of these albums has been a different kind of adventure.
That debut Since I Left You came out in the
year two thousand and it was lovingly constructed bit by

(01:25):
bit out of about thirty five hundred samples of what
Robbie Chader calls junk store records, which means samples that
you don't recognize right away. So Since I Left You
is a big favorite of Team Inside the Studio. Shout
out to team leader Noel Brown, who took time out
from talking about conspiracy theories on his podcast Stuff They

(01:48):
Don't Want You To Know to make sure that he
could be on production duty when we recorded this episode's
interview with Robbie and Tony Deblasi. And you know, one
reason I love Since I Left You is that some
moments it sounds like what happens when you have two
tabs open on your browser and they're both playing sound
at the same time. But on the other hand, it
had this out of left field hit Frontier Psychiatrist that

(02:10):
had turntable scratching on it, so it sounded like it
was put together by a live DJ. But but most
of the album was just a seamless and sunshiny flow
of really relaxed and easy grooves. What wasn't seamless, relaxed
or easy was making a second album that took sixteen
years The Avalanches did not release Wildflower until there were

(02:34):
a lot of stops and starts along the way. They
spent time assisting on the score for a musical version
of King Kong that did eventually make it in some way,
Shape Manner formed a Broadway, and they also worked on
music for an animated film that's been described as a
hip hop version of Yellow Submarine and that never saw
the light of day. So wild Flower is sort of

(02:58):
a concept album. If your I have a concept is
a mixtape that you'd play in the car on a
road trip from your apartment in the city to some
sort of psychedelic countryside. And if the Avalanches never did
get to make a hip hop version of Yellow Submarine,
at least they got to make a hip hop version
of The Beach Boys Smile, with guest appearances from rappers

(03:18):
like Danny Brown and Bismarckee, Andy Rock luminaries like Father
John Misty, David Berman, Tam and Paula's Kevin Parker, as
well as a sample of a chorus of kids from
a high school in Melbourne, Australia seeing the Beatles come together.
Now it's just four years after wild Flower and we
got a new album we Will Always Love You record

(03:40):
time for the Avalanches, although this album almost didn't happen
at all. Robbie talked with me about his issues with addiction,
and he recently told The New York Times that after
Wildflower came out, he'd been drinking again and he checked
himself into detox and that was January of Seen, and
had to cancel some tour dates, and he was thinking

(04:00):
at that point the group might be over. But when
he got out of rehab, he found that Tony had
managed to do some touring without him, and and things
were still going. There was still a band, He could
go out on the road, He could play Coachella. So
while every single Avalanches album has mixed joy and melancholy,
the way both of those feelings are super charged on

(04:22):
We Will Always Love You might have something to do
with discovering that the everything you thought was gone, was over,
was done, is still out there and better than ever.
We Will Always Love You is a little less about samples,
a little more about creating music the way most groups do. Drums, bass, keyboards,
Johnny Marr from The Smiths dropping by to play guitar,

(04:42):
Rivers Cuomo from Weezery doing some vocals. You know, the
usual thing. The Avalanches are still obsessed with old records,
but in a different way this time out. They talked
with me about how their idea of something they call
Forever Voices involves how dropping a needle on a record
is like so many the spirit of someone or something
that's departed. And we also talked about how a book

(05:04):
called The Recording Angel by Evan Eisenberg helped shape the album.
And we also talked about how every sound or singer
ever broadcast on the radio is out there somewhere echoing
an outer space. And speaking of outer space, we talked
about the album's connection to NASA's Voyager space probes in
nine seven. It was pretty cosmic. Here's what else they

(05:26):
had to say. Tony and Robbie, thank you so much.
Welcome to inside the studio. Although we're all inside our
respective homes, I think everybody's everybody's at home where I'm
in New York, of course, and you're both where we're
both in Melbourne. I was just about to say stuck in,

(05:46):
but I don't know if I but yeah, we are stuck.
We are stuck in Melbourne. I think if we tried
to leave, we would feel mine so so officially stuck.
But you know that's okay. It's all it's all getting
better and and and and it's Tuesday evening here in
New York, and I guess it's Wednesday morning for Tuesday morning.

(06:09):
This is so fantastic because we're about to talk about
like interstellar sound vibrations, and now we're crossing the dateline.
I feel like I'm living in the future. This is
all happening. It's kind of perfect. It is. We will
always love you, and believe me, I appreciate it. Uh.

