BROODS

19 June 2014, 14:00 | Written by Huw Oliver

(Tracks)

(Broods)

Broods’ once-personal music is currently reaping plaudits from all across the globe. Their trademark sound, all huge pop choruses and bittersweet melodic moping, is catching fire and setting hearts alight.

No wonder they seem a little anxious right now. To-ing and fro-ing on many a trans-oceanic flight, they band has recently signed to Capitol in the States and Polydor in the UK and Europe, an experience they describe as, simply, ‘pretty surreal’. This was all on the back of “Bridges”, their euphoric debut single and future hit which surfaced towards the end of last year. The artwork for their 6-track debut EP, released at the start of the year, is revealing: the pair are anonymous, watery simulacra. “We’re still kind of getting used to the fact that we have to have our face on things”, they tell us.

When we Skype the brother/sister duo, also known as Caleb and Georgia Nott, it’s only 9.30am in their native Auckland, New Zealand. But the sun is shining bright, the room has morphed into a bleach-like zen-den, and they’re just about to start recording their debut album with Lorde affiliate Joel Little, who co-wrote “Royals”. Before, though, they take some time out to talk to Best Fit about their journey so far, the future, and the inevitable Lorde comparisons.

First of all, tell us about where you live. What’s it like in Auckland?

Georgia: It’s pretty nice most of the time. It’s raining right now, but yeah, it’s pretty nice weather. The people are pretty tight-knit as well, which is cool.

Would you say you’re part of a scene there?

Georgia: Yeah, when we go out to gigs and stuff, we see the same people around us. It’s always the same people supporting our music and stuff.

Caleb: And each other.

Please could you run us through how you started making music as brother and sister. Has it been your whole life?

Caleb: We started playing music when we were just little kids, when we were about 8 and 10. We were playing together, doing little talent shows at school, and things like that, and moved into high school where we had a really cool music teacher. We started writing our own music, and he encouraged that. I guess that’s where it started: us, writing. Then, over the last year, we started this project and started writing as just us too. Before then, we’d been writing with other people as well. This time, it was just us, and it worked really well.

What sort of stuff were you into back in high school?

Georgia: We literally just made a playlist of all the songs our parents always had on around the house. Our Dad had a very country, old school style of music and he listened to heaps of Eagles and Neil Diamond and all that jazz. And it’s funny because, like, all the things that we grew up with are in such a strong contrast to what we do with our music now. But I don’t know, we still had a pretty influenced upbringing. It was always around the house and our parents play music a lot.

When did Broods become a proper, serious project?

Caleb: I mean, we started last year in about April and just then, it was like, we’d go to the studio and play around with Joel [Little], now I had time off from Uni.

Georgia: We didn’t even have a name then. We were just kind of like experimenting with sounds and trying to figure out want kind of a duo we wanted to be, because we knew wanted to create a duo, with just us two. In fact, it’s what we’ve wanted to do throughout our childhood, so everything’s kind of naturally evolved into Broods.

You mentioned Joel just now. How did you guys first meet?

Georgia: We’ve known him for ages.

Caleb: About three years.

Georgia: Yeah, we met him when we were in high school, and we’d just done well in a Battle of the Bands competition across New Zealand high schools and we got to record a song with him. And then we just kind of kept in touch, and went back and worked with him on this project. And we just kind of found that we got the sound we were looking for by working with him. It just felt really comfortable and natural, so we decided to keep going with it.

So, how do you two go about writing songs together?

Georgia: It changes. We try to experiment with different processes.

Caleb: Sometimes Georgia will have a whole demo written, vocals, piano, and all the lyrics and stuff. And then we build it up in the studio.

Georgia: And try to create it into something a little more Broods.

Caleb: Me and Joel just build up some layers of bass and synths.

Georgia: And beats.

Caleb: Yeah, we always try to look to match it with a cool beat.

Georgia: And then sometimes in the studio, we’ll write a whole song from scratch.

Caleb: That’s how we did the first song we ever wrote. It’s “Us Three”, which is on the EP. That’s the first song we ever did. We did it in about 5 hours.

How did you guys react to the success of “Bridges”?

Georgia: We didn’t expect it.

Caleb: We just put it on Soundcloud, just to show people what we had been doing, what we’d been writing, and how it was going.

Georgia: Then people started listening to it and blogs started writing about it. And then we just kind of woke up the next morning and people had begun to care about what we were up to, and then we just built on that.

Caleb: It just started growing from there, which was was pretty crazy.

Georgia: It just keeps on expanding, which is awesome, because this is always what we’ve really wanted to do, and now we’ve got the chance to make it happen.

Lots of interviewers bring up the comparison between you guys and Lorde when talking about that song. Does that annoy you at all?

Georgia: I kind of expected it would happen because there are a few similarities. We’re from New Zealand, we’re working with Joel, I’m a teenage girl… So, I guess it’s kind of expected, but it’s worked in a kind of way that’s pushed us out there more than we would without Lorde. It’s definitely worked in our favour. We know her, and we know that it’s not a bad thing for people to associate us with her.

Caleb: She’s amazing, man. She’s such a good songwriter. So, any comparison is cool.

Georgia: It’s cool to put us in the same category as her.

Broadly speaking, would you say you relate to ‘pop’ music?

Caleb: We don’t really listen to a lot of pop, but we make pop.

Georgia: I think we try and listen to a lot of music with pop influences. Like, we’re into stuff with pop elements, but they’ve twisted it into a different kind of feel. I listen to a lot of female artists just for vocal and lyrical ideas, just figuring out how they incorporate their things into a different kind of making pop.

Caleb: I listen to a lot of producers, people that I find complex but interesting.

Georgia: Basically, I listen to words and vocals and he listens to production. So it kind of works out well.

You released “Never Gonna Change” as your debut single over here. Why did you choose that song?

Caleb: I thought that was the one that we think is going to go down best in the UK to start off with. People in the UK have a huge appreciation for such a large spread of music, and it felt like that one’s got lots of different elements in there that people in the UK would love.

Georgia: It’s cool to be able to put out who you are out there, in an environment where it’s going to be absorbed in a good way, rather than just putting out a song you think will sound best on the radio. Over there, you have the freedom to put out whatever you want and know that it’s going to be received however it comes.

Caleb: It’s to good to build up the band that you want to start off with, to put out the one that you think the people that you want to listen to your music love.

What’s it about?

Georgia: It’s just basically about losing somebody and going through that whole stage of feeling extremely sorry for yourself, and just wallowing in self-pity. Yeah, everybody needs to have one of those songs that you just get a little bit angry to, hate the world for a good few minutes, and then get over it.

Tell us about your debut album’s sound.

Georgia: We’re trying to keep it evolving and just keep introducing new sides to Broods.

So, where do you see yourself in a year’s time?

Caleb: [laughs] Seriously, not a clue.

Georgia: Thinking back a few months ago…

Caleb: I was at Uni.

Georgia: Basically, we don’t really know what to expect. We’re just going to go with the flow.

Ultimately, where would you like to see yourself in a year’s time?

Georgia: I would like the album to have done well.

Caleb: Just having more people listening to our music, that’s the whole goal with everything: to get music out to people and that they enjoy it.

Georgia: Yeah, just building a fan-base.

Caleb: We want to focus on longevity with this project. This time, we feel we can just slowly develop it; and I think we have potential.