Empire of the Sun interview

So I spoke to Luke Steele, he of Sleepy Jackson fame and HOT NEW ACT Empire of the Sun the other day and found out more about the so-called Australian MGMT

What do you do when you’ve found your song of 2009 at the start of the year? Empire of the Sun’s ‘Walking on a Dream’, taken from their debut album of the same name, appears to have already won that accolade, setting the bar extremely high for future songs to come with its poppy space-like beauty.

Empire of the Sun are Luke Steele, known to many for his work in quirky indie outfit The Sleepy Jackson, and Nick Littlemore from electronic act Pnau and a regular member of Ladyhawke’s live band. Embracing costumes, fun and the magic of music, they are Emperor Steele and Lord Littlemore, described by the former as the “superheroes fighting in the modern world” who you loved as a child, back for you to love again with their dreamy 80s tinged flights of fancy. 

Speaking to Clash from his home in Australia, Luke talks about the band’s inception: “I met Nick in 2000. I was introduced to him by Simon Moore, who’s now my publisher at Sony. Nick worked on the first Sleepy Jackson record and we did lots of recording a few years back, then said ‘we’ve got to do the mega record’”. The scale of the album was clear to Steele from the start. “I wanted to write a mega record that would get played, to write big songs, something that’s positive. I wanted to go back to big melodies and not try to conjure up too much meaning in the songs”.

After a few listens to their debut, Prince and Fleetwood Mac seem to be the key influences in their sound. On hearing that, Luke responds with a gleeful “that’s my girl!” and adds Daft Punk to the list for the similarities in concept and aesthetic. His favourite track is the squelchy ‘Swordfish Hotkiss Night’. “I think production-wise it came up really well and it’s a sonically good track”. While it’s more 80s booty-shaking than the wistful title song, both stand out to Steele because “the choruses and melodies were quite spontaneous, like when you meet someone special and it suddenly all happens in the ten seconds when a guy and a girl catch each other’s eye. That’s what happened with these songs, and kind of with the whole album. There’s a lot of magic on this record.” As Luke and Nick only saw each other for short, sporadic periods across a few years, their creativity was fuelled and heightened. “We’re not competitive, but we both spur each other on in the studio because we’re both on the ball”. 

The visual aesthetic of Empire of the Sun is a vital part of the duo’s music. “Now it’s been born, it’s its own entity. When it starts you’re in character, like if you’re at a party and drunk with your friends and you put on a wig. But it’s exciting now, it’s an empire, it’s not just a band. Your imagination goes on forever”. 

With the video for Walking on a Dream “we wanted to capture the dreamlike feel of the song. We went to Shanghai because that’s where the old world and the new world combine”. Their outfits are a nod to Adam and the Ants, and Steele doesn’t look a million miles away from Jemaine’s David Bowie in Flight of the Conchords. Indeed, at times they bring a similar ‘are they having a laugh?’ smile to your face as the New Zealand comedy duo, like the album’s closing track ‘Without You’ which is pure synth ballad winning you over with it’s earnestness like Madonna’s ‘Crazy for You’ or Chicago’s ‘If You Leave Me Now’. A more inevitable comparison is with MGMT. The two duos toured together in Australia and “they were cool, but it’s different. You get compared but we’re not in competition. It’s a different mental approach”. 

They’ve achieved chart success in their homeland, and are tipped for big things this year, bagging a top 5 place in the much discussed BBC Sound of 2009 poll. Do they want to achieve mainstream status? “It’s hard to say because you want the music to be available to a lot of people. With indie it’s all about the song, but with this….” He drifts off in thought. “There’s a great quote that ‘the song is the horse that the artist rides to fame’, and that says it for me. As an artist we don’t go ‘we’ve got to be commercial, like Nickelback’ and that. But then there’s an explosion and suddenly it’s all happening – it’s like, whoa!”

Steele is confident that he and Nick have created a great album, though when asked what he hopes for in 2009, he is ready for anything. “It’ll achieve what it wants to achieve. This whole record’s been like that, really effortless, it just keeps growing and growing”.

Regarding the hype and press attention, “I think you’ve got to be wary. You can’t consume too much of it because you worry the music won’t be as good as people think. You’ve got to keep creating. When you read bad reviews they can be just as comforting as good reviews because they make you want to try harder, to prove them wrong. But don’t go writing a bad review now just because I’ve said that!” 

This article will be printed in next month’s Clash magazine