(06:30):
This album is a little different for you, guys, and
not just in that it took less than fifteen or
sixteen years to make it, but you went about things
a little differently this time. Like you can hear you
listen to this, you hear the love of the dusty
groove is still there, but things weren't necessarily constructed the
same way. How the process change with this record for
you guys. I think it began with like a very

(06:53):
clear idea of what we wanted to make this time around,
Whereas like the Journey of Wildflower, which you mentioned that
took sixteen years, we're almost finding what that record was about.
As we went along, and we took all the twists
and turns, and um, I have to on the first
cold meet. We got a little lost along the way
and the end result was beautiful, but you know, it
took a long time, just just a little a little lost.

(07:15):
So yeah, with this record, it was a singular vision
to make a record almost like exploring our own mortality
and in a way, our own personal journeys, and so
a very clear idea from the beginning, and that idea
also had some very clear sonic images with it. So
we wanted a shimmering record, maybe a more hi fi record,

(07:37):
and a kind of a more modern sound and records,
so we we still began working with samples, but then
we added other instrumentation, and it was also a way
for us to do something different and be not take
another ten or fifteen years. Yeah, like we really felt. Yeah,
and I think it was just searching for that const

(08:00):
set of what Wildflower was about took so long that
you know, especially Robbie and his infinite wisdom, was like, Okay,
we're going to record a new record. We're going to
work out what it's about before we even start, so
we're not just searching around, you know, the sixteen years
we're trying to find that. So we found it quite early,

(08:21):
and you know, the results are four years later, which
which is for us extremely short for post malone. That's
like a decade or something that you know, well, so
part of the difference obviously the samples are there. But
but on this one, if you wanted a baseline or
a keyboard part, you could play it. You could bring
someone in to play it. Is that about right exactly? Well,

(08:44):
it was our close friend and collaborator Andy, So myself
to Tony and Andrew were kind of like, we're digging
for samples. But Andy's fantastic keyboard players, so he would
do a little chords sequences and sketches over some of
the samples. I always just work with samples, so I'm
always just add samples and samples and samples. But we
weren't afraid to reach out to friends and bring other

(09:05):
people in. And a guy John Kyl Kirby, fantastic keyboard
player and at Los Angeles, and it was just a
way for us. I think it sounds selfish, but the
process of making wealth that is kind of like and
since I left you there, they're lonely long processes. You're
at home digging, digging, dig and dig and digging, and
it goes on for years. So we kind of thought

(09:27):
like it was just as much about the life experience
for us as well, like let's hang out with real
people in the studio, you know, and get their energy
and learn how they make records and learn things and
enjoy the making of it, and um, you know, have
a wonderful life experience as well as making a record

(09:47):
quickly hanging out with real people. We're talking about the
other collaborators on this record. You got to record in
in Melbourne, but also in in Los Angeles, and and
and you've got to work face to face with is
it feels almost like a science fiction world right now,
right because when's the last time we were all in
a studio face to face working, right, But those collaborators,

(10:11):
let's let's let's talk about some of that and and
how much different it was to go in and make
a song as opposed to build a track layer by layer. Well,
I think, I mean personally, for me, I only know
how to work one way. And that's like since I
was like fifteen or something like, I'm I play a

(10:31):
lot of instruments really badly, right, So I'm kind of
an amateur musician, and sampling was like how for me
personally I figured out this is your Sampling was how
I figured out this is how I can express myself.
This is my thing, and I'm going to get really
good at this. And so I always just learned how
to build in layers and how to add layers of

(10:52):
pain and like putting this jigsaw together. And so when
we're working with singers now, like I feel like I
still work in similar kind of way. Um, but it's
just using I guess the singers as as samples as well,
like even the way that you know we'll get a
vocal back and it's never just like oh, lay that

(11:14):
over the track as the track got sent to them.
It's especially Robbie will just take it away and chop
it up and all of a sudden, chorus is in
a different spot and you know, some words are messed
around with. So it's still like this process of using
the vocalists as samples, not just having them kind of
singing over a sample. Better. So cool about it. And

(11:36):
I think came to the process knowing how we work,
so I wouldn't be in the studio, I would say,
give me a minute. I would run and chop up
the take they've just done for play it back to them.
Then they would like hang out, maybe listen to it
for an hour or two, respond to that edit, and
do another vocal take. And it was his beautiful back
and forth thing. So you said that the theme and

(11:59):
direction of this record was more clear from the start,
and and let's talk about what that theme was. I
know part of the focus is something you call forever Voices.
What does that mean? I guess it's something we just
started thinking about as we were diving into this record
and thinking about guys who have always sampled music. I

