Leaving Home Behind

2 April 2014 | 5:08 pm | Andy Hazel

"The album is dead for me."

Current resident of New Orleans, Alex Ebert has spent the last two months neck deep in the glamorous side of his previous home, Los Angeles. Moving to Louisiana satisfies his love for community, a love also expressed in the persona of Edward Sharpe, the bearded, wild-haired singer for ragtag collective The Magnetic Zeros. As Ebert explains, “LA has no community so, growing up, I imagined it. A while back, my mom showed me a story I wrote when I was six and it began: 'Once there was a boy who had a crew.' That touched me, because I hadn't seen that in 25 years and it was fun to know I always had my eye on that.”

Winning a Golden Globe for Best Original Score for the Robert Redford-starring film All Is Lost, he believes he's no longer considered a singer in, as he puts it, a “drugged out, naïve hippy band”. “Leading right up to the announcement I was jittery, jittery, jittery,” he says, happily reliving the moment. “But I was able to watch myself be jittery, so I started thinking, 'Maybe I'm jittery for a reason. Maybe I'm going to have to deliver some kind of speech.' It was a very surreal thing. Awards shows are very glitzy and nothing more than a popularity contest on some level, but to be recognised for something you worked really hard at – and I really loved working on that score, and I love the film – to be recognised for something you put all your heart and soul into, was amazing.

“There was a fun moment at the Golden Globes where Redford was talking to Bono about me. I was standing behind them and Redford said: 'Now he really understands silence.' I thought that was so amazing that I just had to say something, so I excitedly blurted out this long-winded monologue and basically proved I didn't understand silence at all,” he says, laughing.

In Australia to promote last year's eponymous album, Ebert has no qualms about the fact his mind is now elsewhere. “The album is dead for me. It always has been, but I love writing songs so I'm writing a lot of songs. I'm scoring a Pixar short film, which I'm really excited about,” he says. “It's a beautiful, beautiful story, so I'm having fun doing film stuff.”

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Film stuff, it turns out, includes a screenplay he developed with sadly departed good friend and Australian legend, Heath Ledger. “That screenplay is a musical I've been developing with a director who uh… I shouldn't give away his name, but he's a very respected director. I pitched him the idea and he loves it. It's an out-there bizarre musical I can't talk too much about, but it's certainly great to be carrying on anything I talked about with Heath.”