Sub Poppers

“We’re touring all the way around the coast with J Mascis [Dinosaur Jr],” Randell says, on the road. “We started in Phoenix and went all the way up Long Beach, San Francisco, LA, and now we’re on our way to Seattle and Portland, then we’ll be in Denver, and then on our way home! This is the first time we’ve toured other parts of America. It’s basically been drive-show-drive-show, but the thing about driving is that, thankfully, the roads take you through some really interesting parts. We’re seeing a lot of beautiful countryside, and it’s very varied – Phoenix to LA is a bizarre desert-land, you know, and then other parts, like driving through Oregon, it’s just so green and full of trees. It’s amazing.”

"It was a really happy thing because we’d been doing a lot of research and realised Sub Pop was our favourite"

Such is the way these days for the duo, who split their time between living in Melbourne and their adopted home of Brooklyn in the States. Their story began with a bit of good fortune: The two met overseas at Edinburgh Festival and hit it off immediately. It wasn’t until 2008, however, when Randell’s father passed away, that she decided to focus all her energy on music, and as such, the duo’s debut album, Dear Hamlyn was born. That record quickly made waves around the world thanks to the band opening slots with artists such as Fleet Foxes and José González, and as time went on, those high profiles introduced Luluc’s music to others. When new record Passerby entered production phase, Aaron Dessner of The National insisted on helping on the album. It wasn’t until after it was complete that Sub Pop asked for their hand. “We were really happy to sign with Sub Pop because we’d spent a couple of months sending our record around to different labels, and they turned up by the time we’d done it, so it was a really happy thing because we’d been doing a lot of research and realised Sub Pop was our favourite. It seemed from the outside that they had a really good approach when it came to working with artists, and when it came to meeting them, we realised they were very happy to let us work with our vision and not interfere with our creative process.

“We made both albums – Dear Hamlyn and Passerby – by ourselves, and that was a very deliberate decision. We didn’t want to send, even when we were in the process of working on the record with Aaron producing it, he kept saying to us that we should send it across to a few labels and we kept saying, ‘No, we want to wait ‘til it’s finished.’ We just thought that’d work for us and we wouldn’t be pressured to change anything to make it more radio-friendly or whatever. So we held off, and I’m glad we’ve done it that way because we’ve now found a label that will work with us on those terms, and we’ll feel really confident going into the next record knowing that we’ll have the artistic freedom we want and need.”