Scott Spark: ‘I’m Still Finding My Feet’

Brisbane piano man Scott Spark talks to No Anchor’s IAN ROGERS – an artist from the other end of the musical spectrum – about finding his own voice and how a fear of failure inspired the making of his debut album.

The idea to interview Brisbane songwriter/piano man Scott Spark came to me late one night. We live not far from each other in the leafy, gentrified suburb of New Farm. Scott lives a couple of blocks to the south, down towards the river. On this particular night we ran into each other at a show and split a cab home. In the car, he told me about his new album Fail Like You Mean It. It’s his debut. On the verge of the album’s release, some parts of the process worried him. It had been a lot of work. As we parted ways on Sydney Street I asked him if he’d be interested in talking to M+N. He agreed. The following week I visited him at his apartment and asked him all the things that had come to mind on the walk over.

I felt like one day you just started playing music. I had all these friends playing music and I had Scott, my friend who worked on the radio. Then one day, you were on-stage too. When was that?
It was around the start of 2006. It might have been a gig at Ric’s? I think I’m still finding my feet.

One of the reasons I’m interested in talking to you is because Fail Like You Mean It – to me – sounds like it came from Mars. I don’t think I own a record by any of your influences. Can you hear the influence of certain people on it?
I think it’s really interesting how if you write songs and perform, you find your own voice. It’s interesting how you move on from that point where you immerse yourself in the catalogues of other people and then understandably come out sounding like a mish-mash of certain people and then you gradually evolve to something that’s your own. Actually, I think you either do or you don’t. It’s a bit like bullies in high school. You either turn into a fucking mess or you come out stronger for it. And in the early stages of learning to write songs, you’re always scared that each song will be the last one you can write. The moment when you lose that fear I think you’re starting to find your own thing.

I’ve already read three or four reviews of the album now and everyone seems to be arguing what degree it sounds like Ben Folds or Rufus, which to me is fine, but in all honesty – as someone who knows their back catalogue quite well – I can’t really hear it, apart from the fact we both all play keys and sing.

The first time I listened to the album, it seemed like a mixed bag of stuff but then it slowly starts to take shape. There’s a lot of different things happening at the beginning but in the middle it really comes together. I think I like the end more than the beginning.
Me too, actually. I’m probably more down than I am up. But I didn’t do the track-listing. We recorded 20 songs and the best I could do was reduce it down to 14 and my tracklisting was completely different. I ended up getting a couple of people I really trusted and I said to them, “You need to fucking do something about this”, because I just knew my version was a record that not a lot of people would like. It had a lot of slow shit at the beginning. It was like a musical. It had an overture. It almost felt like a concept album. I think the tracklisting we ended up with is probably the best for presenting the songs in way that is the most immediately appealing.

I don’t like using the word “honest” to describe music because it seems a bit beside the point. You can honestly write songs about dragons. But your work seems frank. It’s direct. Do you even want to talk about lyrics?
Oh of course! I don’t want things to be too obvious but at the same time I want people to know what I’m talking about. I find it very hard to invest myself in other people’s songs when I have no fucking idea what they’re saying. Even if it’s a poetic stream of gorgeous words, I could not give a shit if I can’t make sense of it. I’m a little bit populist when it comes to lyrics.

At one point I was listening to the record and I was thinking, “How am I going to talk to Scott about this? Scott does this thing that is totally different to what I’m accustomed to.” But then I noticed you’re really angry at times. That’s what our two worlds have in common.
I’m noticing this. It’s weird. I do think of myself as a slightly angry person but not in a Matthew Newton kind of way. I’m not walking around looking for someone to punch. But if you’re going to write songs about life, you may as well write holistically about life. All of us get pissed off at least once a day, so I think some sense of that should be there on the record.

Did you learn anything about yourself from writing the album? You can say “no”.
From the song-writing perspective, I learned I can be a bit of an arsehole. When you’re writing honest songs, you start to realise you can be a bit of a dick. From a music-making point-of-view, I learned the trickiness of balancing the idea that being overly collaborative yields better results with the idea that at some point you have to step in and take ownership. Does anyone ever get that balance right? I don’t know.

“In the early stages of learning to write songs, you’re always scared that each song will be the last one you can write. The moment when you lose that fear I think you’re starting to find your own thing.”

I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to make another record in the future. For this record we had about 20 different people come through the door, all really good friends and all right for the songs. And it was quite directionless to begin with. I had 20 songs I wanted to record and some of them got kicked off the record and some new ones got added during the sessions. Then about a quarter of the way through we had to take some time off because my dad died. Afterwards, I was expecting to go back into the studio and for the whole project to be a little bit morose and melancholy but it was the complete opposite. One of the first songs I wrote after that period was ‘Fail Like You Mean It’, which is one of the more pointed songs on the record.

Did someone actually say that to you? Because someone says it to you in the song.
It’s a bit of a pep talk. When someone’s really ill, even if you suspect they’re going to die, you never say that. Because you feel like it’s almost putting a hex on them and what good does it do anyway. But when someone dies, is that failing? If you’re fighting to stay alive for yourself and for other people that you love, when you die is that failure?

For me, I think failing is one of the most interesting concepts. Everyone is so terrified of it. Whether it’s marriage breakdown or not doing well at your job. And when it comes to rock music, the whole aesthetic is about cool and the irony is that most rock bands fail. It’s a complete illusion. Failure always has to be this thing that is stashed away. It’s that box of CDs you never sold. I just felt like, “Fuck it.” After my Dad died, I was thinking – in a way - death is our biggest failure but no one wants to think about that either. When you’re forced to think about it, you start to feel there’s more of an urgency to life. And it sounds tacky but you also feel the value of everyone and everything a lot more. But normally we just take things for granted. We’re such fucking brats. I think that’s where the anger comes from.

'Fail Like You Mean It' is out now on Other Tongues.

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‘FAIL LIKE YOU MEAN IT’ LAUNCH DATES

Thursday, September 30
Toff in Town, Melbourne, VIC
w/Carry Nation + Gosteleradio

Thursday, October 7
The Vanguard, Sydney, NSW
w/ The Rescue Ships + Fergus Brown

Friday, October 8
The Zoo, Brisbane, QLD
w/ BigStrongBrute + Inland Sea