Ben Lee: Pretty Fly.

Hey You, Yes You is in stores now.

“Aren’t you lucky that you met me,” wails Klinger frontman Ben Birchall. “Cause I’m arrogant like Ben Lee.”

Ben Lee gets a bad wrap. It seems like it’s the Sydney born and Bondi bred New York celeb is fair game in Australia’s tall poppy society. Perhaps Birhcall and Co are just jealous.

Back in the early nineties, Ben first came to prominence as the founding member of Noise Addict. At the age of 14 he was the indie alternative to Silverchair teenage rawk, and was hailed as a major talent in the making by artists like Evan Dando and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who signed the band to his Ecstatic Peace label.

Although he took the plunge at age 16 with his first solo record Grandpaw Would we had to wait until 1998 with Breathing Tornados that Ben Lee really hit his stride. The albums first single Cigarettes Will Kill You found favour with radio audiences, it’s simple, elegant lo-fi pop meanderings were eventually only pipped by The Offspring’s Pretty Fly For A White Guy for the top slot in Triple J’s 1998 Hottest 100. Four years have now passed, and Ben returns with his new album Hey You, Yes You.

“I’ve heard the record a bunch, I don’t need to listen to it again,” Ben jokes as he absconds from a record company listening party in Sydney. “It sounds good loud and outdoors. I’m starting to get a kick out of listening to my music outdoors. I think I’m starting to understand rave culture.”

After a dramatic pause he continues…

“It’s hard for me to say wether I like the album or not. It sounds like me. It sounds more like me to me than any other record I’ve made yet. There’s a cut off point with my music. I’m not that interested in catering to people who need me to pretend to be stupid. Maybe that’s a positive thing. I’ve tried my best, and there’s really not much else I can do.”

Do you think retrospectively that some of the work you’ve done on albums past is not really up to the standards you set for yourself?

“No, it’s not that at all. I like all the records I’ve made, but I feel this is most like me at the time I’ve made it. You gather more tools as you go along. Your ability to communicate what you want to communicate just gets greater, and you learn more about music and lyrics. I just get more accurate, you know what I mean.”

“The records I made when I was 15 are concerned with 15 year old things. It’s pretty hard for me to imagine it again. You know, sometimes I try just for the hell of it to write a song like I did on Grandpaw Would. You change so much from when you’re fifteen to your mid twenties. I try to leave that as what it was, because I’m never going to have that again.”

Was there a great deal of pressure to put together an album that matches the critical heights of Breathing Tornados?

“No one puts more pressure on me that I do. There’s a sense of people wanting me to start the next record and capitalise, but I just can’t do it. It’s like an impossibility to make a record if you’re not ready to make it. I just ignored that stuff and just tried to do what I do.

And just what has Ben Lee been doing to get into the mood for Hey You?

“I wanted to make a record that would sound good to Americans, so I had to go out and try some crack,” he laughs. “No, I’ve just been collaborating with other people, and I made a movie and I’ve just been dealing with life stuff, you know. I did a lot of touring when Breathing Tornados came out. For seven or so years from the time I was 14 I just worked at a pretty manic rate, so it’s taken a couple of slow years to digest it all.”

“It wasn’t a conscious thing so I could look back at it in retrospect, but I needed some distance. I needed to realise I could exist without music. Even Eminen needs to think, you know.”

Can it be easy to forget about a life outside of music when you’re working at such a rate?

“God, it’s beyond easy. It’s a given. You’re expected to give up your entire soul and just exist for performance and press. All the industry stuff. It’s really important to take a break. I’ve now been making records for ten years, and it’s very easy to forget that music is just a part of me. There’s a whole lot of experiences I’ve had that have nothing to do with music, but the rate I was working at didn’t really give me time to digest it all.”

Do you still enjoy being back in Sydney, or is New York really home for you now?

“Yeah, I’m enjoying it. I try to stay connected to Sydney, because it’s a really strong part of my identity. You know, I love coming back. It full of all the difficulties that coming home always is. You know, I was here for a few months earlier in the year and that gave me a chance to deal with some of that stuff.”