Geoffrey O’Connor: The Complexity of Romance

Is Geoffrey O’Connor an unlikely pop star, or is the role a perfect fit for the erstwhile Crayon Fields leader? Interview by DOUG WALLEN.

I’ve interviewed Geoffrey O’Connor for M+N twice before: first upon the release of his band The Crayon Fields’ prowling second album, All the Pleasures of the World, and then to discuss his fogged-up debut solo album under his own name, Vanity is Forever. This time we’re catching up with a quick phone chat around his second solo album, Fan Fiction, which M+N reviewer Freya Zaknich described as “an escapist oasis … just short of pornography.”

It’s been fascinating to watch O’Connor evolve from the retreating leader of a jangling, wallflower guitar-pop band into a would-be pop star singing about lust and sex. He plays nearly every instrument himself on Fan Fiction, which he also self-produced, and he has directed and starred in videos for all three of the album’s singles so far. On highlights like ‘Jacqueline’ he turns his whispered vocals to a sumptuous feast of yesteryear synths, Chic-esque funk guitar and downright creepy undertones. He stokes dancefloor abandon on the whirring ‘Another Time’, turns the closing ‘Centre of the Room’ into a sputtering slow jam and wields ‘Is It Really Happening Now’ like a dystopian synth-pop ballad.

At once subverting and saluting the most earnest, love-stricken side of past commercial pop, he’s like some culture-jamming crooner, corrupting the idea of a pop star a bit like the glitching holograms of himself in the video for ‘I Never Cry’.

Before launching the new LP, O’Connor talked about his discomfort with collaborating and gave an update on the next Crayon Fields album.

I know you’re doing production work under the banner Vanity Lair. You’re doing your videos and you’ve done one for Amaya. What was the impetus for starting that?
I did my masters in film production. And I really enjoy making music videos. I guess I’m not ready to make short films, or obviously feature films, but I love editing and putting together little narrative sequences. So the music video is a perfect format for what I’m capable of – or at least, what I think I’m capable of. [Laughs] It’s been great to put together videos for other people. I’m putting together one for Donny Benét now, which is good, and Jonny Telafone as well.

Was the Amaya one the first one you did for someone else?
No, the first one would have been Early Woman [‘I’m a Peach’]. I just put them together in my creepy little studio here.

“Blue’s a little better for blondes.”

It does seems like a creepy little studio, between the name and the vibe of the clips. I mean that in a good way.
Yeah. It’s all the more creepy now because I have a green screen and a blue screen. I needed to get a blue screen for when I’m shooting myself because I’m blonde, and a green screen for shooting the brunettes.

This shows how little I know about it, but I thought they were interchangeable.
They kind of are, but blue’s a little better for blondes. That’s a horribly trivial fact. [Laughs]

I guess blue screen and green screen came in handy for the latest video [for ‘I Never Cry’]. It’s pretty bizarre.
Yeah, that’s all green screen.

The church in that: where is that?
Some footage I take myself, but the church is stock footage. If you look hard enough for it, you can find royalty-free stock footage. But also I edit the stock footage as well – warp it a little so it looks a little more realistic or a little less realistic, depending on what I’m aiming for.

It kind of freaked me out the first time I saw it. [Laughs]
Yeah. [Laughs]

Vanity Lair is also where you record, right?
Yeah, yeah.

And it seems like you play most of the stuff on the new album yourself.
Yeah, I do. Pretty much everything. There are some backing vocals on there, but apart from that it’s all me.

“I’m more comfortable working on my own … I feel like less of a burden.”

Obviously you’re comfortable self-producing and playing everything yourself, but was there ever a point where you wanted to have more outside input?
I like to occasionally. I guess I’m more comfortable working on my own, in some respects. I feel like less of a burden on other people, and I can really put myself into it. I can stay up very late and get up very early in the morning and work on it. I don’t have to consult with anyone else.

Yeah, it’d be cool to have a 24-hour place you can go to work.
It is nice. My studio is pretty much soundproof, so I can stay up as late as I like.

Did you have to teach yourself to play any instrument that you couldn’t play before, once you started doing this yourself?
No, I’ve always been able to play guitar. And I’m familiar with music theory and everything, so composing synthesiser parts … I mean, I’m no Liberace, but I can play all the basics.

What’s the status of The Crayon Fields right now?
We’ve finished a record and we’re going to release that at some point next year, I believe.

I know some of the guys have had babies, so I imagine that’s part of the gap [between albums].
Yeah, exactly. We don’t really play live. We weren’t much of a live band … not in that we weren’t good – I thought we were a pretty good live band – but that it’s something we only do on rare occasions. And I’m more focused on my solo output. It was fun to put together an album, but it’ll be released around what I’m doing myself.

