Angus And Julia Stone are a brother-sister acoustic duo from Sydney, Australia, aged 21 and 23 respectively.
By Andy Welch
Angus And Julia Stone started making music separately in their teens but later began collaborating on each other's compositions, eventually recording their debut EP, Chocolates And Cigarettes, in 2006.
They came to the attention of Travis singer, Fran Healy, in late 2006 while living in the UK. The famously affable frontman asked them to his home studio to record some demos. These recordings went on to become the duo's beautiful debut album, A Book Like This, which was released in Australia last year and gets its UK release on March 31.
They are currently on tour supporting Newton Faulkner and return to the country in April and May for their own full UK tour.
We catch up with Julia "somewhere between Newcastle and Aberdeen", who explains all about life on the road.
Go to www.angusandjuliastone.com for more details.
HOW'S THE TOUR GOING?
It's wicked, going really well so far. Newton (Faulkner) and his whole crew have a really laid-back attitude. We just hang out and play music. There's also this beautiful catering company as well, which is definitely a bonus. Quite different from when we tour ourselves - we're putting on weight instead of losing it!
IS IT MAKING YOU LOOK FORWARD MORE TO YOUR TOUR IN APRIL AND MAY?
Yeah, it is actually. We've just changed the line-up of the band, so it's nice to have gelled on this tour in time for the April/May shows. Mitch, the drummer we usually have, got ill and unfortunately couldn't make it, so we were lucky enough to get our uncle Steve from Australia to play with us and then a friend of mine from high school, who's an amazing drummer, is on tour with us now.
YOU AND ANGUS WRITE YOUR OWN SONGS INDIVIDUALLY, THEN COLLABORATE OVER THE ARRANGEMENTS. HOW DIFFERENT ARE YOUR SONGS FROM YOU BROTHER'S?
I'm not that sure they are really. I suppose they are, we're different people in a lot of ways. Other people have pointed out that Angus writes more about what he sees in the world, whereas I write more about what's going on in my love life. Saying that, I think we both swap between those two things and Angus certainly writes about love as well. I don't know if I've written anything really autobiographical, I don't know.
WHAT'S IT LIKE SPENDING SO MUCH TIME WITH YOUR BROTHER?
We get on well. We certainly get on better the more we travel together and the more music we make. When we first started, we had to get to know each other as friends, which was something we'd never had to do. We'd just hung out as brother and sister then, all of a sudden, we had to spend all day, every day together. Travelling is always quite intense too, tiring and, as brother and sister, we have ways of getting to each other and annoying each other but over the time we've been doing this, we've realised that if we want to carry on making music, we have to stop that stuff.
"We've done a good job of becoming better friends plus we've both got similar senses of humour and interests. It's got to the point now where it's become enjoyable spending time together and we hang out, even when we've got time off.
YOU RECORDED THE ALBUM ROUND AT FRAN HEALY'S HOUSE?
Yes, we did about half the record there and the rest of it at our mum's place in Australia. We set up the microphones in Fran's lounge, had a jam and just recorded it. We just played the songs for Fran and his wife and he set the tape recording and left it for six hours or so. Fran went back through the tape after, added a few bits of his own and got a friend to put some cello on a couple of tracks too. The week after, he played the songs back to us and we really liked what he'd done. We didn't go there with the intention of recording the album, we just wanted to do something for an EP, but we loved the recordings so made it our record.
WAS IT SURREAL WORKING WITH FRAN?
Well I don't know how successful Travis are in the UK, I'm guessing they're pretty big, but I don't really listen to popular music so I can't scale it. I'm guessing from people's reaction to us working with him that he's pretty famous! He's such a nice guy though, so down to earth and he was like an older brother, telling me and Angus about the industry. He doesn't think we eat enough either, he was always checking if were hungry!
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