Published in
The Big Issue, September 12.
A Stone's Throw
Despite its more
muscular, electric sound, the record is limp. It comes from somewhere dusty
that’s been abandoned, furniture covered in white sheets, without a sense of
purpose or attachment. The third album to come from brother and sister indie
darlings Angus and Julia Stone, it almost seems to be strained, created as it
was at the behest of another.
And not just any
other, but Rick Rubin, the Zen master of music, a man who’s helmed some of the
most important albums of our time, from thrash classics (and rebirths) from
behemoths Slayer and Metallica, to breakthrough cuts from The Beastie Boys, Run
DMC and the Chili Peppers. An odd coupling for the duo from Sydney’s northern
private schools, beaches and cafes? Not so much – Rubin has also worked with
Brandi Carlile, The Avett Brothers, Johnny Cash. For him, it’s about music,
first and foremost.
“I like all
kinds of music and it’s fun to move between different styles. It keeps things
interesting,” he confirms to The Big
Issue via email.
And yet even
under the careful eye, and ear, of one of the most lauded producers still
living today, this eponymous record is timid and odd. Perhaps because it comes
after a prolonged break for the Stone siblings, their last album together being
2010’s Down The Way, an album which,
once finished, saw them drift apart to find their own musical selves.
“The Angus and
Julia thing that happened was really unexpected, it wasn’t like a dream for us
to work together, we just started working together and things started
happening,” Julia Stone says. “It was really fun, and great, and we had so many
good times, but we always felt like we needed to establish ourselves
independently from each other.”
And so off they
went, Angus releasing Broken Brights
in 2012, Julia By The Horns (following
on from 2010’s The Memory Machine) the
same year. By Julia’s telling, they didn’t even see each other for 12 months,
save for an accidental meeting on a random Parisian street. The thought of
another record together just wasn’t part of what was happening, which is what
makes this one seem ungainly and uncomfortable, not quite right, despite
Rubin’s belief and input.
“It was definitely
not on the cards to get back together, definitely not,” Stone acknowledges.
However, she had met
Rubin in Los Angeles last year, striking up an unlikely friendship.
“Rick came and saw
me play at the Forever Hollywood Cemetery, and I spent time with him over a
couple of weeks, we’d hang out and talk,” Stone explains. “We didn’t really
talk too much about music… just chatting like you’d chat with a friend. It was
really nice and relaxing, I found him to be somebody really enjoyable to be
around.”
“And he said to me
one day, ‘I’d really like to meet your brother’, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh,
yeah, I guess he likes both of us, not just me’,” she laughs. “At this point,
there was no talk about a record, we were just meeting him and hanging out. So
Angus met him, and I was out to dinner with one of the guys who works with
Rick, and I said to him, ‘What’s going on? Does Rick want to work with us
separately?’
“And the guy said
to me, ‘He really wants to work with the two of you together, he wants the
first record he makes with you guys to be a duo record’. And I was like, wow,
OK. The guy said, ‘What do you think about it?’, and I said, ‘I’ll think about
it’. And that was the beginning of thinking about it, and talking about it,
with Angus.”
Recording began
not long afterwards, in late 2013 in Rubin’s Shangri La studios, the pair
coming together for the first time, musically, in almost half a decade. “They
have a natural sincerity that spoke to me as soon as I heard them,” Rubin says
of the siblings. “So much emotion in the music.”
“When Angus and I
started writing together in the studio… we started from scratch, writing in
this new way, with electric guitars,” Stone says of how it began to form, an
album which is certainly different to anything they’ve done before, regardless
of whether or not it comes across as fully formed.
It wasn’t
half-hearted however. Angus had gotten up to duet with Julia at her Woodford
show late last year, and as she says, “When we realised we did love making
music together, at that moment, we both thought this is something we have to
try, it would be so silly of us to not even attempt to try something.”
And so here they
are. “We’re doing really good, I think we have a lot more respect for each
other than we’ve ever had,” smiles Stone. “It’s a lot more cruisey. It’s a good
vibe.” If nothing else, this connection with Rubin has rekindled a spark within
the Stone siblings. Perhaps their next effort together will be more considered,
more of an indication of how talented they really are.
Samuel J. Fell
