[Music] i know that place i miss that place it sounds like that place it sounds like that place thank you what a day all right how you holding up because like you this came out like it's the 90s like it came out like like it leaked like it was the 90s it was like everyone went crazy so i got to ask you like like how like what were you thinking like how
did you even find out like what what happened i mean listen i love it the kids are insane i love it i respect it i love how hungry they are and uh tonight's the solar eclipse you know you go to uh gotta follow the vibes stars are in alignment ala for reals and and i i don't know if you've i don't know if you've gone in and you've you've started to sort of dig around or
anyone's paraphrased it and brought you in the overarching kind of feeling about this well allow me to very gently tell you that this feels like a national holiday that's how excited everybody is that's my name i'm gonna spend the entire day not on my phone outside if i can i'm practicing what i preach here we are listening so i won't know what's going on you'll have to
well one day i'm not gonna and i'm not going and you know what i'm not gonna go into detail because i love the idea of you just being able to exist in the moment and let the energies develop you without all the detail because that's all constructed i will say that that you know one of my favorite comments that keeps coming up over and over again in my timeline is
just don't call me i've taken the rest of the day as you should as you should guys i love it yeah well isn't that kind of what isn't this kind of what the song is about isn't it about is it about leaning into the true joy of life and not and not making life not making it unnecessarily difficult for yourself yeah and just getting out there getting outside do your thing do what you feel
you know keep it light all of it well lord just out of nowhere here you are in this music solar power um you know got my god is the sun so so bask in that and and i want to talk a little bit about how you pulled it all together and in particular working with some of the people that once again you've decided old friends and new um jack antonoff wow you know a journalist
asked me today and i hope i did this justice why does jack what is it about jack that makes these really strong independent and in particular female artists want to work with him and i said because he listens and he allows a safe space to to to be able to really tell your truth and knows when to join in is that a fair assessment for you yeah he's just he's an incredible
collaborator you know i love he's down for any idea and when i came to him about this album i was like look i have this crazy vision we're gonna have all these organic instruments you're gonna play a short guitar and we're gonna see what happens and he was like cool okay sounds good and we just had the best time he he just he's down for whatever and i love that
about him you know when you when you find yourself in a room with instruments around you and it you know you're telling me that you had a sound in your head because technology is sort of designed to make it easier for you to get that out because a lot of it's done for you when you have the instruments in front of you and you've got to make it up on
the spot and really create the sound out of nothing can you just describe how that process was and how exciting that was for you just to dive into the unknown oh man well it was so new for me as you know i spent my entire teens and early 20s kind of tightening snares tightening hi-hats getting everything as you know sterile as i could and this was the complete opposite approach i'd had
a couple of incredible summers i was like the sound is for it to be raw and messy and feral you know real drums stereo bass like just lean into it and it was the best fight we had the most incredible um drama matt chamberlain kind of legend from where he had no idea he had so much and so much swing because the matt chamberlain i know is a heavy hitter and someone who you
know yeah totally but he but you pulled him into this place which has this kind of primal scream loaded looseness hacienda vibe to it you know totally so that was another interesting thing about it i had never heard primal scream in my life i'd been told to check them out i wrote the song on the piano and then we realized like this is this sounds a
lot like loaded this is loaded it's a great one of those crazy things that like they just were the spiritual forebears of the song i reached out to bobby and he was so lovely about it he was like you know these things happen you caught a vibe that we caught years ago and he gave us his blessing so let the record stay loaded as 100 the original blueprint for this
um but we arrived at it organically and uh i'm glad we did you know me ella i i don't have it in me to assume that music is is is anyone's ripping anyone off because the artistic spirit is always searching and you never know what that you might land on the same rock just by pure chance to your point but this but you've captured the spirit it's not even about the notes like
to me it's it's not even in that in that frame of reference it's the spirit of you know we want to be free we want to get loaded like it's a sense of youth and abandon you know yeah yeah i know i love it i'm grateful can you do your best to try to describe as you just stay focused on this song try to describe like one particular moment when you were
able to further define the sound in your head based on the experience you were having you know based on where you were at that moment in time and what you were feeling and what you were seeing and what the weather was like and what it was and then and then you knew in that moment that it just helped you to find that little bit more you could carry with you into your
