Luluc: ‘It Definitely Requires Concentration’

The National love them. So do Sub Pop and Lucinda Williams. Luluc are slowly but surely claiming hearts around the world, writes DOUG WALLEN.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] As homecomings go, Luluc have a well-deserved one in store this summer: after years of splitting their time between Melbourne and Brooklyn, the folk duo of Zoë Randell and Steve Hassett are doing a national run of Australian dates that includes regional stops and two festival slots. It’s the band’s first time back in Australia since supporting The National on a six-date tour last February (including the Sydney Opera House), which boosted their profile almost as much as releasing July’s second album Passerby – their first in six years – through indie powerhouse Sub Pop.

The prized connections don’t stop there: The National’s Aaron Dessner co-produced the album at his very own home studio, and Hassett sang back-up on The National’s song ‘Lean’ for the Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack. Both Lucinda Williams and Nick Drake producer Joe Boyd are fans of Luluc (pronounced Loo-LUKE), and their 2008 debut LP Dear Hamlyn continues to attract a word-of-mouth following around the world.

Maybe that’s because, as overexposed as folk music is right now, Luluc don’t sound exactly like anyone else. Even when embellished using newfound collaborators and resources on moments like ‘Tangled Heart’, the frequently stark Passerby feel like its own private universe. The songs deal with such everyday themes as geographical dislocation (“In New York City tryin’ to find our own feet”) and homesickness (“Sometimes I long to be where I’m from”), and yet Randell’s perfectly pure vocals sound unruffled by the messy reality of the outside world. They ring eerily true, exuding a calm that gives her every clear-eyed phrase that much more poignant meaning.

Randell spoke to M+N back in June, discussing the band’s globe-trotting past, the quirks of influences and hay fever and the development of Passerby, both vocally and in terms of production

On the new album, a couple songs mention being in New York and away from Australia. ‘Tangled Heart’ talks about kids leaving school in New York, and ‘Gold on the Leaves’ talks about longing to be where you’re from. Was that dislocation a big part of this record?
It definitely informs a lot of it, because we’ve been living between the two countries a lot over the last four or five years. And definitely it’s something that I really enjoy. It’s actually kind of integral to the work as well because, travelling away from home, it’s very interesting to the songwriting because you get a different perspective. And then you also obviously get the exposure to new cultures that you’re around. New York’s such a hotbed of so many cultures that it’s very rich territory. So it’s a great city to come to [for that reason].

So yeah, traveling between two places does bring up all sorts of lovely memories of home and a sense of distance. And your connection with your friends and family changes because you do have that distance between you. The nice thing is how close I can still feel to people, even though you’re a long way away physically.

What have you been doing for work in the US? Because it’s been quite a while since you put out the last album…
Well, after we put out Dear Hamlyn [in 2008], the 18 months or so after that we were pretty busy. We did quite a few tours in Australia and then we actually did a bit of touring in Canada. We played some of the big folk festivals in 2009 and 2010. So the first two years after that were quite busy. Then in 2010 we decided to move over to New York more permanently. We’re just on artist visas so we can only really work as artists. [Laughs]

So we’ve just really gotten by, playing shows around New York. And really, from 2010 to 2011, we were living mostly in New York and working on songs and demoing. Then we got the Grey’s Anatomy sync [for ‘I Found You’ and ‘One Day Soon’], which kept us going for a while. And then in late 2011 we were actually back in Australia and started working more seriously on the album. But I guess because we’d written quite a lot of it in New York and we were so used to living there by then, we decided we should come back and try to record it here. Lots of things have happened from there.

How did you become friends with the guys from The National?
Our mutual friend brought Matt [Berninger] down to our farewell drinks when we were heading back to Australia at the end of 2011, and we hit it off with Matt very easily. Then, a few months later, Matt was subletting his part of the house that he shared with Aaron [Dessner in Brooklyn] and he sent an email out. It was perfect timing: we were about to go back to South by Southwest. So we subletted his place for what was originally just going to be one month, but Matt decided to move to Venice [California]. He said we should come back [to the house] and talk to Aaron about finishing the record [as a producer].

We were still very much of the opinion that we were going to sublet a place and just record it ourselves. That’s what we did with Dear Hamlyn. But then we got to know Aaron. We were living upstairs, and it’s actually his house. We popped in for a drink one night and started talking to him and his wife, and we got along with him just as easily as Matt. It felt like we were all friends, and incredibly familiar. Kind of like Melbourne people. [Laughs] Which is great.

“Because the songs were written before [extra] instrumentation was added, we’re confident they stand up without it.”

And then Aaron was very humble. He said he’d be interested in working with us on our new record. He really liked Dear Hamlyn. So he asked us to send him the bare bones of the songs and he gave us the keys to his studio, which is in his garage. It’s an amazing studio. It had all the gear we needed. We had free run and recorded all of my guitar parts and all of my vocals and we sent that to Aaron. Then he wrote back and told us how he would approach working on it. He really understood what we wanted and was able to articulate it very clearly.

