Just like his records, Paul Mac is a charming and accessible person to interview. He has none of the pretension that could come with the level of success that he achieved and through out his interview with Fasterlouder he peppers his answers with hearty laughs. To put it simply, Paul Mac is in a happy place right now. Both of his solo albums have been received with much affection by the masses and his skills as a virtuoso musician is in high demand as he is currently in LA laying down keyboard parts for the new Silverchair album. When asked in the nicest possible manner to tell us something about The Chair’s heavily anticipated album he is coy but manages to give us this little morsel of information. “I won’t tell you what it sounds like. I think its beautiful music and I think it will blow a lot of people away but that’s as far as I want to go”.
Distance and location play a central role in Mac’s music. Both of his solo albums have been named after the places he recorded them. His first album 30,000 Feet High was christened after his stay in Katooomba and his latest offering The Panic Room was titled after the studio that was located under his house in Sydney’s inner west. Mac acknowledges that his physical surroundings do have an impact upon the way he approaches his music for new locations keeps his creativity flowing. “I just wanted to not repeat myself. Like on the first album when I was living in the Blue Mountains it was beautiful. But when it came to the next one I didn’t want to be in the same place, surrounded by the same people, the same sort of energy. It was more trying to put myself in a different place and see what happens”.
Mac initially began writing music for his second album in London. But it wasn’t a particularly fruitful time for the song writer as he suffered from writer’s block. He also came to realise that the pop songs he was churning out didn’t come from an organic place. Instead they came as a knee jerk reaction to all the external pressure and anticipation that comes hand in hand when following up a successful record. Mac was not used to writing songs in such an environment. “Suddenly you are exposed to this different pressure that you never felt before. It took me a while to sort of realize that ‘hang on, this is bullshit!’ You gotta keep making music from that pure place where you always made it from. Otherwise, it’s just gonna suck”.
An immediate change of scenery was needed and Mac returned to Sydney, found a new home and converted its underground space into a studio. The result is an album that is significantly different from his gold selling debut in that it is his most personal and melancholy set of songs to date. Yet it is still laced with the infectious melodies that characterize so much of his work. The best example of this is in the Panic Room’s centerpiece ‘As Long As I Am’. Carried by the vocals of The Sleepy Jackson’s Luke Steele, it is a powerful ode to Mac’s deceased father that is mournful in its sea of minor keys but equally uplifting with Mac’s message to his departed loved one that ‘you are still alive, as long as I am’. Mac recalls the completion of that song as a feeling of immense liberation. “Once I finished that song and mixed it and put it out and released it, it’s kind of like releasing a hundred doves or something… That’s what songwriting can do. It does process your feelings.”
An important part of Mac’s song writing and what makes him so successful is his knack of finding the right vocalist to suit each song. His latest offering boasts a number of collaborations with an eclectic mix of artists. Some of the interesting guests that were kind enough to lend their pipes to Mac’s songs are Lenka Kripac of Decorder Rings fame, ex Superjesus leading lady Sarah Mccleod and most surprisingly Australian Idol looser, Ngaire. Mack hooked up with the Papua New Guinean singer after seeing her get the boot from the popular talent show.
As a respected producer, Mac’s take on Australian Idol is cynical. But he has a more realistic view regarding whether shows likes ‘Idol’ actually nurtures or hurts up and coming artists. “I think it can be really good if you don’t win” he states with a laugh. “Ngaire I think got out at the perfect time where every one knows who she is but she still didn’t get trapped into a corner”. But Mac get serious when he says that talent shows like Australian Idol are essentially harmful for it is not in the business of cultivating new talent. “I think it’s a dangerous thing in that it puts so much of the industry’s interest in karaoke instead of finding people with a genuine original voice and writing their own songs. I’m much more supportive if people are singing original songs rather than this endless cover karaoke comp”.
Now that he is reaching the end of the touring cycle for The Panic Room, with gigs played in large and intimate venues as well as appearances in all the major music festivals around the country, Mac is satisfied with the journey he took in making the album and its response from the masses. “When it was finished it was possibly the happiest I ever been with an album ever. I think it gone down well, I certainly enjoyed the reaction”.
But there is still one more festival to go and Mac tells Fasterlouder that he is bringing the whole gang with him to Bryon Bay for his Splendour in the Grass set. “Its gonna be like 11 people, Peter, Ngaire, Abbie, Sarah Mccleod, the 3 backing vocalists and the 4 guys in the band…It will be the full Paul Mac Experience!”
Catch Paul Mac at Splendour in the Grass, or grab a copy of his latest CD, The Panic Room, in stores now.
