Adelaide-born husband and wife duo David Turley and Eden Boucher, or Lovers Electric as they're better known, aren't the type to be put off an interview by severe jetlag, losing their voices or the pitfalls of air travel that saw David's guitar almost snapped in half during transit.
Supporting their second album, the lush and impeccibly produced Impossible Dreams, David and Eden have spent the last 3 years travelling across Europe, recording their new album in the famous Ridge Farm Studio and even scored the theme song to Berlin's broadcast of the Royal Wedding. Did I mention they have a 20-month old son, Auburn? All this, in between Eden's own fashion label too? Can I say coolest parents ever?
The bubbly pair met with me at the Hotel Richmond ahead of their Saturday night show at The Promethean – and it was all smiles.
Travel, living overseas for 3 years and coming home (finally)
David: We've done so much travelling, it's hard to know where home is anymore. It's really nice to come back, and this [Impossible Dreams] is the second album we've released here [in Australia] which is the only place in the world we've done that. In the UK we only released the first album [Whatever You Want], and in Germany we only released the second album, so it's nice to come back with our second album and have people who know the first album already.
Eden: I've been travelling around the world since I was 15. Australia is home but I've definitely been cruising around [laughs] doing fashion, music… I'm addicted to it. I'm not very good at staying still. You're kind of the same, right? Sorry, I corrupted you [looks at David]
Writing music whilst on the road
David: When you come home, you tend to write about your adventures travelling. When you're touring and travelling I do find it hard to write. It's not always the case but often that's what inspires the writing. When we're back in Adelaide or back in London, where home is, we do our writing then. It's more chilled. You need space to write. You can't be like 'Okay, you've got 30 minutes free, let's write a song!' You need the space and the inspiration and the energy to do it.
Impossible Dreams' stripped back production style and being different to the first album
David: We were thinking that we wanted to do something different. It's good to do something different and not get stuck. Knowing that, when we started, we were writing songs that were a bit more organic and listening to a lot of different stuff, Fleetwood Mac especially
Eden: They [Fleetwood Mac] have such a great combination of male and female singers. I think that's what we found most interesting. We were trying to bring in more of David's voice and making the most of what our band is all about. When we play, we do play acoustic quite a lot, so it makes sense to have an album that is more organic-sounding rather than electro. We used to do a bit more of an electro show live, but we didn't enjoy it as much. There's something refreshing about a band that play their songs without a backing track. I mean, some people manage that just fine but that's not really our style.
The famous Ridge Farm Studio where Impossible Dreams was recorded
Eden: We were snowed in for the last two weeks of making the album, so our producer couldn't escape, we couldn't escape. So we just finished the album. And you know how the last part always takes so much longer!
David: It's a barn but it's also completely kitted out. Very high-tech. It's a famous studio, a lot of big artists recorded there… Roxy Music, Whitesnake, Pearl Jam, Oasis.
Eden: In the 80s and 90s it was a big commercial studio and now private owners rent it out to musicians.
On being influenced by their families to pursue music (Eden's sisters are musicians and David's mother is a composer) and going down different paths in their careers
David: In a way, I did do it differently as my mother who is classically trained, who teaches the piano and does jazz. I went to Brighton High School doing mostly classical music but for me I didn't really get that stuff, so I did my own thing which was songwriting and making pop music. In a way it's the same because it's still music, but it's of course different. My grandfather played a lot of instruments and my father is a poet, so I guess a lot of it is in my blood
Eden: There's always a sense of wanting to be different, but it's such a cool lifestyle. If you feel like you should do music, you should just do it. I swore I would never do music, obviously because all my sisters did but David roped me in somehow [laughs]
Eden's foray into fashion and her own label, Eden Honeydew
Eden: This dress that I'm wearing now is a prototype of a daywear range that I'm releasing soon. I guess from a designer point-of-view, I'm already on the arty-end of designing. I'm not a commercial designer. I don't really make money off it, because I make all the dresses myself, still. I really enjoy sewing and being creative, but I have don't have a lot of spare time so I only make a limited amount. I much prefer it though, rather than making lots and lots of dresses. They're all for sale through my website [www.edenhoneydew.com], I don't really want to put them through stores and deal with all that stuff.
Fashion and performance style
David: When we're on stage, we're always thinking about the image and how things will look, the colour of your guitar against the rest of your outfit for instance.
Eden: David and I used to perform in a theatre company so I think coming from a theatre background, I'm interested in every aspect and everything about it. It becomes a performance and not just a bunch of songs. It's how we come on stage, what we do in between the songs, the whole thing. It's far more interesting for me to think of it like that. I'm a very visual person. I always ticks me off when I see a show and notice something not quite right and go 'Ahhh! You should have thought about that'… I try not to analyse things too much though [laughs] Some people can pull off the image where it's all about the music, and I think that's fine if the things they're not doing don't take away from what they are doing. Like, noticing a bright lead on a guitar! You're not focusing on the singing, you're noticing things like that.
And of course, being stylist-free
Eden: I style the band. I do think some people need a stylist! David gets a stylist for free [laughs]
David: We definitely had to fight for that when working with record labels. Their usual approach is just 'Okay great, get the artist with a stylist who will dress them in whatever is big at the time'. I mean, some stylists are great, some stylists are crap. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't But we do our own thing. We don't really want to be dressed in whatever the latest big thing is. We want to dress in our style, and as musicians that's part of the whole thing; you're being yourself.
Unlikely inspiration behind their music, such as activism and working with refugees in London
David: I guess it's the nature of our lyrics to first write something a bit depressing and then something hopeful. Like our single Beating Like A Drum, 'Hear your heart beating like a drum', there's a sense that there's still hope. And that can translate into something really political or serious or even just going through something and having a bad day, that can be equally as emotional for somebody. We write a lot of songs about hope within frustration.
Eden: With asylum seekers and refugees, there's a sadness obviously with the situations they've come from, but also the hope of a new beginning, new possibilities. Even if you have a 'nice' life without the traumas that those people have gone through, you still have that 'within the sh*t there's hope, and within the great times there's hardness'. It's a bittersweet combinaton. And anytime you read the news, I mean I can't find any goodness in any of the wars right now, but there are stories of people, concientious objectors who are willing to go to prison for what they believe in. Even within those terrible situations there's this running thread of hope. I really hope our music can inspire people and teach them that even within the bad there's possibility. Believe it in enough and it can happen.
Lovers Electric play The Promethean on Saturday, October 29. Tickets available through www.venuetix.com.au
Impossible Dreams is in stores now
Photos by Brent Leideritz
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