It Took A Lot For Mansionair To Realise How Not To Be A Band

Sydney's buzz indie-dance band Mansionair have made an album about making an album. Indeed, Shadowboxer is the summit of endless touring, writing, recording and overanalysing. "I don't think this record is by any means perfect," drawls Jack Froggatt, Mansionair's frontman. "But that's kind of what is so nice about it. We were just like, 'You know what? This is everything we are and it's been our last four years.'"

When we meet Mansionair – Froggatt and his bandmates Lachlan Bostock (guitar and keyboards) and Alex Nicholls (drums) – are unwinding in a hidden Melbourne wine bar one late afternoon, having recently wrapped a Laneway Festival run. Mansionair previously joined the fest back in 2015 when, Bostock recalls, they were "super green". The group didn't realise then that there was a "Laneway culture" and they could "hang out" with the other artists. This time they engaged, even playing basketball. "We had a pick-up game with the Crooked Colours guys."

Bostock, into electronica, formed Mansionair with Nicholls, a jazz kid, five years ago. The legend is that Bostock encountered Froggatt, an aspiring folkie, at a music festival, inviting him to cut vocals for Mansionair's future viral breakthrough, Hold Me Down. The trio's divergent backgrounds led to some push and pull but, bunkering down in Bostock's garage, they pursued a fluid "indie-electronic" sensibility. Today, Froggatt jokes about being Mansionair's "black sheep": "I'm always the poster boy for folk music, but I can't remember the last time I listened to Bob Dylan, so maybe I should eject that from my description."

Mansionair were hailed as a next big thing. Their 2014 Hold Me Down EP surfaced on CHVRCHES' Goodbye Records. They showcased at SXSW. The US post-EDM duo ODESZA hit Mansionair up to feature alongside Portland rapper WYNNE on their 2017 synth-pop single Line Of Sight, which was nominated for a Grammy ('Best Dance Recording'). They're now pals. "They showed us maybe that you can be these arena-selling champions of American electronic music and still be regular, normal, balanced people who are lovely to everybody they meet and really nice," Bostock says. 

"It's a miracle we still love each other."

Mansionair also emerged as in-demand remixers, recasting tunes by Death Cab For Cutie, Portugal. The Man and Rhye. In the interim, they aired credible singles like Astronaut (Something About Your Love), which is currently certified Gold in Australia (and orbited the US Alternative Charts). 

Nonetheless, having signed to America's hipster Glassnote Records, Mansionair struggled to complete their debut album under pressure. Self-contained as writer/producers, they lacked perspective, focus and confidence. Bostock rues their initially "irresponsible" approach. "We wasted a lot of time," he says. "You need a little bit of structure. If you really wanna make things that you think are great, you need some kinda rules for yourself sometimes." 

There was lots of vacillating. "We needed to believe our own convictions with the record," Froggatt notes. "We needed to back ourselves. I think, for so long, we were kinda just like swaying: 'Do you like this or do you like that?' The constant touring meant we were just constantly looking for affirmation from the fans or from the industry or whatever. It in many ways broke us. We fractured ourselves a little too much. We strained in our collaborative relationship. We learned all the ways to not be a band and all the ways to not write a record."

Yet Mansionair fell into a flow with the single Easier, finally recognising the authentic resonance of their very own "vulnerability". The quiet Nicholls reflects, "I think, the three of us working together, we know what we wanna do and what works best and how we can tour sustainably because, at the start, we were just winging it and just going way too hard, too soon – and, even with the writing, we did that as well. We were just so enthusiastic! It was all so new that we just went super hard and then didn't get the results that we wanted. So now we are a bit more focused and a bit more diligent with how we run the band."

Eventually, Mansionair retreated into a cabin in the Californian wilderness – a "reactionary" move, Froggatt admits. "That was the first time we'd ever gone to a secluded place together to write songs and not give a shit about what anyone else had to do with it." They survived six weeks. "It's a miracle we still love each other," Bostock quips.

Ostensibly, Shadowboxer chronicles Mansionair bonding, surmounting self-doubt, and achieving life balance. But, in fact, the musicians explore relatable matters of psychic wellbeing, coming of age, and personal epiphany. 

Says Bostock, "Obviously, all three of us have our own experiences, and we all want the music to be representative of how we all individually feel, but I think the one thing that is consistent is that everyone is constantly fighting their own anxieties and stuff like that. The record's called Shadowboxer 'cause that is kind of what that is: shadowboxing's where you're fighting, you're pretending to fight or preparing [to fight]. You're sort of punching the invisible enemy."

Still, Froggatt stresses that Mansionair were mindful to normalise, rather than romanticise, angst in a larger conversation about mental health, while seeking to "always offer a glimmer of hope". "The beautiful thing about the music is the music is tense and tight and at times a bit unnerving, but there's always this other layer of, 'Oh, it's gonna be all right.'" 

Nicholls concludes, "The process of writing the album, and that theme, almost became meta, because we took quite a long time – and a lot of that was due to anxieties and overthinking and all that kinda stuff."

Mansionair will be gigging solidly behind Shadowboxer. Before an Australian tour launches in May, they'll play Coachella on the same day as Ariana Grande, whose Into You Bostock cheekily mashed up with Astronaut. "We're internally all shitting bricks about it – 'cause it's Coachella!" Froggatt exclaims. "But it'll be the tail-end of our first headline tour in the States. We wanna spend between now and then just working out the best way to put the album into a live setting, the best way to get the crowd involved, the best way to do the lights and whatever."