Felix Riebl Shares Inspiration Behind New Solo Album 'Everyday Amen'

EVERYDAY AMEN

Sometimes the lyrics for a song just seem to flow, and though you don’t understand them, intuitively, they feel like they punch and resonate musically. It’s a great feeling when that happens. When you’re speaking and don’t feel the need to really understand what you’re saying. This song, which became the title track, introduces everything the album is about. It’s orchestral, anthemic, and overflowing, but it’s also self-deprecating, unexpected and everyday. I wanted it to feel like an overture for something grand and subtle, introspective and extrovert. I wanted to turn the 'everyday' on its head. The question, what’s an ‘Everyday Amen?’ has informed all the visuals around the album. It’s that particular feeling of viewing your familiar world in an unfamiliar way. It can be filled with grace or just plain ridiculous.

BARCELONA BEERS

In many ways, this album is set between polar worlds - an international kaleidoscopic one, full of colour, romance, chaos, and a domestic one, full of similar excess, but in a more subtle, everyday way. This song, based on many years of travel and tour, is set in Barcelona, a city I’ve performed in many times. It starts with tasting beer in the street, then spirals into an imaginary night that chases its own wildness. It’s a scenario that echoes touring, a forgotten dream that plays on repeat but goes on because each morning it’s reset. Musically it has a lot of Latin influence, and the accented feature vocal by French singer Joe Bel gives it the edge and desire that belongs to it.

LIAR

I had never intended this song to have the vocal range it does. Originally, the melody was all set in the middle, but during the recording, I had one of those fortunate chest colds that let me trip below and above my usual range, and the result was this belligerent, raspy rock anthem. I love hearing passionate couples yell at each other. They flare up in the early hours streets away, but the whole neighbourhood is reminded of the energy of a beautifully dysfunctional relationship. They give a lot of life to the city. There’s a personal joke in this one as well, related to my musical upbringing in a half-Austrian classical musical family. Instead of putting a tearing guitar solo in the middle, I asked Ross to arrange a classical string quintet over the grimy Melbourne rocking bass and drums. Even if no one else gets it, it makes me laugh. ’Ya Liar’ is also a direct reference to Bob Dylan’s famous concert at the Royal Albert hall in 1966, where when he was called ‘Judas’ for playing an electric set instead of an acoustic one, and he went into Like a Rolling Stone and muttered to his band to ‘play it fuckin loud!’

YEAH YEAH 

This song, probably influenced by Stone Roses, evokes a few places in particular. The first is the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. It’s a place I’ve always loved performing in, full of dingy, port-city sailor bars, brothels, nightclubs, and rock venues. I’ve always got such a kick wandering those neon streets around shows. The second is the Malacon in Havana. I remember riding my scooter along that promenade after a recording session, feeling the spray of the waves on my face, and being charged by youth. The third is the summer carnival fair in Apollo bay. It’s so moody there with the Ottways and the murky ocean surrounding those bright, nostalgic fun-fair lights. All those places haunt me and fill my memories with speckles of light. Sometimes, to put a song together, all you have to do is gather fragments and let those loose associations do the work. Then the meaning doesn’t have to be over-explained.

UNTIL THE BEAT IS GONE

I was playing around with words and taking letters out, so ‘Friend’ became ‘Fiend’, and ‘Word’ became ‘World’ and so on, and that’s how this song came to life. 'What is love but the letter L that turns the word into the World' felt like a pretty good hook, and one night at the piano, I found the chords to match. Sometimes those little exercises bear fruit. The featured vocals of Graham Candy add this beautiful alien voice that feels both male and female at the same time. There’s also a feeling I associate with Chris Isaac that creeps into the instrumental sections and gives the track a simultaneously haunted and uplifting atmosphere.

ORFEO

This track started as a very rudimentary guitar riff I’d been coming back to (I don’t really play the guitar). I had a loose melody made up of gibberish, ‘Shammi eh, Shammi oh,’ and I thought it’d be fun to add a female french voice in there. Eloise Mignon wrote and performed the part of the French character, and the song slowly became an abstract domestic spin on the Orpheus myth…don’t look back. It’s a song that takes the album somewhere whimsical and unexpected. It’s one of my favourites for that reason. 

CARRY YOUR SCAR

This song, which to me feels like a driving anthem, sits somewhere between joy and sadness. It’s reminiscent of the 80s songs I’d often listen to with my brother, but it also recalls a youthful time in Cuba with a beautiful, brimming-with-life person called Katioska. She’d always say, in very broken English, "Ah, it’s ok". Over years ‘It’s ok’ has taken on many meanings. The chorus used to sing ‘Katioska,’ but since my brother’s brain tumour and operations, it started to sound like ‘Carry your Scar,’ which is what the song now carries for me. It’s a tribute to both.

SATURDAY NIGHT

This song imagines a lonely blue dive bar in Dallas, Texas. It’s a cliche, but I hope this song invents it new. Sometimes you tread covered ground only to momentarily make it fresh again. It’s about music saving your soul. It also recollects the speckles of light from Yeah Yeah. When I sent the track to Kasey Chambers to sing feature harmonies with me, she went to her old man’s place to record, and what came back within days felt so vocally pure. She’s a wonderful musician.

VAMPIRES

This whole album was recorded from start to finish in 10 days with Andy Baldwin (producer/engineer), Ross Irwin (co-producer/arranger), and the band Ben Edgar (Guitars), Danny Farrugia (Drums), Ryan Monro (Bass), Ollie McGill (Organ, electronics). We worked days and very late nights in a voracious, free-flowing way. You know when a session is going well when technical faults turn into moments. There’s a part in the middle where the power in the desk shut down for split second, and it made this sub-explosion sound that near on shattered everyone’s headphones. The computer somehow kept recording, and it gave the track some danger. Vampires is really just another name for musicians, songwriters, creators, and thrill seekers. We’re hungry for blood. And we’ll find it one way or another.

SOMETHING

This track, probably influenced by Los Lobos and the Latin Playboys, was a bit of an outlier. I never imagined it would make the final cut, but Ross encouraged me to follow it through, and it eventually brought a lilty, drunk, swaying-on-your-feet energy to the collection. It’s about a feeling I get as a songwriter and partner when I ask those around me for the impossible. In the pursuit of trying to reach something that won’t ever be quite articulated. It just does it in this bent, Mexican kind of way.

ARE YOU AWAKE LOVE? (ANYA’S SONG)

This is a lullaby I wrote for my firstborn, Anya. A terrible sleeper! There’s some magic in looking out of the window at the city lights with a sleeping child on your shoulders. You’re suffering, but you’re also gifted a moment in the night that’s otherwise missed. It’s a lovesong — a quiet anthem for all those who are sleep-deprived, half-mad, but very alive all the same.

You can stream or download Felix Riebl's new album Everday Amen here.