(12:22):
love thinking about how, you know, we might grab old
record recording from the forties and there's someone someone's voice
captured on that and they've obviously long since passed away,
but their voice remains like a beautiful ghost for a
beautiful spirit. And I often think about, well, what was
going on in their life at the time. You know,
it's like a beautiful little time capsule or message from

(12:43):
the past of someone's whole life and their pain and
their experience captured in a song. And then maybe that's
seven inch record. I was just gonna say, it's like
they're living forever too. It's it's they're always with us
and they never die because their voice is still there
in this beautiful um. Sorry and then um and like

(13:04):
obviously when we sample on vinyl, like maybe someone else
has owned that recording for like twenty or thirty years
and played at a bunch of time and times and
spilled wine on it or added crackles to it, and
maybe going through a break up, you know, and due
to you talking about the user kind of imprinting their
imprinting them the listener, the user imprinting their own touch

(13:27):
on the vinyl they've owned. They put their stylus on it,
and maybe they put some tears on it, spuilt some
wine on it. That's right, that's right. Played at a
hundred times, it's got dusty, and that's how the dusty
sound comes from. And it's like they're impasting their life.
And then you know there their life onto it as well,

(13:47):
and their experiences with that music they're imparting onto the
actual vinyl that we end up in. Say so, it's
a lovely thought, and then and then it makes it's
very humbling as well because then we're just another part
of that process. We find the record in sample it,
put it into a song, and it gets broadcast out
into the radio, and then someone else is driving along
in their car that day and they hear it and
it's part of their life, and it's just a big

(14:09):
cycle of life, you know. So it's a lovely thought.
So the ghost voice is is every recording out there.
It's or the forever voice that is every recording out there.

(14:29):
Is is in a way that the first recording is
a form of sampling and the listening is a form
of adding to that. But there's also this uh interstellar concept,
right the the idea that sound waves go out into
the ethos, literally into space. And you're very specifically referencing

(14:51):
the sending out of sound recordings on the Voyager pro
back in because the cover of the record is this
image of Andy Dreen, who worked on putting that record together.
What's what's called the the Golden Golden Record on the
Voyager Space prep which is such a great such a

(15:12):
great title, so rich too. But but tell me a
little about that. How did you come to that story
and and and what does that mean to you? Well?
I think, um like on this whole We're on this
whole sort of wherever voices tangent and then um, I
was reading a lot about you know, radio broadcast from
planet Earth and how every record, every song ever played

(15:35):
on the radio is still floating out there in space.
And you can kind of calculate actually from the data
was broadcast, how far that those vibrations would have traveled from,
how many light years you know, they would have traveled
from now, and so that you know, you can picture
planet like a radio station just floating around out there,
and Elvis is floating up there, and John Lennon and
you know, and it's like all these beautiful spirits out

(15:57):
there singing to the cosmos since it's it's a beautiful thing.
And then as we were sort of going deeper into
this record, we came across the story of the Voyager
Golden Record, and I think Nassa had approached Annie and
Carl Sagan to compile it in the end of the seventies,
and they went on this kind of epic quest to

(16:20):
because I think they felt such responsibility. You know, it's like,
how do we sum up the sounds and life of
planet Earth on one golden disc? That's going to be
out there floating around in the Coustmos forever in case
it's actually ever found by intelligent life. So they began
this process of compiling this record, and as they were
compiling it, they fell in love and and had had

(16:43):
the idea to record her and brain waves and heart
waves and have them imprinted on the record as well,
so maybe intelligence civilizations would learn about our biology if
they ever found this record. And the day she was
booked to have the scans for that cow proposed to her.
So um, she says that, um, the sound of a

(17:08):
young woman's heart in love has brother captured and put
on that record, and we'll be floating out there in
the Costmos for like a billion years. So this is
this is really an amazing story. And and I got
a kind of deep into it. I think it's a
day or two before they record her brain waves that
he proposes. But the added level to that is that

(17:29):
they knew each other. They knew each other, but they
weren't going out. They never kissed. They're on the phone, right,
they're not sitting in the same room, and he's like,
you know, maybe we should get married. An amazing story.
And then she comes back to him after that and says,

(17:51):
is there a way to capture my brand waves on
an audio recording? And they capture her brain waves while
she's geeking out on on love Now, isn't that? Isn't
that the most beautiful thing you've ever heard? I mean,
see this is used to happen. Well, there's there's that. Yeah,

(18:15):
and the Voyagers story for for for anyone who doesn't
know it, the the idea is that they put this
album in gold on the side of this space probe.
There are two albums, because there are two space probes,
Voyager one and two. I think they're about fourteen billion
miles away by now. But they put all this music

