Ned Collette: ‘It’s All So Spineless’

Ned Collette can be relied upon to change tack with every new record. Does that amount to a death sentence in today’s music culture?

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Based in Berlin since 2009, Melbourne native Ned Collette has been worth following over the years partly because of how hard he is to follow. Since exiting his early-2000s ensemble City City City (who reunited for a one-off gig in April), Collette has moved all over the shop, from deadpan folk and nebulous indie pop to restless, otherworldly rock via his collaboration with the shape-shifting backing band Wirewalker (Joe Talia, Ben Bourke and sometimes James Rushford). Although really it’s just best to ditch genre guidelines altogether and savour Collette’s uniqueness: here’s someone who’s as likely to cover Broadcast as to get all funky with nylon-string guitar.

Uniqueness is one thing, but Collette’s thoroughness is arguably even rarer: when he tries something new (which is often) he commits to it fully. That commitment hasn’t exactly been reciprocated by the music audience at large, which is a roundabout way of saying that not nearly enough people stick with Collette for nearly long enough. In a global culture measured in clicks and follows, Collette’s work doesn’t fit the mould. His latest album, Networking in Purgatory, houses his widest array of metamorphoses yet – it favours the quietly enduring over the instantly endearing, and it’s in no scrambling rush to win us over.

In a lengthy response to a modest batch of email questions, Collette meditates on what recent shifts in music culture – and the wider culture itself – mean for the quality of art, now and into the future.

How did these songs come together? At what point did Joe, Ben and James come into the picture?
I think the earliest ones were written when I was looking after a friend’s house in Brighton (that’s hipster-cocktail Brighton, not yuppie-Warney Brighton). That was also when I met Fredrik Kinbom, who now plays bass in the band over here. 2011. Work on the record proper could probably be dated to a session with Joe, Ben and James in Taggerty when I was back touring 2 in 2012. That’s when we got ‘At the Piano’ and ‘Across the Frozen Bridge’ down.

Then as usual I worked the others into shape here and got them off to Joe, who added drums and noises etc. We had a Skype session with Ben on bassoon. There was a final flurry of activity in Berlin last year when Joe and James both happened to be here touring their stuff – that was mostly James yelling at us from under my doona – and then Joe mixed it all in Melbourne.

Two new influences I heard on this record were Mike Garson (‘At the Piano’) and early Brian Eno (‘Bird’). Did those factor into the album for you at all?
Yeah Mike Garson, sure. Not necessarily a new influence but a song where we finally found a natural place for that. I dunno, James just gravitated to it and, I mean, it’s not your run-of-the-mill shit keyboardist effect. James can actually play the piano. With all 10 fingers. But yeah, I hope we got away with it, if at least because that song isn’t particularly Bowie. I mean, it could also be said we ripped off Debussy there, too.

Eno not really. There was a really Eno-y type track but Joe didn’t go for it. I’ve always maintained it’s weird with influences though, because somehow they can come after you’ve made the thing that they seem to have influenced. Like, I’d honestly never listened to Roxy Music until recently – those first two albums, and then Avalon not until this week, actually. And yet I feel they are somehow an influence on the record, which is of course impossible.

How did the City City City reunion go? How did it feel to play with those guys again after so many years?
It was fine. It’s quite strange music, really … and it took a bit of work to pick a set that didn’t sound too dated to me. I think it was an interesting band because we were all pulling in very different directions, but I think we occasionally fell back on some of the clichés of the time – the big buildups, etc. But yeah, it was great to play with the others again, and I think we actually played it all better than we used to – there’s a complexity and a harmonic aspect to it that was really enjoyable to get into again. It also provided a kind of closure because we sort of just drifted off into other things after Meredith and an epic A Low Hum tour in 2006. Maybe we’ll do it again in 10 years.

Anyway, a whole lot of people I hadn’t seen for a long time showed up and when we were at dinner someone stole about a dozen old City City City T-shirts we were trying to flog.

