“Reality got James Dean.”
You’ve said And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow is the second part of a trilogy – was that always the plan?
“When I finished Titanic Rising, I felt that before I was ready for a real departure, first there would be another record made like that, with acoustic instruments and those kind of songs. Titanic Rising was sounding the alarm about all the stuff that could happen
– and then it all did happen, so I had to respond to that. I didn’t get to make the really uplifting, hopeful, march-into-the-future record – I was like, ‘That will be the third after this one.’”
Twin Flame has an Avalon-era Roxy Music feel – was that an atmosphere you were after?
“I wanted it to be cold, which is funny because it’s also about fire, that fire in the darkness. I also wanted it to have these swells of warmth. We recorded in Studio 3 of United Western Recorders studios which is where they made Pet Sounds, and that room has an incredible sound, so we were trying to capture that mood within the room. But a lot of the songs are recorded live, so I just wanted it to have that open feel, almost like a road trip. Grapevine is very much a road song – like a freeway.”
You refer to James Dean on Grapevine (“My car broke down in an old ghost town right around/Where they got James Dean”) – why do you think he was “got”?
“It’s about driving past where he was killed. He was killed in California, he was hit by a truck – I think he was blasting through an intersection super-fast. I think he did get got – he got hit by somebody else and died. He was living really fast and reality got him. That song’s about California. The Grapevine is the name of a freeway – it’s the Interstate 5 but it’s nicknamed the Grapevine. The last verse is about driving back the other way and wondering whether you’re passing your ex on the other side. It’s about a lost love. And also the idea that the Grapevine is entwined in all your old wounds in the past, how you can’t enter a relationship without confronting almost every other heartbreak.”
On Hearts Aglow, you sing, “I’ve been without friends/Oh I’ve just been working for years/And I stopped having fun” – that’s a very direct way of assessing your life.
“That’s going touring for years. I stopped having fun and that’s kind of my fault. I became a bit of a workhorse and to preserve myself I kind of let go of partying and going out a lot in favour of going to bed early. Especially in America, if you don’t come from generational wealth, you have to work your ass off to build anything, so I was just nose to the ground – ‘I’m going to just work, work, work’ – but I think in some ways the pay-off ends up being a pretty isolated existence. My new thing now is that I have to do the show but I also have to hang out. I have to find the weird place to eat, force my bandmates to come out with me.”