Yannis Phillippakis Thinks He's Fallible, Or Flawed, Or Something

"I think I pretty much sat in the exact same spot today. I was in the sun and I was having a coffee and I was like, 'This is exactly where I sat when I was writing lyrics to Moon.'"

It's now the early evening, and over the course of our chat, he orders an espresso martini "to try and wake up". He fidgets in his seat, arms raised above his head, saying that he doesn't think this is their darkest or heaviest record, that unpacking his lyrics cheapens them, and that the records on high rotation during the creation of their fourth full-length What Went Down had no effect on what came out the other side.

"I definitely feel like I'm more fallible, or flawed or something."

"I don't feel like if one of us goes and listens to a Bob Dylan record we're going to be influenced by Bob Dylan or something like that anymore. I think when were younger maybe that was true... Often the things that I like in records now are the things that we don't do, because that's what's exciting, it's stuff that's opposite or different or that I can't understand how they did it."

He says that bands subconsciously absorb the context of the time in which they're creating, and that sense of mood seeps into the music.

"Really good records are ones that are really connected to something wider, and what's going on at the time. But that's not necessarily musical references, I don't think. It could be anything, it could just be a feeling, or something generational. You have to have your attennae open to what's going on and you absorb some things. I don't think you can be in control of it, it's probably something that you're not even aware of as it's happening."

The 29-year-old admits that the lyrics on their new record are at times preoccupied by a sense that he is getting older.

"The sense of invincibility that you have when you're younger has worn off a bit. I definitely feel like I'm more fallible, or flawed or something. When we were younger you have this kind of cocky energy where nothing can take you out and I think that I'm increasingly, not necessarily my own life, but being more aware of things not being permanent and being interested in the melancholy of that — I quite like stuff that's bittersweet.

His interest in the bittersweet, and in the flawed, has come through in the production of What Went Down. The band decided to write a lot quicker this time, without giving it time to "marinate", heading into the studio soon after they finished touring Holy Fire.

"I think music's become too perfect. There's too many possibilities to perfect everything, particularly in the studio. I think there's a lack of charm in a lot of modern records. I don't know, we were interested in the idea of keeping in certain imperfections. You think that you're making stuff better the more you work on it, and you iron things out, but actually, that's a trade-off, but what you lose when you do that is that freshness that you have when you first write something. I think on this record we were definitely more interested in capturing the first expression.

Philippakis says that aside from that focus on capturing the first impressions of songs that they didn't consciously approach the record differently to their earlier work.

"I think we just wanted to write intuitively and just write better songs than we felt like we'd written before, and capture the live energy, but also have a lot of diversity on the record so that it wasn't just one colour, one shade through the whole thing. We wanted there to be diversity within the album itself.

"You have to refresh and also be bored."

"We've just gotten better at [not overthinking] over time. Part of it comes from being a bit more confident and not being so insecure about things, which means that it's just less prone to analysis. We just don't talk about stuff as much. Things are more unsaid now. We understand intuitively what we wanna do. It wasn't really conscious, it was just getting better at what we do, or getting older as well maybe."

Philippakis says that he is not the type of songwriter who writes every day; in fact, he's not writing at all at the moment.

"I need a break from writing after writing a record. I can't keep writing, really. I wouldn't know what to write about right now, because I've put everything into this record, and it's taken me about a year to do it. It'd take somebody better than me to be able to keep — I need a break, I think it's only healthy. You have to refresh and also be bored. I want to get to that point where I'm itching to write a song again, rather than it just being something that I do every day. I want to have periods of drought and then really crave wanting to make music because I feel like then there'll be some genuine enthusiasm in it. I don't want to take it for granted."

Instead he's focused on playing shows, including a string of headline sets at Falls Festival this summer.

"I'm really looking forward to it... Playing in Australia is always fun. The crowds are awesome, we feel a lot of love here, and it's a good time of year to be here as well.

"We did Laneway a few years ago and that had a really nice atmosphere, when you're travelling around with other bands, it's quite rare that you do that, and it's fun, it feels like a sort of debauched and deranged school trip where there's no teachers."