Are you still enjoying Berlin? What’s your day-to-day life like?
Yes, I love it. I just feel really happy every time I return here from somewhere, and a lot of the time in between. It’s properly politically and socially engaged. People really fight hard for what they believe is just, and there’s a sort of practical “common sense over strict legality” attitude which I find natural and appealing. There’s also a good little company of people around – the band here with Fred [Kinborn] on bass and Mads Ronbjerg on drums is excellent, and there are more avenues opening up for decent shows. Alex Garsden is here at the moment playing keys and guitar with us.

When I’m not playing shows I write and record. I read. I get stressed about money. I cook. I drink. I live with a woman. I don’t drink coffee and we don’t go out for breakfast.

How did you find your recent time back in Australia, including launching the album [in April/May]?
Well, on the one hand it was great to play with the band [Wirewalker] as always. I mean, playing with Ben and then leaving Ben every time kinda breaks my heart. I see the others all the time. But on the other hand, this time it was much tougher from, I dunno, a “business” perspective. It seemed much harder to get any traction for the record in the press, despite the tireless efforts of the excellent Dot Dash folks. I think I did one interview for the whole album, and it came out after I’d already left the country again. We didn’t do a big tour because last time that was a bit of a blowout (and that time with a lot of press), and even in Melbourne we didn’t quite fill the room. It’s probably because I’ve been away for a long time now, but I also think it’s because everything is whizzing by so quickly now that if your timing is a little bit off, things can get buried. It was a shame too, because I think the band hit something else this time round. Like it got really consistent.

“I do feel that we’re plunging into an abyss of no certain return.”

It’s something I’ve talked about a lot with friends … musicians, in Australia. That often an artist gets that initial burst of recognition, but then if you don’t follow the path people seem to expect of you – if you don’t want to make the same thing over and over again, you struggle to keep an audience following you. It’s a really small audience anyway, and these days it comes with extra added attention deficit. And then you have to settle into the actual lifelong business of being an artist, which is a totally different thing. I mean, after [2006’s] Jokes & Trials we didn’t then go on to make a whole lot of music that sounded like Nick Drake, or Leonard Cohen, or fucking Bon Iver for that matter, and I think that confused some people that maybe thought they’d found something they could rely on to remain a certain way. But we’re really very committed to trying to create something new each time, and new is a hard sell these days, when people expect to have things immediately available and comprehensible and pre-contextualised.

But I don’t know … Australia. What the fuck are we up to? It’s all so spineless. I enjoyed going to the football. And spending time in the bush again, fucking hell – I haven’t really managed that on my last two trips. That’s where Australia’s at for me. With all the screeching, wheeling cockatoos.

You seem to take a jab at social media with the deadpan line “Update your profile” on ‘A Lawyer or a Gimmick’ (plus a lot of nods to the music business, including “Maybe put it out on cassette”) – and the album title has a similar air (a la LinkedIn). There’s also a refrain of “These aren’t my days” in ‘Bird’. Is any (or all) of that about you feeling at odds with the era in which you find yourself?
I think it’s probably very self-defeating to feel yourself at odds with an entire era, but yes I do feel that we’re plunging into an abyss of no certain return. In terms of how we relate to each other and as a byproduct, how we evaluate what’s important culturally. It’s related to my answer before, I guess. I don’t care about “illegal” downloading or that shit … I mean, I’ve never really seen a great deal of profit from record sales anyway. But I do care about the fact that everything has become so superficial that often the extent of people’s engagement with art is confined to computer speakers, maybe a comment on Soundcloud and a fucking thumbs-up button. This is not understanding, or experiencing music, or an album, or any work. Especially if that music asks a bit more of you than just gurbling like a toddler when you’re subconsciously prodded by a synth preset from 1982.

“Going to a gallery and taking an iPhone photo of every fucking painting is a shit way to look at art.”

I couldn’t sign up to Spotify when it came out here because I don’t have a personal Facebook account. It’s become so default it’s unbelievable. People creating all these noisy networks in some kind of imaginary hell-space. And all these musicians fall for it and dole out their time updating crap and spamming people rather than creating something heavy and real. I mean, I do it too. Damn. The major labels were all supposed to crumble in the face of the people’s internet revolution, right? Now not only do the big four labels own Spotify – by virtue of that, they’ve actually worked out a way to rip off artists who aren’t even fucking signed to them; it’s a con for the users too – it’s making us dumb. The revolution, as usual, has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. People get whatever they want, and therefore they don’t really want anything. Want it hard. Just leave it to the algorithm to decide, and its choices will become narrower and narrower. It’s a shit way to listen to music. It’s like going to a gallery and taking an iPhone photo of every fucking painting is a shit way to look at art.

