“We Let Ourselves Lose The Plot”: How Broods Came Back From The Brink

Published: August 19, 2018

On their thundering 2016 single ‘Free’, Broods’ Georgia Nott declared: “I’d lose everything so I can sing/Hallelujah, I’m free.”

At the time, it seemed like a simple statement of intent for an album, but the lyric ended up being eerily prophetic for the New Zealand duo. Following the release of ‘Free’s parent  album Conscious — a gargantuan and near-perfect pop release — the two parted from their US label Capitol Records, leaving them…well, free.

“It was the biggest relief,” Georgia’s brother and other half of Broods, Caleb Nott, tells me as we sit in the upper levels of the office of their longtime Australian label, Universal Music.

“It was what needed to happen,” Georgia adds. “For us to get to this place where we were ready to make music again.”

The two spent the next two years dabbling in side projects (for Georgia it was The Venus Project, for Caleb it was Fizzy Milk) and taking time to consider what the future of Broods would actually look like. They’ve now returned fully formed with ‘Peach’, a bounding single that feels markedly sunnier than their previous releases.

Perhaps it’s the effect of living in LA for the past few years. Or perhaps it’s because that after all these years, Broods finally feel like themselves.

A few days before ‘Peach’ officially landed, Music Junkee spoke to them about how it was to be free.


Conscious was like an industrial, Nine Inch Nails does pop record. What was it like coming back off that massive album and recalibrating your head to the softer sound of ‘Peach’?

Caleb: I don’t know if it’s softer, it’s just…sunnier. It’s more colourful.

Georgia: The whole record is pretty warm. I think the fact that we’ve been living in LA where it’s always sunny has kind of hooked into the way we’ve written this next album. But I think the main thing that’s different about this album is how many live instruments there are, compared to the last two records.

Caleb: It’s a lot more analog. We used way more analog instruments — instead of computers, which is what we did in the past.

Georgia: There’s a lot of live drums, like ‘Peach’ has just a shit-tonne of live drums — that last chorus is all drum fills. But it was fun, because that’s how we started playing music. I think it’s been nice to go back to playing music instead of  programming music.

The live instrumentation was something I noticed when listening to it. Was that born from maybe the stuff you did with The Venus Project? How did those side projects impact on Broods?

G: I think we both just kind of found ourselves thinking “Well shit we don’t play instruments anymore and we want to go back to that”. Because Caleb’s first and foremost an acoustic guitarist. I used to play piano all the time and I think, for us, we wanted to just kind of move away from programming everything.

We wanted to test our songwriting skills and we didn’t want to write around production — we wanted to write production around a solid song.

C: In the past we have picked songs because the production was super cool, and maybe not necessarily because the song was super good. So this time, we’ve like taken our time and we’ve been sitting on songs for a lot longer — and some of them have stood the test of time and some of them didn’t.

If we put out the record like we usually did, it would have been a completely different record than what we are about to release.

What spurred that change? Why did you decided to take more time? 

C: We didn’t have anyone kicking us up the bum. We had no labels behind us on this record until we finished it.

“We feel like we’re in this point in our lives we’re finding ourselves all over again.”

G: And then we got signed to a label based on what we made, and it was amazing for us because we had made this record that had been completely dictated by us and nobody else. Nothing felt forced or contrived. And that’s really exciting for us, because we feel like we’re in this point in our lives we’re finding ourselves all over again.

C: Everyone that knows us says “It sounds so much more like you two as people.” Like in the past all of our press shots were super minimal, super moody and stuff. We’re not those people at all.

G: Caleb’s kind of like a street stoner and I’m a dirty hippy.

C: I’m a pretend gangster.

G: Everybody takes a different route to get to where they feel the most themselves, and I feel like we’re kind of heading there now. That’s something that’s so exciting for us because I feel like this next album that we get to share with our fans is so much more authentic. There’s nothing on this album that we don’t feel 100 percent proud of.

Every single experience writing this album, every single session has been so enjoyable that I feel like the whole experience of making this album, the whole experience of promoting this album and making the video and the press shots, it’s all been so fun. I think it’s going to come across like we’re having a lot of fun too.

