After their single ‘Bridges’ attracted attention in early 2014, Broods’ debut LP Evergreen sent them off on a mammoth world tour. Along with sold out dates in Australia and New Zealand, they notched up North American tours with Ellie Goulding and Sam Smith and made multiple appearances on US network television. Last month saw the release of the duo’s second LP, Conscious. Conscious contains plenty of sweeping choruses, emphatic vocal melodies and instrumental hooks. Though, the eruptive choruses found in songs like ‘Free’ and ‘Are You Home’ are contrasted with the downcast tone of ‘Worth the Fight’ and ‘Bedroom Door’.
“It’s a bit of a schizo album, but I guess that’s because it was written over two years,” says Caleb. “So there are a lot of different inspirations that have come and gone. Depending on what kind of place you’re in at that time, [the songwriting] depends on that.”
With the release of the Broods EP in January 2014, the Notts quickly became aligned with pop music. Pop music tends to draw from all over the stylistic map, as exemplified by greats like The Beatles, David Bowie, Janet Jackson and Prince; contemporary pop stars Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kanye West; and indie pop acts Grimes, Chvrches and Tegan and Sara. It’s no different for Broods – Caleb and Georgia have cited Kanye, M.I.A., Marilyn Manson, Haim and Azealia Banks as influences on the album’s lead single ‘Free’ – which is largely a result of the pair’s individual preferences.
“If you listen to what I listen to in the way of other artists and you listen to what Georgia listens to, you’d think, ‘How do they work together?’ ” Caleb says. “[Our tastes] are pretty different and as songwriters we’re completely different as well. I think that’s kind of how it works. But with the whole pop thing, it’s pretty weird. If you asked me four or five years ago if I was going to be writing pop music for a living I would’ve said, ‘Fuck off. I don’t listen to pop music. I don’t listen to mainstream radio.’”
“I think I just didn’t have the respect that I have now for the pop industry and how hard it is to actually make good pop music and how interesting it is to make it. I’m just like a pop geek.” Being a self-described pop geek doesn’t mean Caleb obsessively follows prominent pop music trends and uses them as a filter for his own ideas. “The stuff that I’m bringing in is not really coming from anywhere pop, really,” he says. “That’s the funny part. It just kind of ends up being pop naturally when we work together. It’s a weird combination where pop happens by combining two different ideas that aren’t really pop.”
It’s a formula that’s working for Broods. Evergreen was a breakout success, converting fans from all corners of the globe, while the anticipation for Conscious blossomed with the announcement that Ella Yelich-O’Connor (AKA Lorde) co-wrote the album’s third single, ‘Heartlines’.
“Making this second album, I think it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” Caleb says. “There was no expectations when we wrote Evergreen. You have those expectations hanging over you a little bit, you can’t really run away from that, but that first album did better than we ever thought it could. So it’s like, ‘How can we top it? Are people going to react in the way that we hope they are?’ That’s why it’s terrifying.”
Even on the cusp of the album’s release, the band’s worries hadn’t subsided. However, Caleb says the high stakes didn’t interfere with the songwriting process. In fact, they might even have energised it.
“I think [fear] can be a useful creative tool. The second album, every decision you make, you take in a lot more than you did when you wrote the first album. We just wrote music [for Evergreen], but then after touring for so long and being in the industry for a wee while you think about other things that you wouldn’t have thought about when we wrote Evergreen. So that was why we decided to call it Conscious, because there was a lot more calculated decisions in writing it.”
Much like Evergreen, Conscious was developed alongside producer and co-writer Joel Little (Lorde, Daniel Johns, Jarryd James), with additional production from Alex Hope (Troye Sivan) and Captain Cuts (Halsey, Tove Lo), and a vocal appearance from Tove Lo. In terms of the band’s internal dynamic, one could assume Caleb and Georgia’s roles are clearly defined. Georgia is the vocalist and lyricist, while Caleb takes charge of the instrumentation and arrangements. But while this is broadly how it works, there is some flexibility.
“Georgia has a say in production and instrumentation – she had a lot of input in instrumentation – and I have some input in some of the lyric writing,” Caleb says. “It was like that in terms of who did what on the first album, but you develop as an artist yourself and as a team that line starts to blur a little bit.”
Tour Dates
July 8 – The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD
July 9 – Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
July 11 – The Forum, Melbourne VIC
Conscious is out now via Capitol Records/Universal Music Australia. For more details, head to broodsmusic.com.
