You won’t find a happier chap than Pete Murray right now. With a home studio set up at his old farm house in the hills just outside Byron Bay, two beautiful children, complete artistic freedom, sold-out shows and chart topping records… what’s there to be miserable about?
To top it off, Pete has just released the first album that he can honestly claim to be 100% satisfied with. Pete’s happiness glows warmly through every guitar chord, every strike of the piano keys, every drum beat, and (nearly) every lyric on his new album, Summer At Eureka.
Songs like ‘You Pick Me Up’, ‘King Tide’ and ebullient album closer ‘Happy Ground’ sparkle with inspiration and contentedness. Even a song like Neil Young-esque album opener ‘Chance To Say Goodbye’ rocks joyously in the face of a less than joyous topic.
Thanks to mammoth radio hits like ‘So Beautiful’ and ‘Better Days’ – more temperate ballads that just happened to plucked as singles from his first two albums Feeler and See The Sun – Pete Murray picked up a reputation as a glum, sensitive artist. When I catch up with him at his Byron home, he laughs about a particular radio station holding a “cheer up Pete Murray” competition.
But anyone who has followed Pete’s career with any attentiveness – or indeed, anyone who’s ever actually met him – will attest to the inaccuracy of that reputation.
It seems to be that you never actively chased the commercial success, that it was really thrust upon you pretty suddenly. Is this true?
“Well it was exactly, that’s what happened. I remember I did the independent album [The Game] and from that we got signed and that was never really put out… And then we re-recorded a few songs and put out Feeler and I remember having a conversation with the guys at the label saying ‘our goal is to try and sell about 25,000 albums, and then we’ll try and set you up with the second album… And I remember thinking, ‘god, 25,000 that’s a lot!’ I was going ‘if I can do five, that’s a good start!’ And then the whole thing just went nuts really quickly.”
Is ‘Chance To Say Goodbye’ just letting out all your Neil Young worship all in one song?
“Pretty much! Obviously I’m a huge Neil Young fan and it’s very inspired by Neil Young’s style, right through. I wasn’t sure whether to put that as first song, because it is so Neil Young, but it’s got my own flavour to it as well I guess, but it makes a statement and it’s a nice change.
The whole album’s got a ‘70s flavour to it, you know and just the sounds that we’ve recorded, trying to make it this old ‘70s drum kit, old ‘70s bass, and drawing from those influences like Young and Dylan and Springsteen, Tim Buckley, all those guys… that era is what I tried to make it sound like…
Dylan, Young, Springsteen – they have unconventional, raw voices. You have such a gentle voice, which I guess is both a blessing and a curse…?
“Yeah totally. It’s hard to really belt something out for me. That’s why in the past I’ve used a particular type of microphone to get distortion on my vocals to make it sound a little bit tougher. Because it’s true probably most of the stuff that works me are the gentler songs because of the soft vocals. Maybe I should be doing stuff like Nick Drake, but I get a bit bored doing that the whole time. So I write the more dynamic songs to keep me interested. Saying that about those guys, their own style is what makes them unique and so great.”
After all the touring he did for the previous two albums, Pete’s been in no hurry to hit the road. But the time has come, and hot on the tail of some dates in Europe, where he and his band The Stonemasons performed in front of 60,000 at The Netherlands’ Pinkpop Festival, Murray is undertaking his first Australian tour in two years.
With a new member, Brett Wood, joining the band on guitar and a new bunch of his strongest songs yet, Pete is now excited to get back on stage – just one more reason for Pete Murray to be happy.