It was interesting putting the two CDs next to each other and seeing how the presentation and your sort of image has changed. There’s commonalities, like the purple and the sunglasses, but it is a lot different. You look really young on the first album, which obviously wasn’t that long ago.
Yeah.

How did you want to present this one, uniquely from the first one?
I guess I wanted it to be thematically linked. I like having myself and someone else on the cover. There’s kind of this duality. But I had this idea for the photo: I wanted to have this sophisticated, classy guardian-angel/Svengali figure who looked like they were kind of guiding my every move. And Fay [Hewison, the cover model] was perfect for that. She was a much better model than I was.

And another thing: especially versus Crayon Fields songs, your songs are talking about sex more explicitly than your songs have in the past. Was there a catalyst for you, where you wanted to be more explicit talking about sensuality and parts of the body?
Well, I like to think there’s some kind of classy subtlety to them, but I guess that’s what I’ve become more interested in as a songwriter. I like writing about romance and especially the complexity of romance. I’ve always written about romance and the love, and that kind of thing. That’s always appealed to me. I feel like there’s endless possibilities for that. I mean, everyone has a very different experience of it. It’s going to be evocative for people in very different ways.

Yeah. And when I said explicit, I didn’t mean crass or anything. Just like saying nipples by name, and there’s another line in ‘Jacqueline’ about getting laid, versus bland metaphors about love and being together and being apart. [Other people’s] lyrics are often very vague about it.
I like to combine stuff that’s a little more vivid with something that’s a little more – for lack of a better word – poetic, and have a contrast between the two.

The last time I saw you play live was when you supported Edwyn Collins [last January at The Kelvin Club in Melbourne].
Ah, right. That was an amazing show. I loved Edwyn Collins that night.

For the launches will it still be just you, or do you have a band?
It’s a four-piece band. With Edwyn Collins [who was singing while accompanied by two acoustic guitarists], we would have cramped his style if we had all gotten up there. I’ve got Jessica [Venables], a.k.a. Jessica Says, I’ve got Raquel [Solier], a.k.a. Fatti Frances, and I’ve got James Tom, who plays in the band Krakatau and a few other bands. He’s a very tall, majestic-looking man.

That sounds like a great band.
Yeah, it’s fun.

“My main ambition is to make people in their 50s and 60s dance to 130-bpm music.”

Are they able to depart from the arrangements a bit?
Yeah, definitely. I like that aspect. I’ve never been into improvisation per se, but I guess when you’ve got fairly tightly structured songs, it’s good to let people improvise a little in the live setting. If you’re just telling people to play exactly what’s on the record, it’d be a very tedious operation. [Laughs]

Well, that’s the whole thing with playing with other people: their personalities are always going to come through in some way.
Exactly. Yeah. And all three of them are very big personalities.

You co-wrote two songs [‘Her Name On Every Tongue’ and ‘Another Time’] with Alex [Burnett] from Sparkadia, and you were in England a bit working with him. How did that come about?
We both have the same publisher, and I’ve [co-written] songs with other people [like Angie Hart of Frente!] before. I got approached about that like two years ago. I got an email about doing songs together: it wasn’t necessarily going to be for me or for Sparkadia. It’s not something I’m the most comfortable with, to be honest: collaborating with people. But it was fun and it was great to spend time in London and go to his studio. And he’s a really good piano player as well.

I like how some of the songs on this record are pushing towards the dancefloor in terms of tempo and style, especially ‘Another Time’. Is that something you’d like to see more: people dancing to your songs?
Definitely. I think my main ambition in music is to make people in their 50s and 60s dance to 130-bpm music. I really love dancing, and I love watching people dance and dancing with people and making music for those people in that way.

Are you planning to commission any remixes, like you did with the last record?
There might be a couple of remixes. We’ll see. Maybe it made more sense with the last record because the last record didn’t really have dance songs on it, whereas this one does.

Is there any visual element to the live show?
Yeah, I’ve actually got something pretty interesting planned for the launches. I’ve always had projection, light shows and that kind of thing – I like to make it an all-encompassing visual spectacular – but I’ve got a few other little things I’m going to add to spice it up a little bit.

I can’t believe I used that expression. I hate the expression ‘spice it up’. [Laughs] I’m going to regret that for the rest of my life. … Maybe I just want my own cooking show.

That’s right. You can incorporate that into the gig too: appeal to all the senses.
Yeah, that would be great.

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‘Fan Fiction’ is out now on CD, digital and gold vinyl through Chapter Music. Read Freya Zaknich’s review. Launch dates below.

Fri, Sept 26 – Howler, Melbourne, VIC [w/Forces, Sui & Sui + Tam Vantage]
Sat, Sept 27 – Spectrum, Sydney, NSW [w/Ela Stiles + Bad Jeep]