(18:37):
and all these greetings from different people around the globe
and different languages, but chuck berries on their Mozarts, on
their Louis Armstrong's on there. I think there's like wild
sounds and old cons of different things. Yeah, and and
and not only is it called the Gold Record, but
did you know this? The engineer for this record Jimmy Ivan,

(19:01):
oh really yeah, better known for running Interscope Records and
sending out M and M and fifty cent into the
world and sending this thing to space, but he engineers
the recordings, right, well, it is it is a you know,
I guess you know, human mixtape, so that that kind

(19:23):
of ties in with that. No, absolutely so. So this
story comes up on on the right, I mean her
images on the cover of the album, and it's this
amazing image is a picture of her. She's either coming
into focus or sort of dissolving into digital dust as
it were. I'm not quite sure which it is. It's

(19:44):
quite beautiful. Yeah, thanks, it is really beautiful. And that's
our friend Jonathan Sawada, who was exploring I guess we
were speaking to him about the whole uh, the whole
thought process about transmissions and recordings, um, not just traveling
through time but also potentially through space and through other dimensions.
I mean I got interested as well in like mediums

(20:06):
who claimed to contact people who had passed and record
their voices and stuff like that, and that these strange,
staticky transmissions and you know, I mean YouTube is full
of them. And the guy was swearing, it's like that
is that's Karen Carpeter's voice. I've been communicating with her
and you can hear her very clearly, you know, say
this or that. But anyway, I was talking to Jonathan

(20:27):
about this stuff, and so he got this old black
and white photograph of Van and ran it through a
spectrograph which turns it into sound. And then I think, um,
you know, the various color frequencies are laid out on
this sorry, the sound frequencies are aligned to different colors
on the spectrum, and then it's turned back into an
image again and that's the result you get. It's extremely beautiful. Wow.

(20:50):
So so the picture has been transferred into sound waves
and then transferred back into image. Amazing, absolutely amazing. And
again that Carl Carl Sagan and and love story comes
up on the track Interstellar Love with Leon Bridges. Is
that right? That's right. I mean, it's part of it,
you know, because we were I was just talking to

(21:13):
Leon about what this record is all about, and we
were hanging out in the studio and he obviously the
song means has its own meaning to him, but it
was part of the bad story as we were as
we were developing the idea. Yeah, this notion of forever
voices and the and the ghost images, the ghost voices
that you were just talking about on YouTube. That's fascinating

(21:35):
because the album begins with a track called ghost Story,
which is a phone message right from someone who wants
us to know they'll always love us, and we're it's
so hard when we're not together. And I kept thinking
when I was listening to it, you guys must have
recorded this record with a different world in mind than

(21:55):
the one we live in. But when that's the first
thing you hear when you sit down to play this record,
it it really feels almost like a social distancing concept
album from the start, because we are not together now, right. Yeah,
it's it's strange. I mean, it's lovely that you say that,
and it's strange the way it worked out. I think

(22:16):
it was. I read of a find of very beautiful
book in a junk store called The Recording Angel, and
there's a chapter called Solitary Ceremonies, and in um the
writer talks about that solitary thing is sitting down and
like playing a record, and it's almost like a sayan
someone where summoning goes and it's this process we all

(22:39):
know very intimately from being teenagers in our bedroom and
you know your you know music is. I love the
way it can be very very extremely personal but extremely
social at the same time. You can experience it at
a festival with twenty people, but it can also be
this thing where you're listening to a record on your
own when you got a broken heart it or you're

(23:00):
lonely and it can comfort you, you know. So that
we were exploring those, some of those inner journeys and
some of those inner moments, and I guess it's just
aligned perfectly with that the loneliness that we're all kind
of feeling at the moment, you know. Um, and it's
if it's a record about connection, you're right, maybe it's
it's um, it's resonating right now. But but in some sense,

(23:25):
I want to ask you, have you made this with
the idea of, oh, it'll be summer, we'll be able
to go out and play some festivals, see some people.
It was supposed to come out in May or June
or something and we and we were going to be
playing in Europe and so but we've we've had a
massive you know, pretty much all year we've been locked down.

