Soulful And Effortless

It's 15 years since Mick Hart decided to step out of the band that he was in at the time – the unlikely, when you look at how his career has evolved, Squealing Pygmies – and try his hand at being a solo singer/songwriter. It's been a decade since his second album, Upside Down In The Full Face Of Optimism, was nominated for a Best Blues & Roots Album ARIA. Since then, Hart has toured the nation countless times and Europe a few times as well, relocated to France for five years, recorded a further five albums (including his latest, Side By Side) as well as an album with his quirky rock side project Monkey Boy.

“Yeah, I know,” he laughs. “Makes me feel old! It's been very quick as well. I remember at that time [of the 2002 ARIAs] I decided… It was actually just a couple of weeks before that that I decided to move to France, and a week later I found out I'd got that nomination and there was this thing inside going, 'Maybe you should stay and change it all,' and I thought, 'No, I've just got to go with the journey – it feels right.' And I wouldn't regret anything because of what I've set up and the beautiful time I had in Europe. But it's gone fast!”

While the ARIA in that category ultimately went to Jeff Lang and Bob Brozman for Rolling Through This World, the nomination vindicated Hart's decision to walk away from a label deal that he found had gone sour with the change in the people he was dealing with and the culture of “if you don't sell 35,000 copies, we'll drop you”. Sticking to his artistic guns, Hart has carved out a pretty solid and respectable international career as a singer/songwriter. It's all there, too, in the aforementioned Side By Side.

“This ongoing journey of life,” he reiterates the inspiration behind the making of the album, “and I guess maturity as well and finding a calmness in being a little more settled now in myself. Like always it's not all just my own personal stories and stuff; it's things that I've picked up along the way, listening and whatever. But it's good, for the first time in a long time, to feel more settled back in Sydney, because that last stint in Europe that I did, for about five years, which was pretty much when the last records [2009's two albums, What Lies Beneath and Where I Go] were made, we were on tour all the time pretty much, which is the muso's dream definitely, but it did get a little exhausting. It's been nice to get a little bit more centred, a little more grounded and I guess I'm feeling that in this recording as well. It felt very soulful and quite effortless and I'm really happy with how my voice is sounding, stuff like that, you know?

“I definitely was needing some grounding, for sure, just to look after my body more than anything in a way,” Hart laughs. “But also that beauty. When I got back to Sydney and started living here again, I just fell in love with it again all over. I absolutely loved my time in France and still get to go back once a year for the tours I usually do now, the big Euro tour thing, this time in October. But it is a pretty wonderful place, to live back here, and I really cherish all those things – I don't anything for granted. It's just been really nice to be back and reconnect with Australian friends and fans and all that as well. But Europeans are so loyal over there and supportive, even when you're not around. It's amazing.

“But song-wise as well, there are two or three that were actually songs that I had saved. When I went to make those records I had a writing frenzy and I had a few songs sort of saved from that that weren't recorded, but I just had bubbling around: the first two songs on the album [Til The Mess Arrives and Seeing Things]. It wasn't a purposeful thing to start with older songs or whatever, it's just the flow of the album felt right in that way. Most of the mail and emails and things that I get, it's still all from the Euro crowd, like, 'When are you coming back?' Which is great, it's beautiful to have. It's very set up there after a lot of good, hard building and working of all those years of going back and forwards and then living there. I'd love to keep it going, I don't want to let that go. If I go back once a year, it's a brilliant holiday and a brilliant tour all linked into one, keeping the connection of the whole thing alive.”

While these days Hart is more likely to perform with his rhythm section of Damian Leonard on bass and Tony Chubb on drums, he's programmed Side By Side in such a way that it alternates between solo and trio songs in a vibe that almost emulates the rhythms of waves.

“I love that analogy,” Hart admits. “I purposely kept it quite minimal again, just for fun more than anything else, 'cause you don't want to just keep making the same album. I'm proud of all my albums but it's nice to try different things. You'll probably notice on some of these, the songs that have that little wave effect, it's just really minimal arrangements and a little quirkier as well. In a couple of songs here or there, where I could have easily just had the standard band thing, I went for a quirky percussion thing. Or there are a couple of songs where I bring in like a weird floor tom thing or a shaker or something like that, just so it has like a little ripple wave rather than just the fullness of band all the way through. I love the flow of that actually, 'cause it still keeps the emotions very, very personal and that holds right through the album.

“Which is such a lovely thing still to hold onto. You deliberate with the fact that, these days, the sort of craft of an album is dismissed a lot because everything's online with single songs here and there – and that's all cool, there's nothing you can do about that – but it is still fantastic to craft the sort of flow and journey of it, and I left the peaks and troughs on this one. And my band helped me to find that order as well – it is a real beautiful team effort, as always.”