BROODS have just released their new album, Space Island, an intricate and emotional rollercoaster that will take you to another world.
We caught up with the delightfully in synch siblings that make up the two halves of BROODS, Georgia and Caleb Nott.
HAPPY: Let’s talk about Space Island. What an album! The music is amazing. the videos are amazing. You must be really proud because it is very cool.
GEORGIA: Yeah, we are. We worked really hard.
HAPPY: Good! How much time would you say you invested into actually creating the album?
GEORGIA: I feel like it’s been…
CALEB: Since we released the last one.
HAPPY: Damn.
CALEB: I feel like that’s always the case.
GEORGIA: One and a half plus years of really focusing on this album.
HAPPY: Fantastic. Ok, so I have a question I feel like you would have been asked a million times. I’d love to know what it’s like working with your sibling. Do you drive each other crazy, or do you just like kill it in communication skills because you’ve known each other so long?
CALEB: I think it’s the only way we could do it sometimes.
GEORGIA: Yeah. It’s just such a demanding industry to be in, and I think we both were so young when we started and I think it would have gone down very differently if we did it separately.
CALEB: I was talking to our friend Amelia the other day, who’s Fazerdaze and she was just like, ‘You guys are so lucky to have each other.’ She’s like, ‘I’m all on my own. It sucks.’
GEORGIA: Yeah, and it’s way better because when things are going really amazing, it’s just the excitement, you can share it with someone, and then when things are really hard, you don’t feel like…
CALEB: You get to share it as well.
GEORGIA: It’s you against the world. Yeah, it feels like… and we’ve got also very different personalities, which helps when we’re taking on this…
CALEB: We don’t fall into the same holes usually, you know, so there’s always one of us to go to…
GEORGIA: Balance.
CALEB: Look down the ladder. The rope ladder.
HAPPY: That’s so good. And I mean, even with other duos, people have to dedicate time to meet and find out if they like each other but you can just jump straight in. You guys would know each other’s language.
GEORGIA: Yeah, we’ve definitely learnt it more and more over the years, especially when it comes to…
CALEB: We translate each other.
GEORGIA: Yeah, translate each other in the studio, which is wonderful.
HAPPY: Definitely. Ok, so between the two of you, Georgia, do you lead the writing? Do you work on lyrics and melody and then get together? How does the writing come about between the two of you?
GEORGIA: It’s really changed. It changes day to day, really, but I think on this record, it has been very much… I’ve been really, really focusing on lyrics and vocals and Caleb was taking on the production and the sonics of the album and the arrangements of the album, and it’s quite nice it’s like that. Again, we just get to focus on what we’re good at and focus on what… how we express ourselves because, for me, it’s words. For Caleb, it’s like noises or sounds.
HAPPY: Haha, they’re very nice noises.
GEORGIA: Yeah, lovely noises. And just basically kind of have that trust as well to just let the other one go wild.
HAPPY: That’s really cool. I guess trust would be a huge thing as well because this album is quite emotionally vulnerable… Especially for you, Georgia, it’s huge, and I imagine it would be quite bonding to be working on that together.
GEORGIA: Yeah. And I don’t think we would have been able to make it sound like a conventional kind of way. We worked a lot with just a lot of really close friends and just people that we have met throughout the last almost decade that we’ve been in the industry and people that have been like, ‘you’re my person, stay here please.’ Like, we’ve met so many good people like that and it’s been really nice to have that safe place to make this album. And because it definitely wasn’t going to be able to be made in the whole LA writing blind date hustle and grind. It needed like a lot of time and space and…
CALEB: Pandemics give you that.
HAPPY: Haha, thank god. I saw as well that you have Tove Lo featured on one of the tracks and you guys have collaborated together and you guys are quite close. Is that right?
CALEB: Yeah. We’ve collaborated a couple of times and are super close.
GEORGIA: Yeah. She’s been a really…
CALEB: She’s like our big sister.
GEORGIA: Yeah, she’s like family to us at this point.
CALEB: I was living with her as well while we were making it for some of it as well. And you know, it just felt right for her to be on there.
GEORGIA: Especially it being such a…
CALEB: Personal thing.
GEORGIA: Pour your heart out type record.
HAPPY: Of course. Let’s get into that a little bit more. Georgia, you spoke about the whole record, but also the recent single Heartbreak being about learning to deal with the loss of your marriage. And in Heartbreak, you’re whispering to yourself to let your heart break. And I think it’s just… I commend you. It’s such a personal experience to write about. And as a listener, I’m seriously thanking you for being so vulnerable. It’s huge.
GEORGIA: It is huge. I’m not going to downplay it because it feels very emotional to release it. But I think every time I’m like, ‘Oh, can I do this?
CALEB: It’s hard to find it in the pop world, you know?
GEORGIA: And I think like every time I’ve second-guessed whether I have the capacity to share it like, I get a message or have a conversation with somebody that just affirms the fact that it’s really important to make music about things that are hard to talk about because a lot of the times, it is easier to express things or feel things through making or listening to music, you know, it’s just so…
CALEB: It just helps start a conversation.
HAPPY: Totally.