(23:46):
So so a lot of this record, I mean, we
we've made it before the lockdown, but a lot of
the process of releasing everything was um done during a
really really hard lockdown. So it was it was like
an average you to kind of also reach out to
the world by putting out all these singles beforehand that
we weren't meant to be releasing so many, but because

(24:08):
everything got um pushed back because of the final plants
weren't printing and stuff like that, it was like we
were able to just um communicate in that way by
you know, putting out songs every couple of months. So
that was that was not really nice feeling to do
while we were ourselves like locked in our apartments. So

(24:29):
you mentioned this has a slightly more modern feel to it,
a modern sound to it. When we say more modern,
how how modern are we talking? All I really mean
is like more base or something like that, you know, you, Yeah,
Robbie always says that it's like, but modern, it just

(24:50):
means we've got to be played some basement, so it's
got some motumand because the listen has since I left
you and it's all just sitting for top range and yes,
so I guess it's just using more of the musical
spectrum um that I think that we would call modern. Well,
I mean, certainly I hear some nineties on this record.

(25:14):
You work with Tricky on two songs, and particularly until
Daylight Comes that that song has a classic Tricky trip
hop feel to it. But but also you know there
there's there's the song with Blood Orange, the title track
we Will Always Love You has that trip hop feel
as well. How how important were those records in the

(25:35):
in the mid nineties, do you extremely important? Extreme? Like
Tricky's first record was something I listened to over and
over and was kind of like, you know, just my
young brain was like, how do how's this record made?
How's this put together? I was just fascinated, you know.
So that records are that very informative and our first,
my first experience of sample based music, you know, along

(25:58):
with some other records. So it's incredible to come full
circle now and work with someone like him. Yeah, but
that that first Tricky record we're talking about, Max and Quay,
did you hear that and understand it as a sample
based or understand the importance of samples on that record?

(26:19):
Because it was only reading about it afterwards that that
I heard any of that in that music. It It
wasn't immediately apparent, I thought, but no, I it was
to me. I was like, I think my ears just
pricked up. It like when something's just a bit um,
it's like it's like something's going on here, you know,

(26:41):
there's like if there's a collage element. I don't know,
it's just immediately drawn to it. It's funny like I
remember like, um, Big Audio Dynamite had a couple of
big radio pop singles in Australia like when I was young,
and it's the same thing. I just remember going like,
how how is this isn't normal music? What's going on here?
Just fascinated how it was put together not normal music

(27:05):
because Big Audio Dynamite Mick Jones band, he'd come out
of the guitar bass drums band, and certainly that was
open to technology and used it. But Big Audio Dynamite
was a very early example of what you could do
with machines instead of just instruments, and and so you

(27:27):
mentioned that. But Mick Jones turns up on this record
on a track called We Go On which features Kola Boy.
And also that is that in fact Karen Carpenter sample
Karen Carpenter singing hurting each other? It is is it
is so So that's another one of the what we

(27:47):
call the kind of spirit ghost samples that you know,
it's like she's being passed for a long time, but
she's still in this new song that we've got just
about to come out. So yeah, we love, we love
all that stuff. And it was so good having um,
Mick Jones and Cola Boy, who's just a legend on there.
But Mick, Mick was a real surprise for that song

(28:09):
because we've kind of set out just the word that
you know, we'd love to get him on a track,
and I didn't really hear anything back, and then all
of a sudden, we get an email saying, oh, by
the way, he's Mick Jones's vocal over this track, Like
how did this happen? You know, you just have to
you just have to pinch yourself sometimes and go, oh

(28:29):
my god, that's that's him. And then you listen to
his voice over the track and it's so unique that
you know, you just keep listening. Um, you know, we
just feel blessed when things like that that happened. I'm
working with such like Angel and what drew you to
that current Carpenter sample? I think it was that was

(28:50):
a sample that we had from years ago from the
wild for our years and back then we used to
put them on CD and share the CED's with each
other and listen to the samples like the mixtapes. But
I think it's just a very sad, very sad, beautiful line,
and it carries it's got a lot of weight. You know,
we're considering her story and her life and um, you know,

(29:11):
like I love lines like that, like in the title
track from the Roaches sample We'll always love you, or
you know, we go on hurting each other, and it
just says so much. But it's still like it's very
much up to the listener to um imprint their own
life story over it, and it will mean different things
to different people. You know. To me, it means just

(29:32):
how cruel cruel people can how you know, as a species,
whether it can be very kind on an individual level,
but um, as a collective, you know, we're still probably
mean to the planet and to each other, and we've
got a lot of growing up to do. That's what
it means to me. But but there's always there's always

(29:53):
with samples like that, there's always I don't know, for me,
there's always just a bit of touch of hope with
the way they sang like they're they're not completely. Just
everything's horrible. It's it's like everything's horrible, but why why
can't we fix it? Like so there's it's just the
way they sung, they still have just that tiny little

(30:14):
bit of positivity to them and that little bit of
joy with them that um that we kind of really resonate,
you know, like like that little space between melancholy and
kind of happiness and that beautiful kind of when you
can get that right and there's just something that hits
you right in the heart, that's that's a beautiful feeling. Yeah. No,

