Interview by Sam and Matilda Elliott.

FMM: Thank you so much for having a chat with us today, Alex. We are so excited to chat all things your new EP, Rage, And All Its Friends. It really marks a significant shift in your musical journey. Can you describe to us what changes you made and how these are different?

Alex: Well, I did a lot more songs to prepare for it. I tried to write 50 songs to go into an EP as usually I write a full album and that's it. I kind of write the album for the album and don't really think about songs on their own, or at least that's what I've done for the two that I've done.

I think that this one was more picking the songs that we like on their own the most. That was a really fun process because there were songs that I did with other writers and there were songs I did on my own. It was a bit more a collaborative process and used other people’s brains. I guess the songs were more single-focused as we knew that it wasn’t going to be an album with tracks and singles. We knew it was probably going to be five singles and six songs. They were all considered to be people’s favourite and I think it ended up being 35 songs that we all picked from.

So, yeah, it was definitely a different process and I think that kind of meant that by the time we got to the end of it, we were all feeling really sure. It gave me a bit more confidence, maybe. So when we got into the recording studio, I knew kind of where I wanted them to fit and maybe had a clearer idea of what production could be like because it was a longer process of whittling them down.

FMM: So very interesting. You mentioned that it started at 50 and then went down to 35 and then to your final little collection for your EP. I'd love to know how long it took to create the 50 songs. Were they all within a similar time period or were some from years ago and some from recently?

Alex: Well, I think in the end the aim was 50. I reckon I got to 42 and then kind of what the plan was like… It was definitely down to me. I was just like, I want to change how I do it. I want to write more songs and just not worry about it because I think it's kind of stressful doing albums because of the environment it’s in. I felt like I put so much onus on all these 10 songs that I was putting on the albums. It makes it a bit more stressful and I wanted to make it a bit more fun.

I think it was songs that I wrote over the two years between How to Grow a Sunflower and now. So 2022 and now, so there was lots of songs over a long time and then a few songs that I started before NIDA, which was the start of this year. I did acting school this year for the whole year full-time. I knew I was going to record the week before or in January or February this year, so up until that point I started writing more songs, did a lot more sessions, and I did co-writing sessions with the purpose of coming out with this with a song. That was the process.

I guess some of them were from writing camps, like from the World Pride writing camp, and then other ones were just random songs I wrote along the way. Towards the end, I did a bunch of songwriting sessions with writers specifically for this EP. I wrote Numb and Road Rage on my own. If You Had To Go was from the World Pride Troye Sivan camp. Change was me and Lisa Mitchell. Cold Pizza was with Paul Kelly. Obviously, that was a very planned situation and that wasn't for the EP. That was more at a time when I was thinking that I wanted to write with other people and try different ways of doing stuff. That was during Covid so that was in the making from about 2020 when Paul said yes. We ended up doing a session just after the Courtney Barnett writing camp, so I was kind of in the mode of working with others. I guess it’s all different and the short answer is the last two years. The long answer is that they were just from so many different places. There were obviously so many songs, 42 songs, so a lot of them were towards the end. I think it would have been sad for me if it was just like all these ones that felt like I was pounding them out. It's nice to me that they're all from these different worlds and all through different processes. They worked in their own way and made sense together, which helped by the production process because you’re doing it all at the same time.

FMM: Can you paint us a picture of the Troye Sivan songwriting camp? We saw there was a bit of teary eyes after your songs you made at that camp.

Alex: Those song hubs camps are pretty amazing. You go for three or four days and they’re all over the world. They’re run by the Australian music body and they are sometimes led by an artist. An artist will pick artists to have the camp with and then they match up a producer, a writer and an artist. Over the days, each producer makes a song. I’ve done three or four of them and I’ve done the Courtney Barnett. You’re matched with randoms usually and you sit down in a room and you will try and come up with a song in a day and record it, so that’s a pretty weird process.

