Pop Without Boundaries

Towards the end of this interview, Jeremy Neale says that he's worried he's rambled too much. And sure, there was a lot of talk about '90s movies, but Neale also answers questions thoughtfully and generously.

He's an optimistic dude, and why shouldn't he be, with new single Swing Left his third in a row to become a serious radio hit, but it's optimism tinged with anxiety; there's pressure in this momentum, pushing Neale to keep trying harder to reach more people. Swing Left, he says, was a conscious decision to do just that; “It was a big decision for what was gonna be a final single for the EP. I personally was leaning towards Lone Tiger because the production was so vastly different on Swing Left. In a way it was the logical conclusion of the style – to take it to a high production level and give it a quality that's not seen on the rest of the EP. I wanted to see if I could do something else in that genre that might interest a different type of person who wasn't caught by the other ones.”

His first proper EP, In Stranger Times, just came out, but Neale's already got future release plans that are causing some angst and excitement.“The problem I've got now is that if people enjoy the EP, I wanna release like a super deluxe version of the EP. There were a lot of songs that could have been on there but I didn't want to deal with the stigma of releasing an album so early.

“However, I can't really put them on the album when it eventually comes out, because since I sent the EP away it's been like an amazing blank slate where I can start in a different style, so I've been writing a lot of different stuff. It's still Jeremy Neale, but I've been listening to a lot of Mayer Hawthorne and a lot of upbeat, soul revivalist stuff. So some of the darker songs I've got now don't seem as appropriate [for the album] as they might have been. So I'm hoping enough people like the EP and they're like, 'Hey Jeremy, can you maybe give us another EP of that stuff in like a bonus context so the world doesn't judge you for not progressing?' And then, 'Jeremy, when you release your next thing perhaps then you can show us what you're ready to show the world in the context of a new direction, while still comfortably in your own realm?'”

This EP tour is the longest one yet for Neale, and yeah, tickets are selling well, but that doesn't negate the fact that Brisbane tends to be a much friendlier town to pop music, so the band might have to work a little harder in other states. Neale isn't too worried, though. “I tried to explain it recently to someone in Melbourne, and they'd acknowledge the sound of Brisbane and that the sound may not be received so well in other cities. Because [in Brisbane] the music population is small, pop music works to bring people in who are outside of the music scene. Whereas in other cities, the population based in music in the other cities is actually like, astronomical. Melbourne's live music population is incredible, the amount of bands and the amount of people who go see music is just incredible, so it allows a lot of different things to flourish.”

On a practical level, Neale says that heading out on this tour he's trying to keep in mind the harsh lessons he's learned from years of unhinged antics at Velociraptor shows. “You gotta go home a certain time if you wanna keep your voice. And it seems like it's gonna be easy, but then you're out until early hours of the morning thinking, 'Aww... I can just drink my voice back tomorrow', and that's feasible for the next night, but not the night after that. I don't think I've gotten better yet but I'm gonna really try.”

And speaking of Velociraptor, with several members now living overseas, Neale says not to believe any whispers that Brisbane's biggest portable party is drawing to a close; “I would really like Velociraptor to live on as a Brisbane institution, to be a band that never stops. Maybe I'll just write a stash of tracks to have on the backburner that can keep getting released until the year 3000. We'll start shamelessly pandering to the robot population. It's very important to me that the band continues. And it will keep going as far as I'm concerned, and hopefully the people who like the music feel the same way!”