Jacob Diamond’s heavenly homecoming

After spending two years writing and recording his new album, Yes Angel, Boorloo/Perth artist Jacob Diamond returns from the east coast for a Halloween homecoming show at Mojos on Thursday, October 31. KAVI GUPPTA sat down with Diamond to reflect on how the past two years have shaped him personally, and how it influenced the new album.

What have you learned about yourself since the last time we spoke almost two years ago?

The two years since we've seen each other have probably been the biggest time of personal growth and change in my whole life. Some weird combination of just letting go of a lot of stuff but also clarifying what is actually really important.

I always really wanted to make my music and be successful in just one kind of way—the way that everyone hopes that they’re successful. Maybe a tour and release music that lots of people get to hear. I was holding on so tight to that idea that it was kind of suffocating. And it’s funny because so many people tell you along the way to just focus on the work, just focus on the music, and not to worry about any of that stuff. And I’m like, yeah of course.

Until you fully—I mean fully—let go of that idea, you know that it’s always hiding somewhere. But I’ve let go of wanting to be successful in one particular way. Even though not much has actually materially changed, I feel a lot better, and I feel a lot more successful.

How did you keep the pessimism at bay to make sure that you could still be your imaginative, creative, and playful self?

For a long time, I didn't really keep it at bay. But I also wasn't acknowledging that it was there. I just felt this general kind of dread, and I just did not really have a dialogue with that part of myself. Everything was going badly, but I placed a lot of that reflection into the work. Luckily though, I think when I am making a song I am focused on making music. I always just put it into making songs, so that part of me luckily isn’t super affected.

Well, the other thing I was wondering about from your perspective: there's a lot going on in the world right now, and things feel pretty cooked. What's the state of the world doing to you?

I feel like in the last year, so much has been brought into focus. What it means to be Australian, even West Australian. What it means to be an artist and just be like, “What is the point?”

You feel like you're screaming into the void. The other thing is that musicians and artists, they really have to work hard for people's attention to work and make whatever scraps of money we can make. To really demand people's attention right now does feel a bit weird, but the flip side is that it's also been a clarifying moment. The one positive thing that can come from all of these horrors is that I do feel more connected to being an artist. When things are intense and tragic, there’s always poetry and music.

That’s a good segue into the new album. What does the new album mean for you?

I started recording the album like a week after the Fremantle Biennale two years ago. That’s when I started recording, and it only came out on August 30th this year. It took me a long time. I’d love to be able to work quickly, but for me it just takes a long time. At the same time, over the past two-and-a-half or three years, I learned that I could really love my own material and make something that I was proud of.

I’ve done one album before (Gondwana), which I love in its own way, but that was such a learning curve and from when I was like 21. That one took me double the time, and by the time it came out, I felt a bit disconnected from the album. I’d moved on. So it was really significant that I could make something and really focus on this little offering, and walk away from it feeling proud.

I also got to work with Broderick Madden-Scott.

What's he like to work with?

His influence is very subtle. He’s just a really gentle person, and I don’t even know if he knows that he’s doing this, but he really creates a feeling of safety in the studio. He’s such a sweetie as we know. It was just me and him a lot of the time.

There was this important moment where there's a song on the album called ICUICRY, and it had this big ending, which is very, very me. I love musical theatre and sometimes I feel like I can go for the big finish.

Broderick was sending mixes back and forth and I was sending lots of notes. I wasn’t sure what it needed, and it was dragging on and on, and then he sent me a mix one day with a note attached that said, “Look, I don’t know if this is what you’re after, but I just decided to change it kind of radically and just let me know what you think.”

As soon as I heard it—I was like a minute in—I thought, ‘This is it.’ He had really shrunk down the whole song and taken all this stuff away.

I couldn’t communicate it in words, but Broderick got there himself and really guided the rest of the album to be this world that is quite small. It’s very intimate.

Yes. I love how close I feel to your face.

It is really there. Like possibly a bit too close.

Photos by Duncan Wright