For mine, I paired with Mona Koshoi who did all the production and I did all the writing and singing, so that was quite nice. I just got to sit around and write for the day and I already had most of the lines from my book, which was kind of cheating, I guess. I just put it all into a song and then we recorded the guitar. There’s a writing presentation day at the end and everyone shows their songs. We showed Troye that song and Troye really liked it and his writer really liked it, so that was a bit encouraging. I was looking at Troye and seeing if he was reacting and I saw him be a bit sullen and glassy eyes and that was pretty beautiful.

Co-writing in general, I’ve always hated them. I like working on my own. I like to take my toys and sit in the corner, but I’ve slowly learned that sharing is caring. Sometimes other people have good ideas, I guess. I just find it really hard to think quickly on the spot. I’m not super great at reading and writing and I just get overwhelmed. I just never thought I was able to catch up and then I was like, okay, well lots of people do it, let’s just give it a go.

I think after I’d done the Courtney Barnett wiring camp and writing with Paul Kelly, I learned there’s people out there. I learned to write from him in a similar way. He’s very considerate. He’s very slow and took his own time. I thought what I had to do in sessions was to speed up and get the song done. He was very methodical, very thoughtful about it, creative, and I wanted to get down to writing How To Make Gravy right away. He was like, what if we wrote a song about something silly? And I was like, what do you mean? And I was like, oh, the reason you can still do this is because you're still kind of having fun and keep the way you do it and not rush everything. That was very helpful. Then I was like, oh, there's probably other people that could help me do what I do with other people around. That was when I started reaching out to other people, like Benjamin. That was a really nice session because he's also very thoughtful and slow and he let me kind of do my own little chaos map and I was able to just like slip a few ideas in there, tip my head up and say that was actually a pretty good idea.

It felt like I was in year three and learning to play with other people and use my blocks. I was like, okay, I guess you can play with some of my Lego if you really want to. Honestly, there were a lot more co writes than just me writing, so the fact that two of them made the cut as well was encouraging for me because I was like, maybe I'm just better with other people and I've been making a mistake the whole time. Road Rage and Numb I got to make on my own and I'm proud of them and that is helpful for me.

FMM: You did mention something that really interested me. You attended acting school at NIDA, so how does your acting and music creativity align?

Alex: Yeah, that's a great question. At first, I didn’t find it creative and I knew that it would be something that interests me. I love TV. I don’t watch many movies. I’m not a film person. I don’t know about Redemption and all that stuff. I got into NIDA and I definitely felt like an outside because I didn’t feel like I knew enough. A bit of imposter syndrome. With music, I think the amazing thing is I can go and sit on my own for hours, come up with this thing, and then present it to the people. I think the hard thing about acting is you've got to prepare and prepare, but then you've got to deliver in the moment in front of all these people. I had to do a scene from the Queer Christmas movie, Happiest Season, at one point in the year. I had to do a scene where Kristen Stewart's character, Abby, is talking to her friend and telling him that she doesn't think that her partner is going to come out to her family. That clicked because we’d done a lot of scenes and I just didn't get it. I was just like, what's the point? Who cares if I pick up this glass and put it over there authentically? Or I can pretend to be a giraffe really well in the corner. I just don't understand this. This doesn't make a difference. Like, I love writing stuff, and it's really interesting. I can see what impact it has on people. I don't know what this is, but I think when we did that scene and I had of show in the second how heartbreaking it is for this person and their whole world, without overdoing it, I was like, I get that.

