Luke Daniel Peacock “Just Can’t Bullshit” When It Comes To Songwriting

"I'm just lying on this big, epic couch," Luke Daniel Peacock, who's "house-sitting a friend's house" in Bardon, Queensland explains. He admits he's also loving the "air-con and Netflix and a big old bulldog" said house contains. "His name's Sherman, he's awesome," Peacock enthuses of the aforementioned canine. (Check out the photo of Peacock plus Sherman on his Facebook wall for a visual.)  

"There's a famous saying that art is never finished, it's always abandoned. So, you know, I guess it's at what point do you abandon it?" 

Although his debut solo album was ten years in the making, Peacock says the recording process "was really quick". "The reason, I think, [that] I've never put something out sooner is because I'm usually such a perfectionist that I would start looking at putting something together and then, you know, I would never see the end of it." So in order to make We've Come A Long Way, Darling happen, Peacock "made a conscious effort not to polish it too much and just put it out there". We discuss how difficult it can be to know when to stop when it comes to creating art and Peacock offers, "There's a famous saying that art is never finished, it's always abandoned. So, you know, I guess it's at what point do you abandon it?" According to Peacock, he loves listening to records and particularly admires debut albums by bands "that have that kind of sound of, I guess, 'not a budget'", he chuckles. "There's a certain charm to that."

When asked how long ago he wrote the first song to make it onto the album, Peacock reveals, "Ah, that's definitely Midnight. I wrote that when I was 17 years old and it's the first song I ever wrote." He then acknowledges, "I've certainly written some songs that make me grimace," before allowing Midnight has "changed a bit over the years". "The lyrics and the melody and whatnot are the same," he continues, "and I guess I'm pretty proud of it and maybe I wouldn't write lyrics like that now, you know.

"With my songwriting I've probably been too honest, I think. I've been quite brutal in my honestly with my songwriting and, like, generally I'm a pretty introverted sort of guy. And I don't really wear my heart on my sleeve too much socially or anything like that, but in my songs I tend to — I guess I just can't bullshit, ha ha, when I write." So have the subjects of Peacock's songs ever approached him for clarification? "Oh, yeah. There's been ex-girlfriends that have, you know; they've figured out the riddle," he confesses.

Before Peacock had even composed the title track, he actually had the album title: "I was going through a phase of basically just being a miserable bastard [laughs], and trying to find some optimism and look at positive things, you know. There's so much shit going on and it was really weighing me down; I guess I wasn't doing enough to distract myself and I was getting really bothered by it all. So that whole idea of 'We've actually come a long way,' as bad as it still is, that was my one grasp at optimism... that phrase really stuck with me. And looking at this album, although it's a debut album it's almost kind of a retrospective of my songwriting so far."