(30:35):
it is such a great example that Carpenter's song of
the California Sunshine pop that has a darkness underneath it,
and not very far underneath it either. Um, it is
right there in the lyric of the song. And it
it also interested me so much when I heard it
because it I recognized it without place. I must have

(30:56):
played it two or three times. I know that song.
I know that song. I know that's a grew up
on that song. I finally understood it was always on
the radio or my older sister was playing it. But
here it is. I've never heard it quite this way before. Um,
and the added level that it is the Wrecking Crew,
the Phil Spector, Brian Wilson Studio band playing on as well.

(31:20):
So there's quite a lot going on there. We get
to work with some great artists, even if they're not
aware that they're working with us, but you know, you
certainly do. On this record. There there are so many fast.
I mean, we mentioned mc jones, but Johnny mar and

(31:41):
mg M T. You're on a track, the Divine Cord.
You you worked with Tricky, you worked with Rivers, Cuomo Cornelius, Uh,
the amazing Japanese artist. Uh. How did how did these
come to beout together? You? You? You said you put
the word out and Mick Jones came back kind of magically,

(32:02):
But tell me about how some of these other things
came together. It must have been a little more direct
than that. Most of them were. Yeah, yeah, I mean
some people like Cornelius is a friend, so that was
just a lovely coincidence. And I think we met him
back he put out a record called Phantasma around the

(32:23):
same time since I left. You came out a couple
of years before actually, so we met him in Japan
way back when, and obviously we've always just really loved
his work and he just happened to be in Los Angeles.
It was my birthday, and he came by the studio
and then this song just sort of appeared. So that
was kind of one of those beautiful coincidences, you know,
that was that was just such a quiet guy and

(32:46):
it was amazing that like that, this is one of
their being in the studio and watching someone perform and
being really blown away because there were maybe ten people
watching him and he just got out lata and so
the track would just go and he just do like
a little and then he'd be like play that back

(33:08):
and then he'd add a little bit more to that.
And then about six takes later a year like everyone's
going we get it. Like at the start, we're kind
of looking at each other, going, what's what's he doing?
And then by the end of the track, he's built
this whole thing that he had going on in his
head and it just, I mean, it just came out amazing,
and you know that that's the real joy of being

(33:28):
in a studio with someone and watching an amazing talent
just do their thing and how inspiring that is. Um. Yeah,
he created like a whole guitar a painting. Yeah, one
note at a time, and there there's notes stacked on

(33:50):
top of each other. They're moving linear and so it's
they're kind of like cascading over each other and ringing
over each other. So he must have had whole picture
in his head before he began. But I think some
of the Los Angeles studio engineers were hanging out, like,
we've been very excited because Kago was saying, you know,

(34:11):
maybe he'd record, and we all organized the guitar. You
were just watching him, said this guy was amazing, like
what's he doing? And then by the was like, oh
my goodness. But it's such a love, yes, such a sweetheart.
So that that that's the kind of moments, said you,
you know, like I'll always remember. And that's the joy

(34:32):
of doing what we do and stuff that we never
take for granted, of witnessing things like that. That's a
special moment in your life. And yeah, we love that.
So Rivers Cuomo from Weezer turns up on running red

(34:55):
lights and and and there's this old story that Rivers
used to tell about keeping all his melodies. He had
a master notebook of all his melodies, and he knew
they were all gold, and he had them cataloged and
he could refer to them. But apparently from from what
you've said, he now does the same sort of thing
with his lyrics. Yeah, it's a PDF and it got

(35:16):
sent to us and it just had the emotion and
she beautiful. Kind of Actually, the reason, just rewinding a little,
the reason we wanted to work with Rivers is because
of that beautiful midpoint Tony mentioned earlier halfway between happy
and said that melancholies place, and that's I feel like

(35:38):
he gets that, and that comes to me. That lineage
is directly like from Brian Wilson. You know, people like
that two Rivers here, Yeah, that that beautiful place where
you know, it's like life is so beautiful but it
hurts so much at the same time, and so and
all these little phrases in this spreadsheet kind of were

(36:00):
like that that you would just read them in your
heartward break And I've been running around the red lights
to get to you might be one of them, you know.
And there was a bunch there, and I think it
was like you guys can choose, choose one, choose, so
that there were three that got sent back, and I
don't think there were the melodies first they were just lyrics,

(36:21):
so it was like three sets of just kind of
chorus lyrics, and we were like, can we hear the
melodies before we choose, So he ended up singing just
pretty quite roughly that you know, roughly for him is
still pretty amazing, each three of the little verses, and
in the end we were like, can we have them all?

