Why It Took Breaking Up To Learn How To Write Together

There was a time when there was no chance that Angus & Julia Stone would work together again. In the years after the success of their mega-hit Big Jet Plane, the brother-sister duo decided that creatively they were just too different to continue together. Eventually, with the guidance of the great Rick Rubin, they worked through their issues and decided to re-form to produce their self-titled album in 2014. Fast forward to 2017 and their fourth album, Snow, is out.

The biggest difference from their earlier works to now? They way they collaborate and interact with each other.

"We always felt a little like there was something a little bit disconnected about the way we were making records. I look back and I'm really proud of A Book Like This or Down The Way, but I felt like when we were making it — and so does Angus — that it was very much like, 'Okay, what songs of yours do you want to put on there?' And I would have, 'What songs of mine would I want to put on there?' And we had a real sense of ownership over the songs we had written and so, to us, it felt like a very strange kind of record," shares Julia Stone.

"It was a record of half and half and it was working in the world and it was kind of like… it was doing its thing but for us, creatively, we felt a little bit stifled by it. It didn't feel like a complete thing and so we decided after Down The Way that we needed to do our own thing. We really felt like creatively we would be better off making complete records as solo artists and so we made that decision, and that was a great decision for us. We really sort of thrived in our own worlds and we were happy for each other, but then Rick got in touch with us and that was a big moment for us because it was such an interesting time."

Even with the support of one of the biggest and best-known producers in the world, the siblings Stone were still unsure.

"We both really were like, 'Ah, I don't know,' like, even though this is the biggest thing in the world — because he's so incredible and he's such an awesome human — we had made a decision and we were happy with that. We spent time with Rick, we started hanging out a lot. I was living in LA, Angus was visiting him when he was there playing shows, so over the six-month period we got to know him. We started talking more, Angus and I, on the phone, and like, 'Well, what would that be like to work together?' and we both had a very clear conversation about that: we should try writing together and see if that makes a difference. We can't keep doing what we used to do because it has to be exciting for us. So we started writing together on that record, we wrote Heart Beats Slow, A Heartbreak, Main Street and a couple of other songs, and we enjoyed it. And it felt good and it sounded good, it had a different sound to what we'd had before and that felt kind of interesting and exciting. That was sort of the beginning and, deciding to do it like this for this record, we weren't going to go backwards. We knew that we needed to do something that really combined both of our sounds."

What's resulted from their years of exploration and development is their most sonically developed album yet, an album Stone is certainly proud of.

"It feels like people are responding really well and feel excited that we're making music again, and that's a nice feeling. You never know how people are going to react to what you create. Certainly Angus and I had an incredible time making this record. We got a lot out of it so it's always nice when you get the sense that people are going to get something out of it as well," she says.

"I think for both of us we kind of finally feel like we've made a record that we're — not that we haven't been proud of the other records, but certainly we both finished this and we felt like… For instance, we're in rehearsals at the moment to prepare for the tour and we're finding it very difficult to not play every song off this record. It's really exciting. We're both like, 'I want to play this song, I want to play this song,' and normally we kind of have a little bit more of a 'meh, don't really care about that one that much'. Normally we have five favourites that we want to play. This record, it means a lot to us. It's been a sort of dream to write like this together, so we finally got there."