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.
BROODS at ACL 2014. Photo credit: Robert Castro
“This is such an amazing chance for us to talk to people through music, and actually make some sort of minuscule difference. Even if it’s just to a few people, that’s why we do it. ”
MC: You two have spent a LOT of time in America this year - nearly the entire year! -supporting the new album. How’s the good ol’ US of A treated you?
GN: They’re really nice to us to be honest! We’ve had such an amazing experience with traveling and meeting people, but also meeting new fans. We’ve been so lucky to have such an amazing response from everybody that we’ve encountered.
MC: What’s been the most ironic or stereotypically “American” thing you’ve seen/done/experienced?
GN: The culture over here is so different than what we’re used to! Especially in Hollywood - walking down Hollywood Blvd. is really terrifying. We’re definitely getting used to America and hearing the accent everywhere, but there was this one time on the Sam Smith tour where we went with him and his band to this party at a hotel, and it was just so typical…something you’d see out of a movie. There was a pole in the middle of the room! It was so weird! We were just walking around like “Oh my gosh! This is something out of a seriously cool movie.” It’s moments like that where you just think, “holy s**t, that’s actually what really happens?”
MC: Tying into that, have you had any particular moment that stood out to you as a “this is why we do what we do” moment?
GN: Yeah, pretty much every time we perform. There’ve been a couple of times times where we’ll be performing, and I think about when I was a kid and when I told my mum that I wanted to be a singer. And then I think, “holy shit, I’m actually a singer now!!” Times like that it just hits you, and you just want to cry because you’re just overwhelmed with pride in yourself for doing the thing that you wanted to do, and more. There was this one moment in Vancouver and we played this song called “Four Walls” off of the album, but we played it acoustically, and the crowd applauded for so long. We were the support act - they weren’t even there to see us! But they applauded for so long. Every single time I went to talk, the applause would just keep swelling up, and the crowd just got so loud! It was such a moving moment. I didn’t know what to do with myself; I was just standing on the stage giggling because I was so taken aback by how much love we were getting.
It’s times like that when we realize that every single thing that’s been hard has been leading up to things like that. At the end of the day, it is so much better than anything we could have ever expected for ourselves. You have to be so grateful, because there are so many people who don’t have the chances we do, and if you’re not grateful for it than you need to have a good slap in the face! This is such an amazing, amazing chance for us to talk to people through music, and actually make some sort of minuscule difference. Even if it’s just to a few people, that’s why we do it.
MC: We’ve heard about your huge LA show at The El Ray that happened recently - how was that?
GN: I walked into the venue, and the first thing I thought was “it’s too big. This can not be sold out, it’s too big!” It’s very strange to see this thing keep growing. You kind of expect it to just stay where it is, but it just keeps getting bigger. That was such a cool show. People knew some of the new songs, and it was amazing to see people singing along after having to prove ourselves to those audiences in our opening tours. It was priceless.
MC: 2014 is winding down, and you’re heading back to your own hemisphere to end the year. How are things back at home for you two musically?
GN: New Zealand is quite a smaller country than America, but we have so much support back at home. Whenever we go back and play shows there, everyone is super welcoming. Kiwi’s can be very patriotic, so it helps us feel like we’re surrounded by family, even if they aren’t really family. We haven’t been home long enough to walk around and see if people know who we are set, so we don’t know, maybe… I’ve got a normal looking face, so I can disguise myself pretty easily!
MC: We heard you’ve been nominated for a few awards?
GN: It’s pretty weird! Last year we got to go to the awards as spectators, and it was such a cool experience, every single performance that night was just incredible. To be in the position where we’re a part of that now is just fuzzy. Our extended family has been sending us tons of congratulations, and our parents and sisters are coming with us to the awards and hang out with us so that will be cute.
MC: What does 2015 hold in store for Broods?
GN: To be honest? I guess just more touring. We’re probably going to keep touring the album next year, and we always keep writing. I don’t know about new releases yet, but we’ll probably keep working on new material while we’re out, and try to keep making our live show better.
MC: I hope we’ll get to see you back in Denver again next year to see all this progress!
GN: I think that is a definite yes, just sayin’.
A huge thanks to the lovely Miss Georgia Nott for taking the time to speak to me, and if you can, be sure to catch their FREE show at Lost Lake Lounge tonight at 8pm, or their set tomorrow at Angelo’s CDs and more on Colfax (next to The Ogden) on Friday at 7pm.
Their new CD Evergreen is phenomenal, and available everywhere (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify) now.