(36:42):
Because they're all amazing, So we ended up kind of
working each three into the song. Um, and yeah, it
was just it just turned out so good, and that
was that was kind of the first, i think the
first vocal colab that we we had. So we were like, Okay,
let's keep going with this. This is working, this is good.

(37:03):
And the three that you worked into the song where
those the three rough takes that he had centered did
did you? Did he find them further? For you? Here
we find them further And then um, we also went
back and asked him to just record a little bit
of stuff into his phone for like an interlude stuff
a bit like the album open, and he did that

(37:24):
as well. Rivers was fantastic. Um that bit didn't actually
make the record, but yeah, absolutely fantastic. And we got
we got to meet him too, because that was a
lot of them were done when we were together, but
that one was done fire email. But they came and
played in Melbourne maybe a couple of months after that.

(37:44):
So we got to meet him and you know, we
we were like, this is Rivers. We gotta you know, googled,
you know, all these amazing cool places in Melbourne for hours,
like where were going to take and we're got to
impress him. And in the end we just kind of
it was a rainy day and he's just like, you
just want to walk around in the rain. So we
got some umbrellas, made his hotel and just walked around

(38:05):
and then setting a Starbucks for an hour and talked
and then we went and it was like, still an
amazing experience, but all these cool dinner options and bar
options and everything like that, it was like, no, I
didn't want to do any of you for the world's
greatest sushi or we go to Starbucks in the rain exactly,

(38:26):
that's it. Yeah, walk around Melbourne with umbrellas in the rain.
So that, I mean, that was just perfect. That was
so pardi so Rivers that that track running Red Lights.
It brings me to something I want to ask you about,
David Berman, he was a collaborator. Uh, he read a

(38:46):
poem on Saturday night inside out the last track on Wildflowers. Um,
and sadly he took his own life last year. It's
a loss that hit a lot of people so hard
because he just put out his first album in a decade, uh,
Purple Mountains album, and it was a fantastic album. And

(39:06):
a lyric from one of the songs on that album
comes up on your album on a track called dial
d for Devotion, and then it flows into that river
song running Red Lights. Uh and and and part of
that lyric goes, the light of my life is going
out tonight without a flicker of regret. And I want
to ask you, what what kind of person? How well

(39:29):
did you know David? What kind of person was he?
And what made you turn to that lyric? It's, uh,
it's kind of hard to answer. I guess I mean
to be perfectly transparent. Um. Part of the reason why
Wildflower took so long as because, uh, some my shoes
with addiction personally, and I and I first thought really on, well, um,

(39:53):
we're drinking as a very young person, like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
and by the time I was twenty, i'd nearly I
was it was nearly game over for me. Um I
nearly died, and then I eventually when I first got well,
I threw myself into making music. And that was since
I left you and Um. I had a long long

(40:16):
time have been very healthy and very well, and then
unfortunately fell back into a period of addiction. As we
were making Wildflower, and I've been corresponding with David about
working together, and that's in a strange way, that's how
our relationship began, was corresponding, and he was kind of
he helped me through and he would write me beautiful

(40:38):
emails and sometimes just practical advice about how to look
after myself when when I was struggling, and so we
formed because he had his he had his own struggles
with you know, he just spoke to me from a
personal experience, and I would guess that's not my place
to talk about what his journey, but he UM certainly
was very, very wonderful and caring to me, and we

(41:01):
were those lyrics you mentioned on Saturday Night inside Out.
That was something we worked on remotely during the making
a wild Flower, and I remembered that period very well
because I was very unwell, and his lyrics would come
through sometimes and in this poem and I was sometimes
I would edit parts of it and send it back
and it kind of just kept me going. Um. So

(41:23):
that's how our relationship began, and it was it was correspondence,
and we often talked. He often talked about coming to
Australia and you know, he ah, they never did after that.
But um, that's that's how I knew David and he
I just knew him as just a very very beautiful
man who was very very generous and whose work just
touched me more deeply than you know, than i've I've

(41:47):
really I'm really touched like that, you know. And his
book Actual Air is very very beautiful as well. And
um so he's just was an expiring artist who I
was very fortunate enough to get to know in a
small way. And then, um, we were speaking about doing
more music for this current album, and he sent some
of the lyrics for a Yeah, the Purple Mountains record