GEORGIA: Just create something that maybe somebody doesn’t even know that they need to hear.
CALEB: Give someone some driver.
HAPPY: It’s interesting because I imagine it’s quite an expressive thing for you to create, and probably helps with the actual processing to make the music, to write the lyrics. But that’s a whole different thing from being like, ‘OK, now I’m sharing it with everyone.’
GEORGIA: Yeah. We were talking about this yesterday. Yeah, how when we were making it, we were just really the only thinking about just making something that we wanted to make. And then now that we’re sharing it, it’s real.
HAPPY: So you have spoken about that lyric to ‘let your heart break’ and said that one of your parents reminded you of that. You guys, do you have a pretty close family?
CALEB: We’re in each other pockets.
GEORGIA: We joke about it being like co-dependent, but really super supportive and it was quite adorable when just as I’d split with my husband and I was just staying with my family for a bit and, you know those advent calendars that you get full of chocolate? Mum had one of those and instead of putting chocolate in, she put in really inspirational quotes about healing.
HAPPY: Ahh, no way, that’s so cool.
CALEB: Mum loves a good Facebook quote.
GEORGIA: She loves quotes.
HAPPY: Classic mum stuff.
GEORGIA: But she was… the main thing that she was trying to encourage me to do was just… She keeps saying ‘let this open your heart instead of close it’, because I think when you do go through something that’s really hard on your heart, you have like options, right? You have the option of building a fortress around it that kind of protects it from pain, but also joy and love.
Then you have another option to kind of open it up even more and learn from the experiences of not just yourself, but other people and let it connect you with the rest of the world. I read somewhere when life is a joy, think of others and share it with all of us. And when life’s a burden, think of others, because I think when things are hard, we go straight to like ‘poor me, I’m isolated, I feel alone’, and it’s just really helpful to know that you’re a part of something bigger even it feels really isolating, you are connected to support and people care.
HAPPY: Wow, yeah, that is so great to know. It’s so important. Caleb, I’ll ask you a bit more about the production. There is just so much going on and you’ve managed to perfect the amount. It’s so intricate and subtle and beautiful. The whole album just flows in and out of so many things. I want to know when… how do you know when to stop? You know, I see people painting and they just walk away from it at a certain point, and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s perfect.’ But how do you know?
CALEB: Yeah, I didn’t… I don’t know, to be honest. I just… yeah, it’s kind of like painting, you just keep doing it until you think you’ve done that final stroke and step back. Stepping back away from it is super important, giving music time to just be there and then you go back a few months later, and maybe that’s when you have the ideas that you were missing before.
GEORGIA: It’s a fun way to work too.
CALEB: Or you just rip a bunch of shit out of it. You know, you’re like, ‘Delete all of that.’’
GEORGIA: That’s the thing about music cause with painting, you put it on there and you’re like, ‘It’s there!’ but with music you’re like, ‘I can take that again.’
HAPPY: That’s such a good point.
CALEB: But we had so much time and having that time was essential to getting that final product.
HAPPY: Of course. I think the world’s… It’s interesting because it’s been such a bummer not being able to have live music over the last few years, but from that, all of this incredible music was being produced in the studios. It’s quite cool.
CALEB: Yeah, it’s all coming out now. And people have been holding onto it, and the world has been like missing it for so long, and now everyone’s just like, ‘there’s new music.’
HAPPY: Yeah, it’s quite a time.
CALEB: I know everyone needs it.
HAPPY: Absolutely. We’re all starving for it. Okay, let’s talk about the videos. Space Island Chapter One and Chapter Two. So cool! Can you tell me a bit about the decision to animate the second one?
GEORGIA: Yeah, I mean, the appeal of animation is just that you don’t have any limits.
CALEB: Boundless. Opportunities to make whatever you have in your head or…
GEORGIA: And I think this one, because it was so otherworldly, like the idea of space island is so otherworldly that we wanted to be able to have this magic and crazy prominent storylines come out, but when you’re shooting something, you can only do so much and then you put it into animation and all of a sudden, anything’s possible.
CALEB: Yeah, if we tried to film the second chapter, it would cost a million dollars.
GEORGIA: For the same story. But it was really fun to… we really just kind of handed it over to Dr D Foothead, a Kiwi animator who we’re massive fans of, and we just gave him the song and said, ‘What do you think you should do?’
CALEB: All his work is just so charged emotionally.
GEORGIA: And we saw the video that he did for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and it was just… Jaw on the floor like, ‘Wow.’ It’s so crazy that you don’t even really know what is happening, but you feel what’s happening. I think that’s the most beautiful art to me is when you’re don’t even have to understand it with your brain because there’s a deeper part of you that understands it.
CALEB: Songs are like that too.
HAPPY: I could continue to ask you guys questions about Space Island because it’s an incredible album, but I think you’ve just wrapped it up perfectly. Thank you guys so much for chatting with me.
CALEB: Any time.
HAPPY: Thank you, and thank you for the music.
CALEB: We’ll keep doing it.
GEORGIA: Thank god people listen to it.
Space Island is available to purchase or stream now.
Interviewed by Chloe Maddren.
Photos supplied.
