Dan Sultan On Not Wanting To Make The Same Record Twice

He was recently up at BIGSOUND performing with AB Original, whose January 26 track he features on, and Dan Sultan enthuses, "Those boys were one of the acts that were part of the festival and they did a keynote speech. And I went up there and it was my birthday that day so that was a great day." Of the hip hop duo's show at The Elephant Hotel during which he made a guest appearance, Sultan enthuses, "Yeah, it went off".

A teaser of Magnetic, the lead single from Sultan's forthcoming album, materialised last week and is currently available for your ears. It's only a 36-second taste, but up until the point where Sultan's voice enters the arrangement you could be forgiven for anticipating a hip hop verse. There's fluttering piano, dramatic strings and then, boom! In comes that voice with its unmistakable power and husky undertones. "There's a lot of different elements there," Sultan allows. "We used a lot of electronic stuff on the record and a lot of synthesisers, but electronic drums mixed with organic drums as well and, you know, sorta beats that I haven't really gone for before as well."

"I've always been an all or nothing type of person but it's just about what the 'all' is... is that the self-destructive side or is it the, you know, constructive side?"

Referencing his upcoming album, Sultan assures, "I still think it's very me: there's some ballads in there and it's still very soulful." Although Sultan acknowledges, "We had a lotta success with the last record, with Blackbird," he "just wanted to change it up". "I didn't wanna make the same record twice," he stresses. After admitting, "It's scary," Sultan states, "I'd rather be scared than bored."  

Magnetic is about "change" and Sultan elaborates, "Changing the way I approach things on a pretty deep level, but also, you know, on not such a deep level as well; just sorta day to day, and taking care of myself, and I guess growing up in a lotta ways. And, you know, dare I say it: maturing, I guess." He's "33 now" and Sultan adds, "It's a song about really just getting a lot more serious with myself, not just professionally but personally - that's not to say that I'm taking myself more seriously 'cause, you know, I'm still pretty realistic about everything and I still like to have a good time. And, you know, although I'm a serious musician and an artist and I'm a writer, I'd hate to one day think that I take myself too seriously. You know, 'cause it's not something that I find particularly attractive in other people, and in myself, you know what I mean? So that's not really what I'm about."

Often Sultan answers in zigzags, as if gauging mid-sentence how a quote will read on the page and taking a detour to soften the edges of reader judgement. He comes across as an intensely private person and you immediately know when he's not up for commenting on something, because he'll tell you ("It's not for me to say"). "I've always been an all or nothing type of person," he points out, "but it's just about what the 'all' is... is that the self-destructive side or is it the, you know, constructive side? And taking care of yourself and just being better to yourself and just being better in general; you know, I don't think I had too far to go, but I think it never hurts to have a bit of a look at yourself." Sultan says he often needs a reminder "not to be too hard on [himself]".  "I wanna cut myself a bit of slack," he informs.

When asked whether he feels more comfortable writing songs from personal experience these days, Sultan considers, "I think so," before deciding, "Yeah, absolutely. And also I think I've experienced more so I've got more to write about from a personal level." In the past, Sultan observes, "I've written a lot of songs that were based on empathy and what it would be like. I wrote my first album [Homemade Biscuits] that I did with Scott Wilson - he wrote a lot of those songs, but we wrote a bunch of songs together and I'd written a bunch of songs and, you know, they were love songs that I'd written and I hadn't been in love at that stage so a lot of that was based on imagination.

"I was pretty young. I started that record when I was 19, but I think now I've got more things to write about; I've got more of a story - I already had a bit of a story, but I think it's a combination between having stuff to write about and, like you said, being more comfortable in my own skin and, you know, being more confident in writing about my own story where I might not have been a couple of records ago."