Image Courtesy of Sweet Jean

When I first saw Melbourne’s Sweet Jean live I was absolutely blown away. They’d just released their new stripped back mini album Greetings From Goodbye and were recreating it’s stunning folk music live on stage. When I heard they were showcasing at this year’s BIGSOUND I just had to take the opportunity to chat to the duo

Gareth Hugh Evans: I want to start with the new mini-album Greetings From Goodbye. I have to say that I am obsessed with this album. More so since I’ve seen you perform it live. I guess my big question is what made you strip back and explore this kind of folky music.

Sime Nugent: That’s basically where we started. When we started playing together we didn’t even have a name for the band, we just started showing up to gigs that I had booked in Melbourne as the pair of us. We played this music together and investigated that sort of sound. That was the first year or so of us working together. We love that music. Then we went on to investigate and invest in the sound that ended up becoming Dear Departure and that took a while to generate. Once we’d published that bunch of songs it felt appropriate for us to honour that first period when we were working together. That said there’s a new sound that we’re generating at the moment which is sort of a broader pallet of work again.

Alice Keath: I think it’s really representative of a lot of the shows we do live as well. We do the band thing but we perform as a duo a lot and there’s a lot of thought and a lot of hours of playing live that have gone into that. There’s the two sort of elements – I love playing with the band but I love stripping it back to the core elements of a song and I guess being economical in what you do with it. Every choice matters when you’re dealing with material like this. It’s not just “yeah, throw on some strings and some drums and this and that”, you have to actually really think about what you’re wanting to say and play and I really love that process. We both really love a lot of the music, that old, soulful kind of folk music that’s quite dark and quite effecting I find. This album is actually a combination of really early recordings that we did basically in my back room when we first started playing together and then some new recordings as well. It was interesting for me because some of the vocal takes on that I find they’re quite raw and Sime and John [Castle] had to convince me not to redo them and put them on the album. In the end, now that I’ve sat with it for a little while, I think that’s maybe a strength, that it’s not too polished and it’s not too self conscious.

GHE: Was there ever a point when you were putting the album together where you started layering the drums and the strings and things before pulling it all away or was it going to be stripped back right from the very beginning?

SN: I think from the very beginning we knew that it had to be a fully duo orientated record even though I think one drum kit made it on.

AK: Half a song!

SN: And there was one guitar solo overdubbed. We really wanted to keep it very pure.

AK: And most of the songs as well are performed live which I think was important for us. We really wanted to make it representative. What you hear, apart from a couple of overdubs, is what was played in the room. Which is a completely different process to how we made Dear Departure. That was built up in layers, bit by bit…

SN: And edited over months and months. Revised and revisited. A totally different way of working.

GHE: So when you listen back to Greetings From Goodbye do you wish you could fix some of the rawness?

SN: Not really because it is what it is. There was certainly a moment where we had to kind of take a deep breath on some of the songs and just commit to that take. But once that process has happened it sort of takes on its own internal logic.

AK: And I find that often it’s those happy accidents or mistakes or rough moments – the bit where your voice cracks or there’s a change in tempo or something – I find actually build into making a more interesting group of songs.

SN: They add to the realness

AK: Those are often the most interesting bits on an album, for me as a listener. I guess it’s interesting as a performer remembering that and not getting too precious.

GHE: Your live show is really what caused me to really knuckle down and listen to Greetings From Goodbye properly. What I feel it does is capture your live show beautifully. What I saw on stage is what you get on the recording.

SN: Totally. And that’s what we wanted to honour.

GHE: If you’re putting together a set list for your live show does it depend on whether you’ve got a full band or not as to whether you’ll play anything from Greetings From Goodbye?

AK: We will always play the folk stuff. There’s quite a breadth of material that we do but I think in every show there will always be at least one stripped back, duo acoustic song. So far anyway.

SN: The reality from our point of view is some audiences respond more to the duo and some audiences respond more to the band stuff.

AK: And it’s purely out of what we’re interested in. There comes a point where you’re dabbling in different types of music and you go “is this so far outside of what we’ve been doing that it’s time to do a side project or something?” [laughs]. How far can we push this in a live show stylistically? And I think at the moment even with the new stuff we’re doing which is more band driven or wide screen or whatever you want to call it its roots are still very much in that folk/country/gritty/roots music. Its roots are in roots! [laughs]

SN: We’ve got delusions of synth-pop but you’re always going to hear the folk music in there [laughs]

AK: Even when we think we’re writing pop music it’s still entirely grounded in the roots tradition.

GHE: You keep referring to Greetings From Goodbye as your “folk” album but I think Dear Departure is a folk record.

SN: Nah man, that’s our synth-pop record! [laughs]

AK: Sometimes you just can’t escape it and that’s not a bad thing at all. We love that music. We’re having a lot of fun with new songs and pushing the sound and making it bigger. But often keeping it simple, there’s a real strength in that and a real immediacy. It’s not that easy to do sometimes, to write a really distilled song that sounds simple but has weight. You can put all the bells and whistles on there and dress it up but the challenge is to write a song that sounds like it was really easy to put together.

GHE: And I guess that’s what makes those great folk songs. They sound simple but there’s years and years of writing behing them.

SN: There is something funny that happens. If the ear is listening to say two voices and two instruments and technically it’s a certain volume, and then you play a song beside it which is two voices and twenty instruments, the larger pallet song will always feel quieter. Because there’s so much more information for the ear to work out. I’ve done this again and again. In the set trying to put a band song beside a duo song, the duo song always sounds louder even though you sit there with the mastering engineer and you go it’s not technically louder.

GHE: So you said you’re working on new material and it’s more leaning towards the band stuff?

AK: I think there’s going to be a mix but it’s not going to be as stripped back and distilled. The next album is going to have more production on it.

SN: And there’s a bit of a grittier palette to what we’re doing.

AK: Yeah! I think doing this folk EP has informed some of the newer songs and I’m really looking forward to exploring that darker palette with the band stuff. Some of the stuff on Dear Departure was quite polished. I’m looking forward to exploring that more produced sound but with a few of the mistakes and a few of the darker tones in the instruments.

SN: Some of the looseness.

AK: Yeah, getting some of the looseness in there.

GHE: So the new material is going to be Dear Departures informed by Greetings From Goodbye.

SN: I think you just helped us work that out!

AK: We’ll put that on our next press release.

GHE: You can quote me. I haven’t heard the new material but you’re welcome to use that pull quote!

SN: Yeah!

GHE: And you guys have a couple of festival dates coming up. You’re playing JamGrass right? You haven’t played it before right?

AK: No. I’m looking forward to it. There’s some good acts on there.

GHE: It’s one of my favourite festivals of the year. It’s very well put together – really slick.

SN: That’ll be fun.

GHE: And then after that what’s next? Is it just writing at the moment?

SN: After BIGSOUND we’re basically going home to get to work. There are a bunch of demos currently kicking around that we’ll go out to the laundry [studio] and start to work out what to do with them.

AK: Honestly, having that space in our backyard where we can record – John [Castle], our producer, set us up with some monitors and another friend gave us a a preamp. Basically we can go out there and record something, give it to John and maybe add a couple of extra things. Greetings From Goodbye is the perfect example. Having that space there free from time constraints or any studio pressure, that’s just so much fun. You can just muck about and try out sounds and ideas. Having the time and space to do that has been so much fun – I’m really looking forward to spending the summer doing that.

GHE: Well that’s all I’ve got time for today. Thanks so much for spending you BIGSOUND afternoon chatting with me.

SN: Thank you!

Stream the new Sweet Jean mini-album Greetings From Goodbye below: