Angus & Julia Stone have spent plenty of time travelling over the past few years, and some of those places have found their way into their new music.
The Australian sibling duo have released their seventh studio album Karaoke Bar, a record written and recorded across Greece, France and Australia while they were also touring their previous album Cape Forestier.
Rather than heading into one studio and emerging with a finished record, songs came together wherever Angus and Julia happened to find themselves.
The title track began on the Greek island of Hydra, inspired by late nights, days spent by the water and those occasions when music somehow manages to bring a room full of strangers together.
Monroe came from a rather different setting, taking shape during a week at the legendary Miraval Studios in the south of France.
Then there’s Celestial Bodies, which had perhaps the longest journey of them all. First written on Hydra during an evening when Saharan dust turned the sky red, it travelled with Angus and Julia to France before eventually being completed at Angus’ Sugarcane Mountain Studio in New South Wales.
Those aren’t the only destinations to make an appearance.
Take Me Back to Japan looks back at time spent in Tokyo, while closing track Mexico City brings another part of the world into a record that rarely seems to stay in one place for very long.
There are plenty of changes musically too. Julia takes the lead on the bright, rhythmic The Start, while Strangely Strangely slows things down with Angus at the forefront. Cowgirls Lover Boi, meanwhile, introduces a playful country influence as it recounts a rather chaotic romantic encounter.
It’s been almost two decades since Angus & Julia released debut album A Book Like This in 2007.
Since then, Down the Way and its enduring single Big Jet Plane helped introduce them to audiences around the world, while their catalogue has now accumulated more than three billion streams. Their music has also taken them into soundtrack work with Life Is Strange and, most recently, back onto the road with Cape Forestier.
That tour included sold-out shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Paris’ L’Olympia and New York’s Town Hall.
And somewhere between all those shows, flights, countries and quiet days away from the stage, another album was taking shape.
Karaoke Bar feels fittingly difficult to pin to one particular place. Instead, it’s a collection of songs carrying little pieces of everywhere Angus & Julia Stone happened to be while they were making it.
Karaoke Bar is out now via Virgin Music.
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