Eliza Klatt is in love with the full album.
Call her an old soul in that way, if you must, but the ever-present demands of the modern music industry are going to have to wait if they want Eliza & The Delusionals to do what they do best. Fortunately when the albums are this good, Klatt and her Australian bandmates should be able to do whatever they want.
Make It Feel Like A Garden is an impossible album to get through but only because every song is such an instant favorite—one irresistible earworm after another, making it a chore to move on to the next track because the desire is to instantly repeat the one you just heard. These are indie pop/rock gems so plentiful that you'll wonder why the members of Eliza & The Delusionals aren't heavily sought out as co-writers by major labels. (Or maybe they are and we're just unaware.)
Together with Kurt Skuse and Rudy Lee, Klatt has given us one of 2024's best melodic releases, yet it's also a thoughtful release in its sequence, its interludes, its questions asked and answers provided. We recently sat down with Klatt to hear more about the band's approach to this new album—and to the album format in general.
Analogue: Listening to the new album, it made me wonder about the garden you reference on the title track as a potential reference to Eden in some way. The quotes that were released around the album described it as music that makes you feel like you're kind of retreating to some space. I wondered what the garden meant for you specifically.
Eliza Klatt: Yeah, that is true. The overarching concept was kind of like a utopia, I suppose. The idea stemmed from hearing someone say, "I got this idea to make it feel like the garden..." and whenever there's an idea like that, like a line or something, it can connect to me instantly. I was imagining all these things, imagining myself and how I feel about that.
To me it was kind of like being a kid. I used to always play with my sisters in the next door neighbor's garden. Those were really lovely memories. That garden was always so nice and their lawn was always so soft, and we used to play there all the time. It was just very innocent.
So the garden is kind of like happiness, I suppose—those sorts of memories that you just think about as a perfect memory. That was kind of where the idea started from. And then the rest of the songs, we kind of put them in different contexts, in different parts of life, how sometimes being in your own garden in your mind is like a nice thing to do, you know?
Analogue: You wrote this album away from home, right?
Eliza: Well, it was a little bit of a mixture. We wrote most of the songs between tours when we were staying in Napa. We'd been staying north of L.A. with some friends at their place. We made this makeshift studio in their basement, and so Kurt [Skuse] and I spent our two-week break writing every day, demoing, and taking ideas that we had written at home before the tour on our voice memos and turning them into songs.
Then when we came back to Australia, we went to Mornington Peninsula, which is in Victoria to record at Oscar's [Dawson] studio. We did a few songs and songwriting sessions there an got a bit of a feel of what doing the album would be like. Then we went home for like Christmas and stuff.
Then in early 2023, we went and actually recorded the album. We stayed with him in Victoria for like two months and recorded it at a studio. So yeah, it was a little bit all over the place.
I think being away, you're out of your comfort zone or you have those different experiences, and there's a lot going on in your brain. Whereas at home, you're in the same spot, where there's a sense of comfort, which is nice. But we kind of had to write pretty much all of the first record at home. So it was nice to be able to do it in a in a different area. It gave us some different experiences and things like that.
Analogue: Was that the initial choice to do that? Was that just about being economical with your time?
Eliza: A bit of both. Being in a band and touring, you have to map out the breaks to make sure that... people just want music so fast these days. And I honestly hate it, as much as I love writing music every day. I hate when you put so much work into an album, and then it's just, 'All right, what's next?' And it's like, 'I literally just poured everything into that. I like need time to think of something else.' You know what I mean?
Analogue: Hey, with that relationship, you said you honestly hate it. How much do you feel some control over that? Like, are you able to, ‘Hey, I hate it. So I'm not, I'm not doing it.’ Or do you feel like, ‘I hate it but I'm under the gun to keep going,’ you know?
Eliza: I think we're pretty lucky to have like a record label that's kind of ready to go when we are, even though they might say they want something in this time frame.
No one really cares about full albums these days. It's just like, 'How many 30-second songs can you put on Tik Tok or whatever?' That's cool but I love the idea of a full concept and a full record and that takes time.
But you know, you can't wait too long. Otherwise people move on, unfortunately. So it's finding that balancing act of how can we write the best music and take the time that we need, but also still like staying in front of people's faces.
Analogue: Will that feel you forever that way about the album format?
Eliza: I think so, because at the end of the day, the songwriting part an creating music is such a big part of why I wanted to do this anyway. It's such an important part. The touring and playing shows are a very close second, but I feel like when we write something, when we make something that we love and we're just like, 'Oh my gosh, this is so sick!', that is such a special feeling. When you have that, it's such an important, important part, and it really brings you back to the basics of why you even bothered in the first place.
Analogue: There’s something magical to me about a great hook—like somehow that a great hook could still be written and feel new amid all the music that's already out there. The hooks are so prevalent and immediate on the album that they feel important to you as well. Is that true? Like “If this doesn’t land melodically with that hook then forget it”?
Eliza: Yeah, I think it does come into play in some aspects. Sometimes I feel when we write a song, you have to ask, 'Does it give you that energy when you listen to it?' That's kind of how we decide if something's going to be on the record.
I love all kinds of music. And Kurt, Rudy, and I have lots of different tastes. Then again, we love a lot of the same music. I love pop music as well as lots of different styles. A good song is a good song, but I also feel like it's a feeling thing, you know?
VISIT: Eliza & The Delusionals
Photo: Neil Maguire
