Teeth & Tongue: ‘I Want To Be A Better Singer’

After three albums as Teeth & Tongue, Jess Cornelius is still exploring “weird, complex feelings” and still adapting the project’s sonic identity. Interview by DOUG WALLEN.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] “It shouldn’t be hard to be happy,” laments Jess Cornelius at the start of ‘Easy Living’. That theme pops up across Teeth & Tongue’s third album Grids: a nagging dissatisfaction with one’s lot in life. “Oh I don’t know why you’d give up the love of a good man,” goes a line on ‘Good Man’, while ‘More Than This’ asks, “Who would ask for more than this? Who would not be satisfied with this?”

The Melbourne-based New Zealand native has always posed more pointed questions in her lyrics than most, and her bracing self-examination is a crucial part of what made 2011’s Tambourine one of that year’s best albums. Developed over months and months with co-producer AJ Bradford, Grids is more piecemeal by comparison and newly open to swapping between full-band and more solo-style songs, but the same level of emotional scrutiny is there in the lyrics. And Cornelius has grown a lot as a singer, climbing to chandelier-shaking new heights on ‘I Feel Good’ and eerily swapping lines with Laura Jean on ‘Newborn’.

You’ll still feel the presence of guitarist Marc Regueiro-Mckelvie (Popolice, Enclosures, New Estate) and bassist Damian Sullivan, but Cornelius steps out further than in the past, at times singing against tides of her own multiplied vocals. Rotating easily between piano, keyboards, drum programming and electric and acoustic guitar, she reconfirms Teeth & Tongue as an outlet for her songs that’s always evolving.

You use vocal looping on this album to give the effect of multiple you’s, self-harmonising on ‘Good Man’ and ‘I Feel Good’. Is that something that came up in the demo process and you just decided to keep it that way?
Yeah, it became a bit of a theme that I wanted to explore. On Tambourine and [2008’s] Monobasic I wasn’t really into using a lot of harmonising and a lot of backing vocals. It wasn’t something I really explored. It basically came about from doing live stuff. Rather than it being something we did in the studio and had to create live, it actually started off being a live technique. I was doing a solo tour in the States [in late 2012] and I just wanted to fill the sound out and present more of a fully realised sound live, even though I was playing on my own.

Then Darren Sylvester lent me a sampler. Well, he gave me his old sampler. I’d never used one before; I’d used drum machines and things. I started recording all these vocals and had the idea of having vocals as a percussive element. So I just started layering them up and putting them on this sampler and triggering them live. It was something I wanted to work in throughout the album as well, I guess.

On ‘I Feel Good’ you really hit those hit notes. What was the impetus for that?
[Laughs] It’s a bit theatrical, isn’t it? I was feeling weird about doing that – going the whole overly-dramatic route – but it just happened when I was writing the song. I was living in Northcote above a shop. It was me and a friend of mine; he had this old piano that sat in this tiny, tiny stairwell, so that’s where I wrote that song. On an upright piano. The harmonies came later when I started demoing it.

But that chorus bit: that was just the way the song came out. [Laughs] I didn’t really intend on doing this big dramatic thing, but once it was there it was like, “Well, it’s there.”

Did you ever study singing?
I definitely put a lot of energy into singing. I want to be a better singer. When I started singing, I was 13 or something. I was pretty bad. I used to irritate everybody by singing along and being annoying and actually quite bad at singing. But it was just something I really wanted to get better at it. For a long time it was my primary instrument, so I didn’t really put a huge amount of energy into playing guitar but I put a lot of it into singing. [Laughs] I don’t know why.

I feel like on this record you’re not worrying about making it sound like a full band, but just taking whatever approach is right for each specific song.
Yeah, that was kind of the approach. We didn’t have everything written and demoed before we started recording, so it was this recording process that took a year and a half. I started off with a bunch of songs, and some of them were songs we had already played with the band. So you can tell on the record the more band-y songs, where Marc and Damo had their parts that they’d arrange themselves. There’s a handful of those that we recorded, and that was pretty straightforward. Then there were some from my solo tour – we kind of added the band into those songs, but we still kept it really [stripped back].

“We don’t have to worry about everyone playing on every song.”

There’s a number of songs that the band don’t play on, because I was writing as well as recording and so there’d be a whole lot of songs that I’d end up writing synth bass parts for or there just wouldn’t be any guitars. So I didn’t worry too much about performing it live until after we’d finished. It was like, “Well, I think this song is finished the way it is, so we don’t have to worry about everyone playing on every song.” We did it to make the songs how I wanted it to sound, I suppose.

Doing ‘Newborn’ with Laura Jean: so you just decided to collaborate and do the trade-off vocals?
No, Laura [came into] it kind of late, really. The song was already written. Initially I was thinking about singing both parts myself, but obviously that wouldn’t work live because they overlap. And it was much, much better getting someone else and have it as a duet. I didn’t specifically think of Laura when I was writing, but then she was the first person that came to mind after AJ had suggested doing it as a duet. That worked out really well. So yeah, I just gave her the song and she did a really good job.

Your voices are similar on that song, so they seem distinct but related.
Yeah, when we were rehearsing it at home, my boyfriend was like, “I can’t even tell you guys apart.” But it’s weird: when Laura does her own thing, I feel like she has this incredible angelic voice that’s so different from mine. [Laughs] I just kind of brought her down a notch.

I like the reference in that song to Lygon Street and the cemetery [Melbourne General]. Have you done that much before? Put exact geographical markers or details in songs?
No, I haven’t. I feel like if it doesn’t come really naturally … there are a lot of bands that do that and do it really well, and I don’t think that’s necessarily me. But it made sense to me in the song. I think in the past I’ve been a bit too self-conscious to do that. But I do really like specific references in songs in general, rather than vague universal themes. I think you need a bit of both.

“The record was a lot to do with finding ways of being content.”

When you do relationship songs, they seem more unique than most bands’ and more about the actual struggles that go on, rather than just the broken heart thing.
Yeah, I think there’s just so many subtleties of drama that happen within relationships, and it might not be that you’ve had your heart broken or you’re about to break someone’s heart. It’s much more … there’s a lot of weird, complex feelings, even if you’ve been with someone for five years. I think that’s the hardest part. I feel like the record was a lot to do with the mundane [side] of life and the relationships within that, and finding ways of being content with the things that you’ve got and not constantly striving for drama or striving for bigger and better things. That was something I was really dealing with a lot. Not necessarily consciously all the time, but those things seem to spring up quite a bit.

Well, that’s definitely the big theme in ‘More Than This’: Why can’t I just be happy with what I have? Wouldn’t anyone be happy with this?
[Laughs] That’s it, yeah.

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‘Grids’ is out now on vinyl, digital and CD through Dot Dash/Remote Control. Teeth & Tongue is touring nationally in support of Vance Joy (dates below) and playing the inaugural Beechworth Music Festival on Saturday, May 10.

Sat, April 26 – The Gov, Adelaide, SA
Tues, May 6 – Hi-Fi, Brisbane, QLD
Thurs, May 8 – The Bakery, Perth, WA
Fri, May 16 – The Metro, Sydney, NSW
Fri, May 23 – The Forum, Melbourne, VIC