What are the origins of Malibu Spacey? Where did it start?
In 2017 I (Evan) started taking my little folky noodles around to a friend of a friend who had a seriously good home recording setup. That guy is our now-guitarist Zoran and we quickly started putting together some recordings under the name Malibu Spacey, which was really just me for the first year or so. Two of the tracks we did got proper releases – Three Different Nightmares and It Hurts Me To See You Like This – so have a squiz to see how things have changed since those very early days.

Tell us a bit about the new album. What does it mean to you?
The album is us as a band lassoing five years of writing and gigging together. Some of these songs started life in 2019 while some are only a year or two old and, since finishing the album, our original bassist Nat Richardson has moved away and left the band. So it’s a kind of way to capture a moment in the lives of us as individuals in the band, to put a little stake in the ground. We won’t get to make this same sort of music again, so it’s really nice to capture it forever on record before we move onto the next lot of songs.

Are there any inspirations you look to beyond music when writing or performing?
As a songwriter, I’m always looking inward. There are songs on here about growing up as a kid with social anxiety, about feeling the pressure of masculinity and not liking it, about the slow creep of death, the difficulty in creating anything original. But then, beyond that, I love to pack my lyrics with pop culture references from films and books and TV shows, all of which have been there at the same time as these internal struggles, so it’s a nice balance between earnest introspection and entertaining myself.

Name the five songs that have informed your song writing more than any others.
The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apt. - Father John Misty
Happiness is a Warm Gun - the Beatles
Cornerstone - Arctic Monkeys
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Crosby, Stills and Nash
Amelia - Joni Mitchell

What Australian bands are you listening to at the moment?

There are so many amazing artists in Australia at the moment, but I’ve been completely in love with Way Dynamic since I saw them open for Sylvie last year – the album So Familiar is the sort of perfectly formed soft rock I wish I’d made myself. I’ve also been playing the latest albums by Leah Senior and Grace Cummings an awful lot, as well as a WA group called Bures Band who have got a casual Grateful Dead-goes-surfing vibe that really does it for me.

How do you hope your music might impact listeners?
Except for the odd line of nonsense in there, I spent a lot of time crafting lyrics that both let a small, personal part of me out into the world and give me a chance to make jokes or references that fly straight past people. I’d love to know that anyone listening might get a laugh out of a weird line, relate to my anxieties or share a love for the pop culture references that seep into every pore of these songs. I’d love most of all for people to form a relationship with any of the ideas or scenarios in these songs. That’d be really cool.

A Quick Chat with Malibu Spacey