So yeah, it’s so great and easy to expose people to your stuff now, but mostly I think all this superficial exposure to everything just leads to a mass attention deficit disorder. I see it touring here now as opposed to 10 years ago. And honestly I think it’s because no one knows how to commit to anything anymore. No one follows shit, because everyone’s “following” everything, constantly. The hype machine is literally now called The Hype Machine. But no one really cares. I think our audience cares, but they’re probably mostly old men from York.

Is there a story behind ‘Vanitas Quack’? It’s a great song title, and there’s a lot of evocative imagery in the lyrics.
Oh yeah, I guess there are a lot of stories in there. I used ol’ Sergeant Liddiard’s method of writing lyrics over a song I had running around in my head … ‘Tombstone Blues’ by Bob. Sounds pretty different now, I guess. Anyway, it was when I was in Brighton and I was sitting on the beach and it was clear and cold and it all poured out basically in place. There’s a good little collection of vanitases and memento moris in the museum there – like little etchings and paintings of mortality that were popular in the 15th and 16th Century. I like the idea that the whole world is eventually united in the dance of death after everything. As the skeletons drum it out.

I guess also it’s just another song about feeling things moving on, leaving things behind and being left behind, and wishing well to those you say goodbye to. It’s all electronic but it’s set back a few hundred years in my mind.

Is the new album coming out on Fire again in Europe? What are your plans for the rest of the year?
No, the deal with Fire fell through. There are certain contractual obligations I’m tied up in that put the kibosh on the whole thing. It’s all amazingly grown up. But it was also all the more ridiculous for essentially being a fight over nothing – I mean, we’re not exactly raking in the Hyundai syncs. Personally I wouldn’t want to be running any sort of record label in this day and age, so I understand that when our last one [2012’s 2] didn’t do a lot of business for Fire – and even though they said they loved this record, they couldn’t really see a way to justify it unless they could find another angle from which to work the material in the UK. But that didn’t wash with Jeff Woad and now effectively no one will be working the material in the UK. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … the music industry.

“Jesus, everyone still seems to be obsessed with cocaine and who’s who.”

The massive silver lining is that thankfully, right when I was having my longest darkest night of the soul about all of it on Michael Beach’s couch in San Francisco – thinking that really no one would release this record, even in Australia at that point – my pal Andy Zammit, who runs Bronze Rat Records, came and said he’d be keen to help us out. I actually tried to get us on Bronze Rat a few albums back when I was really into Joe Gideon & The Shark’s album Harum Scarum. I didn’t know then that it was run by this excellent and humorous Welshman who would later be based in Berlin and who plays with Gemma Ray. Gemma sang on our last record and we like touring with her.

It’s all the better because they’re musicians themselves and are committed to working on and in the scene here in Germany. I mean, we’ve played some good shows in London, mostly through Fire, but unless you’re from the Brit School or someone’s niece you’re generally gonna be treated like the Romanian at the UKIP party. And Jesus, everyone still seems to be obsessed with cocaine and who’s who and that can get pretty fucking trying, to be honest. I played a show a couple of years back, the success of which was judged by the fact that some comedian was in the crowd. There are of course some excellent exceptions, publications, venues like Cafe Oto and a place that doesn’t really exist called The Dentist.

Did I answer the question? Sorry. The album will come out here in August through Bronze Rat and our little gang will tour it through Europe in October. I've got a couple of side-recording projects on the go, and quite a massive one I'd like to start thinking about getting off the ground. I’m always more and more interested in making experimental music again. Ironically, it seems to offer more in the way of work here, perhaps exactly because the audience for avant garde music or whatever you want to call it seems to maintain its commitment to the art form. We’re moving house in August. I want to put some new doors in. I like a good door. I should probably start a crowdfunding campaign.

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‘Networking in Purgatory’ is out now on vinyl and digital in Australia and New Zealand through Dot Dash/Remote Control. Read previous interviews with Collette from 2009 and 2011.