Angus & Julia Stone are officially back with Karaoke Bar, their seventh studio album born unexpectedly on the road while touring 2024’s Cape Forestier.
Out today via Virgin Music, the record was created across Greece, France and Australia, after the siblings found themselves inspired by the joy and connection of their ‘Living Room Sessions’ tour, which saw them revisit songs from across their career in an intimate setting.
“We had set the stage up like our living room,” Julia Stone tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “We had the feeling that we wanted people to come back into the living room where Angus and I started writing music together.”
Playing old theatres around the world, the pair stripped back songs from across their catalogue and shared the stories behind them. That trip down memory lane, she says, reminded her of just how strong a community they’d formed over the past two decades.
“That tour, it really was maybe the first time we had a real sense or understanding of how special the community is that has grown around our music and what it means to us to have that,” she explains. “We felt such a sense of joy and togetherness with the crowds and having people sing back songs across all of these years that means something different to everybody and their own lives.”
View this post on InstagramLove Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
Karaoke Bar comes a year out from the 20th anniversary of Angus & Julia Stone’s debut album, 2007’s A Book Like This. The timing is “pretty poignant”, Stone says, even if the milestone itself catches her off guard.
“I think it still surprises us. When we do look back, like we did on that tour, and realise that it has been 20 years, there’s a real appreciation for the privilege that we’ve had to make music.”
The timing of Karaoke Bar may feel significant now, but its beginnings were far less deliberate. While touring Cape Forestier, Angus and Julia decided to change the way they approached life on the road. Gone were the marathon stretches bouncing around the world – instead, they broke the tour into smaller blocks, including four weeks in Europe followed by a proper holiday.
“We usually just burn out by the end of a tour,” Stone admits. “It’s pretty rough.”
As they searched for somewhere to spend the break, the only non-negotiable was having a good studio nearby. A recommendation from Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa led them to Hydra, the Greek island famously associated with Leonard Cohen, who lived there during the 1960s.
Cohen had long held significance for Stone, who describes listening to his music growing up as one of her earliest experiences of understanding the power of good songwriting: “Probably my first musical experience of listening to songs and lyrics and realising I’m not alone in the world. There’s somebody out there saying these things that I don’t really understand, but I feel connected to this person.”
Spending their time in Hydra swimming, drinking wine, and playing cards, the plan was never to make songs – just to have a studio in the vicinity… just in case. The island itself was unlike anywhere else, she recalls, adding that it felt like going back in time – with no cars, cats roaming everywhere, and everyone smoking cigarettes on the streets.
Most importantly, she adds, she and her brother were enjoying themselves and each other’s company: “We were just very relaxed and enjoying, I guess, our friendship, and the fun of having been on this tour and making these songs and talking about our life together in the context of the ‘Living Room Sessions’ shows,” she says.
“And then the songs started to come.”
The first was “Karaoke Bar”, which would eventually give the album its name. The track itself shares some of the spirit of the tour that preceded it, exploring the sense of connection that can emerge when strangers find themselves singing the same song together.
The Hydra trip also delivered an unlikely full-circle moment when Angus walked downstairs one night and found a stranger in the kitchen. It turned out to be Adam Cohen, Leonard’s son, who was visiting his late father’s home on the island. They ended up spending the night playing songs together, Stone recounts, and talking about growing up surrounded by music.
“Growing up in a musical house, I think, is such a privilege because you learn that music brings people together,” Stone says. “You don’t have to agree with someone about their political beliefs or their values even necessarily, but you can sing a song together, and you both understand that you feel similar things about being a human.”
The spontaneous way Karaoke Bar came together is, in some ways, typical of Angus & Julia Stone. While making an album while touring was new territory for the pair, the unplanned nature of it was not. After six albums, neither sibling was particularly interested in forcing the project forward simply because it is time to make another record.
“We really have had to have a loose grip on the project,” Stone explains. “Neither of us have ever pushed to make a record. There’s never been a time where one of us is like, ‘I really wanna go on tour’. It just has to happen.
“Because of that kind of attitude and approach, I think it’s meant we both naturally sort of find our way back to wanting to make a record together. Records for us are always a bit of a surprise when they happen. There is this kind of mystery to, like, maybe we’ll never make another record… and then of course we do.”
The way they actually make those records has changed significantly, too. On their early albums, Angus and Julia largely wrote separately before bringing songs into the studio and collaborating on the production. It was Rick Rubin, while producing their 2014 self-titled album, who suggested they try starting a song together from scratch.
“Heart Beats Slow” became the first track they wrote entirely together, and the siblings continued developing that process on 2017’s Snow. With Karaoke Bar, Stone says they’ve taken that collaboration further than ever before.
“This is probably the most complete, fully written together,” she laughs. “You know, nobody had an idea before they showed up. It was exciting because it was like, ‘What happens next? Where do we want to go to?’ Every record, something new happens.
“We are not the people we were when we started making records together,” she adds. “Over time, we’ve become more and more safe in the studio to be creatively open and authentic. There’s such a freedom to try things, and we feel really safe to do that. If it works, then let’s put it on the record. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. Nothing is a waste of time.”
Angus & Julia Stone’s Karaoke Bar is out now.
