This was originally written as a way to explain to my label and PR etc about WHAT I’ve been making. I thought it would be good to share this, because although it was intended to be administrative - there’s something there.
I will rehash these stories over and over again in interviews for the coming months, but here it is in plain English.
AFTER DARK
This album was written in New York during a period of loneliness, depression and existential confusion. I was confronting the mythology of being a musician—and of New York as a place where artists go to become who they are supposed to be—with the much less romantic reality of modern life.
I was able to travel to New York through the Grant McLennan Fellowship. A generous and competitive award given to one songwriter a year, in honour of Grant McLennon himself who travelled as a songwriter throughout his career. The application was particularly human: How do you imagine spending your mornings in New York? What totem would you bring back home to remember your trip?
I said that I wanted to feel like a small fish in a big pond again. I had begun to lose some elbow room in Brisbane, and the pond felt as though it was shrinking.
When I received the Fellowship, I made a private commitment to release an album written during the trip. I wanted to make something last from the opportunity. I was—and remain—deeply grateful for it. But I got something very different from New York than I expected.
I lived on the Lower East Side for a month. From my apartment, I could see the old jail where Jeffrey Epstein died. Nearby was One Police Plaza, where the students from Columbia University were being processed and held for protesting the Palestinian genocide. Activists gathered on the street corner directly outside my window, waiting for them to be released. They chanted late into the night. The sound of their despair and determination was sad and necessary, and became a kind of companion to me. During the day, Donald Trump would pass in a convoy of black SUVs on his way to the courthouse for his criminal trial.
I felt as though I was the only one who blinked —the rest of the city seemed to absorb all of this, and remain the so-called ‘city of dreams’ for everyone else.
I felt panicked everyday that I had not written anything of substance in comparison to the world outside my window.I was wasting my big moment. Johnny Mackay, a more worldly artist and friend, comforted me from a pub in NYC at the end of the trip. He said almost prophetically, “when you get home, open your laptop and you will have written much more than you realise.”
It was true. After Dark, Almost Dead, Inst #64, Crossroads and Endless Summer were all there, as if they had become fully formed on the plane out of New York. The rest came quickly once I landed home. I was left with a choice. Return to Brisbane and record it with my bandmates like normal, or continue into the unknown and record in a way that reflects the intensity of the writing.
I chose the latter and messaged the Melbourne producer Jim Rindfleish who agreed to come on board. Inviting him into the project from its earliest stages was very new for me. I usually have my hands all over the session files the whole process - editing, re-recording, moving things around. So it was a big leap of faith to be hands off. Jim stepped into a fragile body of work and a mood that I was still living inside of and masterfully steered it to shore. This was by far the scariest part of the process, but also what I enjoyed most. I was seen with new eyes and felt room to grow.
The album does not offer a resolution or pretend that suffering is inherently meaningful. It’s not written about a moment, but from inside of it. I hope that when someone listens to this record they feel less alone in their anger, confusion or isolation. I want them to feel okay —even without the promise that anything will change.