It’s quite a stripped-down record, but there’s still a lot of guests and embellishment. How loyal do you try to be to the album versions when you play live?
Well, it’s definitely thrown up more challenges than Dear Hamlyn did. Dear Hamlyn, we could work with the two guitars and two DIs [direct input] and that’s it. It was very easy touring. But we really love all those textural, sonic and tonal variations that’s been added to this record, and that’s really what we wanted to do. It’s thrown up a few challenges, but there’s so much great technology now that we’re able to create a lot of those sounds live, just with pedals. So we put some of the recorded sounds through computers and hit ’em with our feet while we’re playing guitar. For Steve especially, because he’s the technical whiz, it’s been a real jigsaw puzzle. But we’ve got it to a point we’re really happy with.

Obviously songs like ‘Tangled Heart’, which has a huge horn section and drum kit, we don’t try and emulate that. But just with the two of us, Steve spices it up on the guitar. Because the songs were written before any additional instrumentation was added, we’re confident that they stand up without it.

I know Luluc is just you two, but I saw that Pete Cohen from Sodastream once played in the band. How many other members have you had?
We’re the core of the band, but Pete plays with us [on upright bass] quite a bit in Australia, especially in Melbourne. We weren’t really able to afford to tour with him, unfortunately, but we’ve actually done shows where we’ve had Pete plus a couple of other string players and horn players. I guess we view it as a pretty flexible arrangement in that it’s great that Steve and I can perform all the songs with just the two of us. But when we can, we really want to get other players involved. So we have a couple of musicians we did shows with in New York, and we really look forward to playing with musicians in Australia as well. It’s just a case of when we can fund it.

When I heard the new record, I was reminded of bands like Pentangle and Fairport Convention. Was that stuff a big influence for you, or something else?
I don’t know Pentangle – I should look them up. And Fairport Convention – that’s something a lot of people bring up, but it’s not something that I would cite as an influence. Not because I don’t like it, but because I haven’t listened to that much. But I will, because people keep mentioning it. [Laughs] Influences are so tricky because there’s so many. It can be so small, like the way someone delivers a line. It’s such a vast terrain, what goes into a song, that it’s really hard to pinpoint it.

“Just a slight change in tone or attitude can affect a song.”

But our influences in the past year … well, I love Nick Drake’s records, and Gillian Welch is fantastic. I’ve really been enjoying The National’s records since we’ve been getting to know those guys. Simon & Garfunkel is probably a very obvious and key one for us. But we’ve got such varied taste, and I really think that all of it gets in there somehow, in some way. What actually ends up happening is people cite a lot of different bands and a lot of times they’re bands we’ve never heard of. And that’s interesting.

I was really struck by how calm and undisturbed your vocals are. There’s this great fortitude. Did you do a lot of vocal takes for the album?
It’s really interesting how just a slight change in tone or attitude can affect the atmosphere of a song. For my role, it was really working through that to make sure the right tone was captured. It definitely took a long time, which was good because during that process we got to experiment with microphones and so on. And the arrangements just became more and more clear, and how we wanted to treat the songs in other ways. But that’s a huge part of the process for me, in songwriting and in recording.

Do you have to do anything psychologically before you sing? Do you try to chill out or have some herbal tea?
[Laughs] What do I do? Well, I warm up my voice. I’ve actually taken singing lessons for years with this amazing Russian teacher in Australia. She’s a classical teacher but when I first went to her, I said, “Look, I don’t want to sing like an opera singer. I just want to look after my voice and use it properly.” So I don’t sound any different – I just know how to use it better, which is good. [Laughs] I’ve got techniques from her that I’ll use to warm up.

But I think what you’re asking is more to do with the tone and the atmosphere of the song. It definitely requires concentration. But the good thing is that I feel like by the time I get a song to the point where I’m ready to record it, I have tried to work through all aspects of it so it really is a complete atmosphere. The main struggle for me with getting the songs right is that if there’s ever something that irks me about it or feels like it doesn’t quite fit or I’m not being true to the core essence of the idea, then there’s a problem.

So usually by the time I get to recording, I’ve worked through all of that and I’m happy that it’s its own thing. Then it’s just getting the take right. [Laughs] I was having trouble for a while in Australia because I was sneezing so much. We had to throw out all these takes because of hay fever. That was a problem.

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‘Passerby’ is out now on CD, digital and vinyl through Mistletone in Australia and New Zealand, and through Sub Pop in Europe and North America. Stream it in full here. Tour dates below.

Thurs, Nov 27 – The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine, VIC [w/Ryan Downey]
Fri, Nov 28 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC [w/Ryan Downey]
Sat, Nov 29 – Queenscliff Music Festival, Queenscliff, VIC
Sun, Nov 30 – Old Hepburn Hotel, Hepburn Springs, VIC [w/Ryan Downey]
Wed, Dec 3 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD [w/Tom Cooney]
Thurs, Dec 4 – Newtown Social Club, Sydney, NSW [w/Betty & Oswald]
Fri, Dec 5 – Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle, NSW [w/Vanishing Shapes]
Sat, Dec 6 – Clarendon Guest House, Katoomba, NSW [w/Francesca Sidoti]
Wed, Dec 10 – Four5Nine, Perth, WA [w/Benedict Moleta]
Thurs, Dec 11 – Mojo’s, Fremantle, WA [w/David Craft]
Fri, Dec 12 – Jive, Adelaide, SA [w/Naomi Keyte]
Sat, Dec 13 – Grand Poobah, Hobart, TAS [w/Calypso Brown]
Sat, Jan 24 – Beechworth Music Festival, Beechworth, VIC