into your creative spirit um well i remember i was on martha's vineyard um with my good friend kazzy staying at her house um we had just been for a big swim all day her hair was wet and i came back into my room i had my little yamaha dx keyboard and i just started singing some hair color i'm about teachers and kind of figuring this thing out so i was like what is this i felt like
um it almost felt like uh rock tj to me the robbie williams was like i don't know what's going on here but i love it and uh and then i just put it away and like had a paddle board i think but it really was such a natural like joyful extension of an awesome day and then i think i took it back into into the city to jack's and uh you know we had all the windows
open it was summer and we just followed it through it it blows my mind that you are able to capture to me and and i think you're gonna really get this the sound of a new zealand summer yes i'm so glad you think that this is my goal oh my god did you hear those things i haven't picked those up uh for the last few summers i was like it has to have cicadas in it
i really wanted yeah to capture there's something so specific about the new zealand summer and it's so specific you nailed it and even even the way that you captured phoebe phoebe bridges for less who are listening in terms of like creating that the background vocals have that you know it's a way it's like it's almost like you found margaret erlich's
vocal processing do you know what i mean it's amazing it sounds so kiwi to me it's remarkable i love those girls so much they killed it on the song i was like who are my most like tear female vocalist friends so give me on this and they both just crashed it was uh such a pleasure for me to have them so talented so cool and i've never had any other voices on my songs this is the
first uh first time people were singing with me i felt right i was trying to do the math like when i when i heard the song i was trying to remember whether we'd mention that when we when we when we caught up as part of a team ages ago and i couldn't remember if you'd said that or not i was trying to figure it out in my head like have you actually had other voices on
your songs you've been steadfastly dedicated to telling your own story up until now so how did it feel when you started listening back to other people's voices next to yours can you put it into words i just knew it had to be a gang you know i've got a couple of um amazing male musicians on it as well from new zealand james milne and marlon williams and i just yeah i was
like this record more than any that i've made isn't just about me you know it's um it's it's it's my friends and my family and my country and and i knew it wasn't just the sentiments were not just mine alone to deliver so yeah it really uh it's it's everything i hoped it would be in terms of having other people on it it's uh it's fun not to not to be alone finally
of course if you're watching this right now then you'll notice that myself and and lord um ella we're rocking our various representations of solar power as we speak um very deliberate on my part lady the electric lady yellow t-shirt i got the i got the beanie without the logo but the whole thing feels very much in keeping and um i just you know i think i think about
your performance in this and i think you know maybe this is a comment for later if if and when hopefully we get a chance to dive into the album more detail which i always love but um you know i feel like on the second album you know i feel like you are you are reaching for new places searching for ways to break through into new experiences and to contextualize
things in in your own way this performance feels so beautifully creatively casual in the sense that you just feel very very much in your bag and so i just wanted to ask you as we near the end of this initial conversation can you talk about the importance of space because we get so drawn into racing racing against time and making the most of our time and you seem to
have realized that actually the best use of your time could be rejuvenation not the opposite totally you've you've had the nail on the head saying honestly i just i mean when you come from where we come from there's so much value in just coming home and you know especially over summer there's a solid like five months there where i don't want to
be even thinking about work i want to be thinking about you know what the tides doing how the fishing is what the sun's doing that day you know it's um and it's so valuable for me and for my process and i think people realize that about me now i'm someone who has to go away and figure it out and i'll be back and i'll bring you a full universe you know when i when i
come back that takes me a minute so yeah it was it was so good and i feel like you can hear that in the in the work and the whole album and and yeah as we when we do sit down and talk about it um yeah there's just just felt light and casual and playful and that's the zone that i'm in and yeah i hope it translates that's a perfect place to pause because uh
it goes against my very nature because i'm so hungry to just dive into all the stories but i can't wait to do it in the meantime you know i'm so glad that you're at peace with what happened today because everybody else it seems just loved it and we all just were like let's go like it's it's i think it's joyful it's exciting it's exciting so so let me let me so as
everyone else is taking a national holiday tell me what you're going to do today as we say goodbye hmm good question i'm going to probably hang out here for a bit more it's very pretty today a little sun on the water um i don't know i'm gonna not go on social media probably not go on the internet um have some friends around i might buy some magnums of champagne later we'll see what happens you