On the eve of her first Australian tour and the launch of
her debut EP, ANDY
HAZEL finds out about the long musical history and striking fresh sounds
of multiple Age EG Music Award nominee
SOPHIA BROUS.
When a debut single is musically proficient, lyrically
unusual, artfully produced and stunningly delivered, it’s going to attract
attention. Streamers, the lead single
from the eponymous debut EP from Melbourne band Brous has been thrust to high
rotation on JJJ as well as garnering community radio play and an Age EG Music
Award nomination for Best Single. Despite a short musical career of surprising
twists and turns, recent developments are something that vocalist, composer and
chief architect Sophia Brous is still grappling with. “I’m really pleased!” she
says happily. “It’s funny, when you view other people you think things are
going well and achievements like this are all there is to their life at the
moment. It is fantastic, but it’s not
like the world has turned purple, life goes on.”
Life, for Brous, constitutes of a range of creative
projects, which sees her week divided between writing music and playing gigs.
It’s a work ethic befitting someone who can lay claim to an impressive array of
achievements, including debuting onstage with Gil Askey, becoming, at 22, the
youngest ever director of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival (a role she
recently stepped down from), and winning a scholarship to the New England
Conservatory and Berklee College of Music. These experiences feed in to the
truly unusual and powerful sound that is being introduced to the world through Streamers. “When I went to the States,
it was the first time in my formal music training that I had been introduced to
music like exotica and tropicalia, and film noir soundtracks and was able to
focus on them in an concentrated manner,” she says emphatically, highlighting
influences that permeate the EP. “Many people who’ve gone through that system
go through a process of unlearning, and it was like that for me. As soon as I
got back, I went straight into jazz clubs and performing, but then there was a
period of feeling like I wanted to explore other things, so I stepped back and
started writing. It’s interesting,” she says, pausing, “as soon as I stepped
away from jazz, I got the festival job; I jumped into it and gave it my all and
it was a great experience, but now that Brous
is out there, it’s time to be focusing on that.”
Unsurprisingly, when Brous focuses on something,
impressive results follow, and so it is with the EP. Amazingly enough, with
Brous’s powerful voice and poetic turns of phrase, the band’s music arrests
almost as much attention. “The band were long time friends of mine and people I
knew well before they joined,” she says keenly. “It began with James Rushford. We
had an interest in pop melody, Europop, art music and avant garde and after
playing with him I got further into melodies with a sense of darkness or depth.
Shags [Chamberlain] was the last person to join the group, but he is a really
important part of it,” she says with a rare pause for contemplation. “As oppose
to having musical training, he has great taste in gear and an encyclopaedic
knowledge of music and sounds which makes him great in the studio, this guy has
10000 records in his bedroom, so how could he not? I had a clear idea of what I
wanted before I went in, but it’s difficult to communicate outside of music terms,
and that was a great thing about having Shags there. I don’t have knowledge of
synths, but when I write I have a very clear idea of the sounds I want, and
sound is the core of my music – every song begins with the foundations of
melody. To communicate the sound in my head means I’m singing stupid sounds to
people, or playing recordings to focus on the exact tone I want, and Shags really
gets that. Scott [Horscroft], Shags and me coproduced the whole thing. I bring
the chords to the band and ultimately it’s what you do next that is the most
interesting thing. Everything has to come back to the fundamentals; that’s the
whole process on the writing - the melody, then lyrics. Then it’s a matter of
extrapolating out and building around it, like architecture.” Other band
members, or architects, include Alexander Garsden, Jeanette Little and Joe
Talia, shining examples of the fertility of the Melbourne music community,
which Brous seems intent on feeding back into.
“Initially we recorded nine tracks as a session - a
few I wanted to hold for the album, some others as B sides - and this
collection of songs felt cohesive. For the EP, it felt like this was enough of
a first statement to come out with. We’ve written a lot of music since then and
I can’t wait to get to work on that, but with Brous, there is a certain timbre. It’s dramatic and epic in scope,
but I’m interested to see how this can be done in sparser ways with fewer
instruments,” she says enthusiastically. “When we were recording and producing
the EP Streamers was such a big song
to create,” she continues breathlessly. “It took the most work, it was draining
to record and it is a workout to perform; I call it my Jane Fonda song,” she
laughs. “We had a lot of gear in the studio to play with, and time to develop
countermelodies and give the song a certain robustness. Recording it was
something that happened over time and in stages - because of my job we could
only work in bursts - so the song was constructed in stages, which is funny
because you can hear the song develop like that when you listen to it,” she
says of its unusual structure. “I wanted a strange dislocation.”
Even with the quality and universally positive
reviews, Streamers runs the danger of
overshadowing the quieter and less exuberant songs on the EP, but that’s
something Brous can justify. “Because Streamers
came out first, and with the video getting lots of views online, people have
had time to sit with it. I think every song on the EP has that scope of
arrangement and heart and soul put into it; none of them are fading flowers,”
she laughs. “A song like Little Ticket
is a condensed version of the drama that people are talking about in Streamers. More is great, and giving
something a sense of grandeur is great, but I don’t want to overwhelm the
song,” she says carefully. With the company she keeps, you can be sure that’s
unlikely and any density the songs have will only reward deeper listening.
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