Julia Stone On New Music, Jeff Buckley, Whitney Houston And How Working With St. Vincent…

A household name in her native Australia, Julia Stone is one of those artists whose name you know from friends or friends of friends or your favorite artist. Over the past 15 years, aside from two solo albums, Stone has recorded with her brother Angus.

The two are so revered within the industry that after taking a four-year break, from 2010 to 2014, to work on solo albums, their self-titled comeback album was produced by Rick Rubin — who has produced Johnny Cash, the Beastie Boys, Neil Diamond, Tom Petty, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and more.

That is the level of respect Angus and Julia Stone command from their peers. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that for her first solo album since 2012’s By The Horns, Stone has teamed up with another beloved music figure, in Annie Clark (St. Vincent).

Stone, who worked with Clark and Thomas Bartlett, has been dropping previews for the highly anticipated album throughout 2020 (the release date is still unknown and even Stone is unsure of when it will come out, saying, she’ll leave it to the business people). The latest track, “Unreal,” dropped this past Friday (September 4). It follows the sensational previously released “Break.”

If the point of a teaser is to make you want more, then Stone s delivering perfectly with the lead tracks from the album, which so far shows a very different side of the singer/songwriter.

As I found when I jumped on a Zoom call with her while she was in her native Australia, stepping out of her comfort zone is very much the point of the new album.

I spoke with Stone about finding her groove, how Whitney Houston used to make her dance, how Jeff Buckley’s drummer brought her together with Clark and much more.

Steve Baltin: How Is the record coming? Is it close to done?

Julia Stone: We’ve been doing a little bit of back and forth online, but it’s very close. I’ve always been in touch a lot with Thomas [Bartlett] online because he’s based in New York and I’m based mostly everywhere else. So yeah there’s been a little bit of back and forth, but we’re pretty close. I’m hoping we’ll be done soon.

Baltin: How did you and Annie meet?

Stone: I met Annie through our sort of mutual drummer and friend, Matt Johnson. Matt Johnson is the guy I grew up listening to on Jeff Buckley’s Grace record. And when Angus and I toured with Martha Wainwright through Europe, Matty was drumming with Martha and we had this great friendship that formed over that tour. And then we went out on another tour, Matty was available and we asked him if he would come on tour with us. We never expected him to say yes, but he did and he ended up touring with us for three or four years. Then, after Angus and I took a break, [he] started drumming with Annie in St. Vincent. We then went back on tour and I think we were drumming with Chris Dave, who’d we met through Rick [Rubin]. And Chris and Matt both grew up in Texas. Anyway we’re walking through the airport in Helsinki, I think it was. It was summer festival season and I saw Matty walking along with his bags. It’s one of those exciting moments on tour where you cross paths with somebody you love. And Annie was with him. He introduced us and he said, “You guys should be friends.” And she said, “Okay, let’s be friends.” She sent me a text message saying, “Friends.” And after that we sort of just stayed in touch loosely over text. I always found Annie to be very warm. And I had also seen her performance on the biggest festivals and I thought she was spectacular to watch.

Baltin: Where did the working together come in?

Stone: It wasn’t until maybe a couple of years after that, I was spending a lot of time in New York with Thomas and she came to do a piano vocal version of her record. I was in the studio at the time they were recording it. So I got to spend a bit more time with her then. Again it was all just pretty random. It was like dinners here and there. Anyway, Thomas and I had been working on all these songs, we had about 30 songs we had written and we didn’t know what this record was going to be. We were starting to get a bit lost in our own world of writing and Thomas said, “We should get Annie to produce this. We should get Annie to come in, listen to all of the songs and tell us which ones are good and which ones we should let go of, what this record is going to be and how we should maybe shape the songs in whatever way.” And I of course thought that was an amazing idea and just hoped she would be up for it. She had just finished producing the Sleater-Kinney record or was maybe in the mixing process of that. So I knew she wanted to get into production. So Thomas asked her and she was really keen and she came and listened to the songs. It was amazing, from the moment she turned up on the first day, she had like a notepad and a pen and she said, “Play me all the songs.” And she was saying things and writing notes that were so helpful and amazing already. I got this feeling of relief like, “We’re gonna finish this.”

Baltin: How much has the record changed after she became involved?

Stone: Some songs changed a lot and some hardly changed. She added some amazing guitar playing and sometimes some backing vocals or things like that. Kind of pulled out a couple of synths on some songs, “That’s way too many synths.” That’s something she was great at, which reminded me a little bit of working with Rick. Some of the similarities of the production style, which was stripping things out, removing things to make it feel more spacious. It’s a pretty thick-sounding record so you can imagine what it sounded like before with extra, extra synths (laughs). Then some songs, like “Dance,” for instance, is a really great example of a song that was so different. I really wanted to make it like a pop song. It felt like that chorus, “Why don’t we dance?/There’s only one thing left to do/You’ve got that hold on me/I’ve got that hold on you.” It felt like that chorus was really poppy and we wanted something to go there with that. And Annie had a different idea when she heard the song. She heard it referencing more “Bonnie And Clyde” Serge Gainsbourg kind of style, something a bit more romantic and it was great she took it that direction cause then the verses sort of changed from being these melodic things into being more like spoken word poetry, which I hadn’t ever done before. And it ended up being a style of singing I really enjoyed, singing/speaking.

Baltin: It sounds like you definitely opened yourself up to new things on this record. Would you say that is true?

Stone: A lot of this record was about not judging myself. I think I’ve been so in a style for so long with my brother and my previous solo stuff I wanted to do something different, sound different and use my voice in different ways. But I’d never done that before. And for having been in the industry making records for almost 15 years it was a really challenging thing to trust myself that going down those roads was going to be okay. And another amazing thing that happens is I don’t know how you feel about hearing your own voice, [but] that’s the thing that everybody hates. It’s one of the most shocking things to hear how you speak. You think, “I don’t sound like that.” And to speak I was like, “That’s not gonna sound good.” I don’t mind hearing myself sing. But hearing myself speak was a challenging thing to get through. And I had to find this way of speaking that was authentic to how I sound as a person, but also sounded palatable. There were just these adventures within adventures. With Annie and Thomas they both really pushed me to get past that judgment and criticism and keep trying things.

Baltin: Talk about the dance nature of songs like “Break” and “Unreal.”

Stone: Hearing great songs that make you move has been a huge part of what’s inspired me to make this record. I really wanted to at some point in my life make a record that felt like I could move my body to it and have fun. I’ve always written a lot of songs about the sadness of heartbreak and the sadness of how people treat each other. That’s been part of a cathartic experience of songwriting for me, sitting down and getting some of that stuff out. And hopefully that then makes it easier to be positive in the world and feel good about waking up and being a part of it. But I’ve been so lucky these songs have existed that made me want to move and feel alive and be here in that way. I’m hoping some of the energy off this has that same energy, that energy of let’s connect and celebrate each other. I’m hoping we actually get to do that again (laughs). Making this record, for sure, for me, is about being more connected to the joy of music and the feeling of when it really makes you want to move. I’ve never done that and I’ve always wanted to do that. I loved that feeling growing up and putting on records loud and moving my body as a kid. And I felt that was freedom. You put on a track, turned it up and just wriggled about, not knowing what you were doing. But it was freedom and I haven’t made music like that. So definitely this was my time to start going in that direction.

Baltin: What were your favorite songs to wriggle to as kid?

Stone: The Whitney Houston song, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” which still go crazy for if it is ever playing. Just absolutely phenomenal. And recently I saw her performance at the Super Bowl of her doing the national anthem, which has now become one of my favorite vocal performances. It’s just incredible, tears in my eyes.