Why It's Easy Being Self-Indulgent In LA: 'That City Facilitates Anything'

Talking to Cameron Avery, multi-instrumentalist and member of Tame Impala, Pond, The Growl and others about his new solo record — the enigmatically titled Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams — one major theme emerges regarding his attitudes towards it and his motivations for creating it.

"It's a totally self-indulgent thing," he admits readily. "It started as a Growl record, and then more and more I was just like, 'I wonder what would happen if I made a record that sounded exactly like the music that I love the most, the music that I've grown up listening to?' A lot of big band stuff, a lot of jazz stuff, cinematic music. So it's a totally self-indulgent thing, I never thought about getting signed to a big American label [Anti] or anything like that, it was just fun to do."

"The infrastructure in LA left behind by Hollywood is just unbelievable."

That sense of doing it for himself carries right through to the meaning behind the album's mysterious title. "[Creating the album] was more of a catharsis for me than an attempt to tackle any kind of musical fame or anything. I didn't go to America and take over the American music scene, as if I'm going to do that with an album that sounds like it was made in 1960!" he laughs. "I was just doing it for me, the 'ripe dreams' and 'pipe dreams' was just a personal thing, I have ripe dreams and I have pipe dreams. Pipe dreams is like 'maybe I'll get married one day'."

The album was well over two years in the making, and Avery's surroundings during much of the writing and recording process were inspiring and conducive to creating a great record. "When I moved to LA, my friend had a tiny studio," he recalls. "I did the drums, bass, keys, vocals, guitars in there. The infrastructure in LA left behind by Hollywood is just unbelievable. The sound stages they have there, half the strings we did were at the Paramount broadcasting room at Paramount Studios where they did Psycho — same microphones. That's were that sonic element came from. Half the piano on the album was done on Duke Ellington's piano.

"Basically, that city facilitates anything," he emphasises, "any idea I had in my head."

Avery is flat chat for much of the rest of the year. He recently did a brief, intimate tour of Australia in support of the album, and come March he is off to North America and then Europe on his own. He may also squeeze a tour with Tame Impala in there somewhere before they go on their well-publicised hiatus. Aussie Avery fans should not have too long to wait to get another glimpse of him in a live setting though.

"We've got a Tame tour," he reveals, "then I'm doing an American tour, then to Europe, then I want to get back here sooner rather than later. Before the middle of the year, I'd like to get back to Australia and play some bigger shows."