Broods

Photo via Broods Facebook

I read that you once said that ‘Free’ was you just being sick of people just telling you what to do. 

G: Yeah. The first lyrics are literally ‘I’d lose everything so I could sing hallelujah I’m free’. And it happened: we lost both our record labels and we became free and we wrote this album. It was like I was foreshadowing this whole situation [laughs].

Were you happy that you lost those labels?

C: It was the biggest relief.

G: I think it was what needed to happen for us to get to this place where we were ready to make music again.

C: I mean Universal Australia have always looked after us, we’ll never change from them just ’cause they’ve always treated us great, but it’s just the rest of the world.

G: Australia is one of those places we can come play a show and we can just have a safe bet that everyone’s going to be happy. And have a good crowd.

C: We’re most loved in this country for sure.

G: Yeah. Out of all the markets, I think Australia is the most fun. Especially festivals, holy shit. It’s so good! For me — because I’m a psycho on stage — it’s nice to have other people being psychos back.


You guys seem to go into an album with a pretty strong idea of what you want the end product to be. Was that the case with the new album? 

G: The weird thing about this one was we didn’t go into it thinking that we wanted to achieve anything.

C: We didn’t have any direction that we needed to go or anything. So it took about two years. More like one and a half years, before we actually got on track. And that’s when we wrote ‘Peach’.

G: Yeah. I think definitely when we wrote ‘Peach’, we were like “I think we’re figuring it out.”

C: It’s kind of funny because you write this record, and then all of a sudden songs from two and a half years ago all of a suddenly fit in with the latest stuff.

Does there seem to be a through line through all of the songs? Did any major themes emerge? 

G: There’s definitely a huge “Who am I? What am I doing? Am I going crazy? What’s wrong with me?” kind of thing. I think it’s the most introspective body of work we’ve ever done. We tried to push ourselves to write about things that weren’t necessarily the things that you hear about. There a track on the album called ‘Hospitalised’ and it’s about wondering what it would be like to break a bone.

C: It’s about just having a reason for feeling pain and knowing exactly what it is — not just being in pain and having no idea why you feel like that. It’s like “Man, I wish I’d just break my arm so I knew exactly what was wrong with me.”

Photo via Broods Facebook

I relate to that so much. It’s like “Oh fuck, I wish instead of chronic anxiety I could just break a fucking finger.”

G: Exactly! Yeah instead of me having to be like “Hey, um, so I don’t really feel good…I don’t know why.”

C: ‘Peach’ is about that chronic anxiety, and having very high highs, and very low lows, and just celebrating being fine in the middle. Just being “I’m okay today.” Like “I’m just good.” I’m not a maniac, and I’m not depressed.

G: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of that kind of thing throughout the album. That’s something that we’re both so passionate about. I think ever since we first began writing music, we wanted to be very open about that side of us and to be so open with our fans about our own mental space. I think it’s really important.

C: Because if you can’t, then no one else can really get anything from it. Because that’s the best feeling, when you listen to a song and you’re like “This is me! This is my life!”

G: It’s like “Oh my God! I’m not the only person on earth that feels like shit.”

There’s that saying as well that some writing, and writing in general is just like you trying to fucking figure shit out on a page. Do you feel that way when you write songs?

G: Totally! You’re processing your emotions.

C: Its just like we have our one-on-one therapy sessions with each other and then a song comes out. We just try and comfort each other.

We just kind of let ourselves lose the plot and then be put back together.

G: If you write a song about something that feels so destructive in your head, and you put it into any form, it makes it feel like it had a purpose. It was productive. You feel a little bit…even though it might not change the way that you’re feeling. It makes you feel like it wasn’t just for nothing.

If you try to stop yourself from being crazy then you often lose the perspective that is different to others. We let ourselves lose the plot and then be put back together and then lose the plot, and be put back together so many times that.

It’s built this whole record that’s almost bipolar in the sense, there are some songs that we are on top of our shit, and then there are times when we have no idea what’s going on. But I think that’s so normal.

Broods’ new single ‘Peach’ is out now. Listen here

Jules LeFevre is Junkee’s Music Writer. Follow her on Twitter

The post “We Let Ourselves Lose The Plot”: How Broods Came Back From The Brink appeared first on Junkee.

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