Yeah, I often have very vivid dreams. I was dreaming that I was performing a song at a show and at some point the dream became lucid because I was able to wake myself up from it and I quickly wrote it all down. It was one of those feelings like ‘I know this song is supposed to exist’ and the strangest part was literally only a month or so later we were performing the exact song from my dream at our show at the Gaso. It was a surreal feeling, like the whole thing was pulled out of my head and brought life.
There’s a strong emotional undercurrent in your music—how do you channel such raw feeling while still delivering big, anthemic sounds?
Ooh, I guess for me they go hand in hand. I think a song can get massive and anthemic sometimes to emphasise something in a way that hopefully does justice to the strength of the feeling. The Mill carries a lot of real frustration but I didn’t want it to feel like despair because it doesn’t have to end there. I felt like it needed to sound reflective of the current mood of our society, like yes, life is tough, but people are also resilient and hopeful, and I love how we can carry optimism, hope and frustration all at once. And the grind isn’t easy, the more you grind and the more pressure builds up, it feels natural to me that there has to be a release, and in this case, builds to a big, raw anthemic moment.
You’ve mentioned feeling let down by summer—can you unpack that theme in the EP title I Once Loved You, Summer?
The title ‘I once loved you, Summer‘ is actually a line from one of the tracks on the EP called ‘Summer Chapter’. That song in particular, I wrote with a lot of intention. I realised that I had written a collection of songs over a small period of time that all had a recurring theme surrounding summer, and so many really tragic things had happened to me and a lot of my loved ones all at once last year. I felt like I really wasn’t managing anything very well at that time, and I saw that I could tie all of these different experiences together in Summer Chapter to try my best to explain what was going on, and maybe why I suddenly stopped being the person people knew me as up until then. I felt like I fell out of love with summer. I took that, and wrote some stuff that I had to get out, and I had the idea of personifying summer so I could acknowledge some of those expectations and disappointments I had.
This new body of work feels like a collective reflection—how have your friendships and community shaped the EP?
If I could sum it all up best, I have to say the EP is written like many conversations with my friends and people in my world. It’s all confession, declaration, checking in, trying my best to encourage and give hope. That’s really just how things are with my community. I love everyone so much and I just felt so hard for this EP that I can’t wait around for it to be ‘too late’ and in retrospect wish that I had had the chance to tell someone what I needed to tell them. That already happened last summer and I learnt the hard way, people need to know they are loved and valued. So I feel like people do that for me and I want to do that for them too. This EP is absolutely collaborative in that way and very shaped by my relationships.
We are! I think people can be excited to see our supports, Yours, Georgina and Sean Hutton, I know I am! As for what they can expect from us, I’m stoked that we’re finally sharing all the songs from the EP live. We’ll be playing Summer Chapter for the very first time, no one has heard it yet, so it will be a sneak peek at the final song on the EP that will be released a few weeks after on 7th August. We also have a couple of other new songs we’ll be road testing and of course some old favourites. We’ll be playing with our full band. It’s big and it’s so much fun.
You’ve been building toward this EP with releases like “You All The Time” and “How It All Came Down”—how do you feel they connect with “The Mill”?
I think sonically, those three songs in particular are our more anthemic tracks on the EP. They all end a lot bigger than they begin, in my head they’re a lot like snowball songs, like pushing a little thought from the top of the mountain and they just pick up size and pace and they go until they’re big and heavy at the end. Hopefully they all hit like an avalanche!
Saint Victoire blends elements of folk, alt-rock, and even alt-country—how did that fusion come about, and how do you keep it cohesive?
Keeping it cohesive is a bit tricky, but I think having solid references helps. When I take the songs to the band to add in their instrumentation, there seems to be a few consistent artist references we fish out of the pool. There’s a bit of deliberation around ‘does this sound like it needs banjo or mandolin?’ and sometimes I’ve initially thought a song might be more folky and we end up feeling like we want to make really loud noise instead. We all love so many different genres of music, and I love to give each song what I think it needs, rather than thinking ‘this song has to sound like this because this is what people think we do’. There is a limit to that though for sure, I’m not exactly sure where the boundary is, but there have been occasions where the guys are just like ‘what, this is so far from our sound,’ I think I’ve ditched a few songs because they don’t get what I’m doing and I realise I don’t either!
Do you write most of your lyrics from personal experience, or do you find yourself stepping into different stories and voices?
Ooh, so far I think it’s all pretty personal. I’m sure I exaggerate and inflate ideas sometimes to add to the imagery, but at their core I reckon they’re mostly things I’ve experienced or derived from things that I think about. I’m a huge dreamer and daydreamer, so sometimes I’m not entirely sure if something actually happened or not. I also love philosophy so I think that informs a lot of the writing too.
The recording process took you from Phillip Island to Sydney—how did that environment influence the sound or mood of the EP?
When we recorded at the island, we had two days to work with to track the main body of the EP which is five songs. We decided to track everything live and overdub whatever we needed to in post. I personally love tracking like this because the energy just feels very different. It’s not like sitting there playing along to a guide by yourself. We play it like we’re performing, which does mean that there’s a lot more room for error and imperfections. I know that can grate on people, but it’s kind of my style. I’m not mad about a few little imperfections, I love live music more than anything, and what I love is that it isn’t perfect, it’s really raw and human and that’s something that tracking live in the studio allowed us to capture. Ethan mixed everything up in Sydney so we were on a few calls back and forth, but honestly he is amazing. He absolutely understood the vision so quickly. I think I just said I like it sounding full and big and he absolutely delivered on that!
With the EP dropping August 7, what’s next for Saint Victoire after the Sooki Lounge launch—more shows, videos, or surprises in the works?