(42:12):
in advance, and then a couple of them ended up
fitting UM for different pieces on on our record and
for the Pink Cepoo verse in Running Red Lights, and
David was happy for us to use them, um and
which was lovely is lovely? That that through line from
the previous album to this album, um and then you know,

(42:33):
sadly he passed. The music came at, came out, but
it was just so amazing that we're actually able to
get still just a piece of David on this record
before it did passed. I do also want to say
we're back to this idea of the happy and the
sad together because one thing he was so good at

(42:54):
was there's an element of humor that runs through so
much of what he does. And and that that that
line that that it's in it's in the song the
light of my life is going out tonight, which could
mean a couple of different things, and in fact, in
the song it does mean a couple of different things.
The light of his life that's going out tonight is

(43:15):
someone he's in love with, right, That's one of the
meetings in the song. And so it comes to this line,
the light of my life is going out tonight in
a pink champagne corvette. You know, he loved the the
funny and clever wordplay of country classic song, classic country
songs that that meant so much to him, and it

(43:37):
really is in that Purple Mountains record. Um. And and
that was another devastating thing about his loss, was that
he'd made this wonderful record that said so much about
how to keep going and how to use humor and
and your mind to transform the darkness. Yes, exactly, you
just said it better than I have a cold. Yeah.

(44:00):
And that line, I mean, god, it's just such a
gorgeous line, isn't it, like without a flicker of regret?
And the white ends and I mean he just what
do you? What do you make? Talent? So there's an
idea that that comes up, I think a couple of
times on the record that the idea of music is
a kind of divine force. There's Music Makes Me High, um,

(44:24):
which has a real classic disco feel feel to it.
And there's also a song called Music Is the Light,
which has a bit more of a Ladies and Gentlemen,
we are floating in space kind of feel. Yes, And
I guess we could also include the attractive features Perry
Farrell Oh the Sun, where he's singing about the divine designer. Um,

(44:49):
So what what what? What are you? What are you saying? Here?
Is is music the answer to life's problems? Or is
it just another one of the forever voices acting us sometimes?
What's what's the deal? So, I mean it's a very
personal thing, but for me it's it's it's transformative music transformative,
you know, and it can it can change the way

(45:11):
I see the world completely a certain song on a
certain morning, Um, and I'm just looking at life completely differently,
you know, the way the way it can hit you
and the way it can feels at a vibration or level.
So um and I love breaking down to a very
simple element of what music is just vibration where all
we're all made up of Adams vibrating around. Of course

(45:32):
it affects us profoundly, you know. And it's like and
some music just has a different like beautiful music has
a different vibration to say heavy metal, which is great
in its way, but it's going to hit you in
a different thing. So I don't know, like all these
vibrations are kind of coming and hitting you and you're

(45:54):
accepting in whatever mood you're in. If you're a little
bit sad, it's sad song is just gonna make you feel,
you know, amazing. And so it's like how you resonate
with how our vibration resonates with the vibration of music.
It's just a beautiful thing. Well, I I want to
thank you for making some music that transforms things for

(46:17):
the rest of us. Uh, And I know this wasn't
the goal, but I also want to thank you for
making a perfect album. For sitting on your couch with
a cat on your lap, staring out the window and
wondering if the world has gone to hell yet. I
love that, thank you because that that that was the

(46:37):
way I experienced part of this. And it turns out
it hasn't gone to hell yet, and the music is
awfully good, and I feel like it's picking up. I
feel I feel like there is a there's a mood
lifting in the world, the idea of a vaccine, and
a lot of people seem to be happy that Donald
Trump's gone. So I feel like that they, you know,

(46:59):
in the collective count busness of humanity, we've taken a
little bit of a step up. Hopefully it continues, but
it's so who knows, how's your cat going? Joe? Has
he been good or she's been good? Companion? It's both,
it's a he and she. Thank you so much for
asking because now we've come to something I really like

(47:19):
to talk about. It's a brother and a sister. Uh yeah, yeah,
and they're they're doing well. They've been very good companions. Uh.
And like your record, they will always love me. I've
had the same. I leave by myself and just have

(47:40):
my cat and she has kept me through these years.
So it's it's animals with Joy. Well, I've got to
tell you with the cats, they will love us until
we don't feed them and then they will lead us.
But now so true, for now, they do love us.

(48:00):
Um and and guys again, sincerely, thank you so much
for this record. It is a great thing to hear
right now and a great thing to have right now,
and it really is wonderful. Joy, thank you, thank you
so much. Joe. Yeah, great chat. Yeah, than thanks for
being here, Thanks for being on Inside the Studio, Thanks

(48:21):
for having us, Thank you for having us. Inside the
Studio is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, check out the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.