Acting can sometimes be over doing it. When I was writing Not Worth Hiding, it was not under doing it and getting this perfect note where people can completely understand you’re a human being who’s experiencing things similar to them that are difficult, complicated, hard, and you’re just trying to work it out. I think there was a moment where I thought if I hit this perfect note, my partner’s not going to come out. It was so weird because I started crying in that scene, and I’d never cried on screen before. I did a shit job of doing the line, and I did a whole bunch of things wrong. But it was the first moment where I was like, oh, okay. Because I could feel the room shift in the same way as it does in music when you hit the right note playing live and the mood shifts, and suddenly people are really watching. Now I've got something and I've got to hold it. And so I was like, okay, that's that dynamic that has to happen. And if I'm connecting with Jules, My little scene partner, that's how that is shown and that is important for people. I think it was about finding how it could be helpful and important for others, because I was just like, I just don't get this. It seems silly. Like I'm just pretending to be Jane or whatever who's lost her frog. How is that? Who cares? And then it was like, okay, this is really important for people and there's TV shows and characters that change people's lives and this is a collaborative thing that happens. The shift is now I respect acting as a thing and I have to take it seriously and I have to hit the right things.

FMM: Your EP, Rage and All Its Friends, covers a lot of emotions including grief and anger; emotions that a lot of people find difficult to process. Was making this EP a way to massage and sit with those uncomfortable thoughts?

Alex: It's so interesting because it was only afterwards that I could kind of see like what I was dealing with. With Road Rage, I’ll write that and then think, it seems like you’re experiencing despair and anger, and a bit of disillusion in the world. But, it’s only really after I’ve written the song and after it’s been around for a while that I’m like, oh, you were probably feeling this. I guess it was probably cathartic or helping me digest it all in a way. But, it was definitely in real time and it's definitely only now that the songs are coming out and people are having reactions to them, or that I’m having to learn the lyrics for the friggen tour, that I realise what I’ve said.

I realise I was obviously feeling quite bad. I was really annoyed at the world, or thinking it’s like the five stages of grief. It was helpful, and I can’t remember who talked about it, but someone said that art is not therapy. Therapy is therapy, and that is really good. Art is very helpful and cathartic and getting it all out was good, but it didn’t fix it all.

FMM: Do you have any advice for listeners who may have been through the emotions you explore throughout the EP?

Alex: I think it’s really interesting that Road Rage has just come out because I think I went a bit crazy the first time Donald Trump got elected. I really went into this place of like those people are doing this thing and I'm not. I think there's a lot of despair associated when someone like that is up holded by a system that's really powerful. I think that's completely okay and that anger has a place and that self righteousness is sometimes completely fair. When I wrote this EP, there was a lot of things going on; it was the pandemic, it was stuff that was happening personally, relationships. It was yada, yada yada, on and on and on. Life, life, life.

But, when Road Rage came out and I had to type out all the lyrics, I thought it was so funny because there’s like an idea that when you’re stuck in traffic, and there’s so much traffic, you realise you are the traffic. It’s so easy and completely fair when people have done all this stuff, to hate it. Once you've gotten past this processing thing, if you’re accountable with yourself every day, because sometimes it’s very easy for us to feel like we’re not doing enough, or saying enough., or not smart enough. We point at people who we think are kind of pressing on that button. I think that when I read the lyrics for Road Rage, my sister and I were having an argument in my head and where she was saying I’m so angry about stuff, and that’s annoying. I remember just saying there’s so much to be angry about.

Going back to it, I needed to listen to how I was feeling and actually get in touch with that rather than just at people. I think it’s just the stages happening. If I hadn’t gotten all self righteous, angry, cranky and frustrated, all of those things which are totally justified, I wouldn’t have been able to understand what has happened in my life now. I think I’m just sitting in the mess. Holding yourself accountable is really important when things are bad. I think when bad things are happening to you, you feel like this thing of, I want everyone to know how hard it is for me. But you're still kind of a citizen of the world and you still have to be a part of the world. So even if you can in those stages go, yeah, I have a lot of hard stuff at the moment, but I'm still being a bad friend to this person because I didn't message them and they had something big on or I still was late to that thing and that's annoying for my girlfriend, it’s actually healthier. I think that was one thing that I got out of the Road Rage process is that sometimes we’re the traffic and that’s annoying. Especially when you are in those moments of frustration, grief or anything. It’s like everything around me is wrong, but I’m fine. It’s all encompassing. You should actually just sit with it and tease it out. It’s so important.