I got to take some time yesterday to chat on the phone with Georgia Nott, the lead vocalist of radio darlings BROODS. If you've been living under a rock you may have successfully been able to keep their catchy tune "Bridges" out of your ear canals for now, but it's only a matter of time before their new singles like "Mother & Father", "Four Walls", or my personal favorite, "Everytime" invade your life. Georgia and I talked about the album, tour, some hilariously "American" moments they've had this year, and more. Read on below to check it all out, and be sure to check them out at Lost Lake Lounge TONIGHT for a free show at 8pm!
(for this interview, questions from Ultra5280 will be marked with "MC" for Maddie Casey, and answers from Ms. Nott will be marked with a "GN").
MC: You guys have played Denver a ton this year, but we get to have you back one last time this week for your 3 shows! Whats the thought surrounding this free show tomorrow?
GN: Denver has always been a super supportive market for us in the States, it’s been an important place in our career. It’ll be good to go there properly and hang out for a little while!
MC: It’s been a big year for you guys! First you release your EP in January, only to follow it with the full-length in August. How long have you been preparing the music we’re all hearing on these albums?
GN: We kind of…didn’t. We wrote the entire album in five weeks. We had two demos - I think - but we still had to re-record them. It really helped to have a really good producer! Everything that we’ve done this year has been a learning as we go kind of situation. We’re kind of good at the whole “not knowing what we’re doing” thing. We find it easier to kind just just go with the flow and not overthink what’s happening.
MC: “Evergreen” as an album captures so many different emotions. If you could pick one emotion to describe the album, what would it be?
GN: For me and Caleb, we are just so very in love with what we do right now. There’s this incredible contentment that we have everything and more than we could have ever imagined. We have everything we could have wanted for our careers, and there’s still more happening on top of it. There are a lot of love songs on the EP, and that’s kind of the realm that we’re in at the moment. It’s just really chilled, “loving life” right now. We still have to write sad songs because we love them so much, but yeah…
MC: I’ve seen the word “elegant” tossed around a bit to describe your music, what do you think of that?
GN: I’m okay with that, that’s not a bad word at all! I can kind of see that. Our music is quite clean, and the way the album was produced was a very…”sharp” production quality. I think it’s pretty emotional (music). We don’t - well, I don’t - know how to be anything else but emotional. Caleb is more practical than me, which kind of helps because if we were both that emotional we’d just be just a mess. (laughs)
MC: So it sounds like you guys have a good balance going between the two of you!
GN: Oh, totally. We have, like, perfect balance.
MC: Sometimes siblings don’t get so lucky, so that’s great! You’re lucky.
GN: So I’ve heard! (laughs)
MC: Does that balance come out at all with your writing process? It seems like both of you write from separate places, can you speak a little bit about what that’s like for both of you?
GN: Oh, definitely. Especially in the beginning when we first started writing the EP, I dealt with the emotional lyrics type stuff and the melody. I’m a singer, and I always have been a singer, my forté is melody and vocal lines. Caleb’s always been an instrumentalist, so he dealt with the arrangements, and that’s been his area of expertise. As we’ve gone on we’ve learned to expand into doing everything together. I mean, we still have the parts that come more naturally to each of us. I’m always going to be a little bit more excited about the vocals because I’m the vocalist (laughs), but I think we balance each other out and that suits us well. We just make sure we’ve covered all the bases the best we can, and put everything single ounce of our creativity into making it inspiring to us, not just to other people who have never heard it. We want to listen back to a song and say, “yeah man, I feel that again”. I want to make sure I make myself feel something for my music as well.
MC: Your writing just oozes so much “life”. Do you do any kind of character writing, or does this all come from more of a natural place?
GN: When I was in high school, the only thing that I really wrote were songs for my friends. When my friends were going through anything at school, or I were trying to say something to somebody that just wouldn’t really come out in a conversation, I would just write them a song, and then strip it down, and be like “I wrote you a song”. (laughs) I was really fortunate to have friends growing up that were all musicians and all writers, so we all kind of gave it to each other. As I’ve grown older I've been exposed to the more difficult parts of life and growing up: experienced more difficulties with more relationships, experienced loss, and leaving home - I HATE leaving home. There’s always a poetic license that you can call on, but I guess the more I experiences I have the more I feel that I can write honestly.
