Track By Track and stream: Andy Bull

Today marks the release of Aussie alt-pop king Andy Bull’s new album Sea of Approval, the much anticipated follow up to 2009’s debut We’re Too Young.

Last year saw the release two incredible hit singles ‘Keep On Running’ and ‘Baby I Am Nobody Now’ with both tracks scoring coveted spots in the most recent Triple J Hottest 100. Bull then followed the success with the release of the incredibly catchy ‘Talk Too Much’.

Out via Island Records the record was written and produced by Bull himself who like many talent artists before him played every instrument on the album. He’ll soon be taking the album on the road with the Sea Of Approval National Tour supported by indie pop wonders New Navy.

To celebrate the release Sea Of Approval, we chatted with Bull who gave us a track by track run down of this exciting new record.

Just One Expression, Just One Line

This is the opening scene: a guy strewn out on his back, staring at the ceiling, wrestling with his conscious, drifting out of his mind. People are calling his telephone, banging at the door, talking through the wall while he is toeing the brink of some event horizon. Then this spirit descends and tells him, “You are not what you were”. That hammy voice over I did at the end is where the title comes from, and it describes how I feel from time to time: like I’m just an actor, with just one expression, and just one line.

Baby I Am Nobody Now

The best explanation of this song is probably just in the lyric itself; anyway it’s about feeling envy, jealousy, being on the outer, wanting to be unique and wanting to fit in. There’s a kind narrative in people wherein we cycle between thinking “I’m one in a million” to “I’m a nobody” and back again, particularly when we make our self-worth provisionally or in external contingencies, as in the love of others.

All I can add is that it took me a long time to get this one right; I made so many different versions, but I arrived here, and I still feel very close to this song.

Nothing Is Wrong

I think ‘Nothing is Wrong’ is an offering of comfort. When I first wrote it, I wondered if it was too much like an old fashioned ballad, which was something I maybe wanted to move away from at the time, but a few of my close musical friends were very encouraging about it. I came back to the song then and once I recorded the heavy synthesizers in the chorus, it started to feel like it was in context, and now I think that it could be a reply to ‘Baby I Am Nobody Now’. Also, I think Paul McKercher (producer) did a really excellent job of mixing this song.

100 Ways

In the 1980s, Roland music made a series of drum machines and bass step sequencers with the names 808, 909, and 303. They were considered failed commercial ventures at the time, but after a little cross-cultural appropriation, ended up providing some of the most utilized sounds in modern music. In 2014, some 30+ years later, Roland developed new versions of these modules, and I was lucky enough to be given them by a guy named David Lackey, who had worked on their development and whose own passion is getting all these things to work together in sync through all kinds of specialized contraptions he’s dreamt up, which I think is kind of esoteric and cool.

Growing up, my eldest brother had used all this sort of stuff in his own music, but I had been uncertain about to approach it, and it meant I could only appreciate what my brother did from a distance. All these sounds are all available in software form now of course, and you can make loops at your computer etc., but using the hardware is like playing an actual instrument and the experience is tactile (and volatile) and it rewards you in different ways. On top of all this, the unexpected joy of it for me personally is not only talking to the ghosts in these machines, but a better insight into my brother’s music and his thinking too. This track is also the first one of the album that my friend Alex Bennison appears on; that’s him playing those amazing guitar sounds. Other than the guitar, it was all recorded live, all at once, in a single take- even those vocal glitches, which I made using of audio-scrambling hardware midi-synced up and side chained through the TR-8.

Something, I Guess

This song was written as a bit of theatre, like an intermission in ‘the film’. It sounds maudlin, but I almost see the lyric as a eulogy that a parent might give at their own child’s funeral, a child who sort of thrashed around as a young adult and eventually undid themselves. It’s the album’s intermission.

Talk Too Much

In our age, it seems that chatter and conjecture has become, maybe accidentally, the primary way we qualify ourselves and our experience of living. We are often beating our chests and saying what we stand for, who we think we are, what we think of this or that, as if somebody asked. The implied fear is that silence must be akin to not existing, but this is a dangerous lie. Language may help us to express that we are looking for meaning, but only clumsily, and only after the fact. I think this song is me saying to myself “stop this clumsy conversation and just live, whatever that turns out to mean”

Keep On Running

The first line of this song is where the album title comes from. I think a bit about how a clear conscience is tied to having personal integrity, which I think in turn has something to do with an individual being able to independently formulate their own interpretation of experiences, their own values, and then choose their own behavior, without excessive reliance upon other forces to direct them. I suspect that continuously seeking the approval of others or looking to others for answers to your internal questions can make for a very confused life. If the thing that ‘keeps you running’ is the approval and acceptance of others, then it may be hard to experience life as yourself.

Loved Like You

People talk about social media as a stream, and I was thinking how if it is, then it must be a shallow and fast one. Social media didn’t invent our ancient desire to be “liked”, but it has certainly been designed to reward it.

The Hill

This song is about having a kind of epiphany roll down upon you like water down a hill: washing something away, lifting a weight from your mind.

So That I Can Feel Better

The character here is suffering, although it’s partly because his identity is safe within his misery; he holds onto his misfortune as a badge of honour: like I am a good person because I have suffered for this thing, because I have held on to it. There is sadness in life, and suffering and personal loss and great injustice; but living is also about letting go; letting go of people, ideologies, narratives; there is a time when everything has to be let go; so this is the final scene.

Andy Bull’s Sea Of Approval Tour

For more info and tickets visit: www.andybull.com.au

Track By Track: Andy Bull – ‘Sea Of Approval’