'I Just Think People Are Giving Way Too Much Information, And It's Really Boring'

"Music," says Mazzy Star's David Roback, "is very visual in the sense that it triggers a sort of cinematic reaction in the mind. This reaction is really very personal, very individual. But it's universal that this happens."

It's a rare moment of conversational flourish from the duo; guitarist Roback and singer Hope Sandoval. From their beginnings - in Los Angeles in 1989, when they formed from the ashes of Roback's prior band Opal - Mazzy Star have been a study in reluctance. On stage, they rarely talk. In interviews, they talk even less. On the eve of their first-ever Australian tour, with the release of a brand new EP, Still, Roback and Sandoval are true to conversational form: brief answers, long silences, general evasiveness. They're not hostile, just reserved; Mazzy Star's two main people don't talk much, especially when it comes to music.

"There's a certain narrative that goes into any album," Roback says, at one point, of the band's fourth album - and comeback LP - 2013's Seasons Of Your Day. "[But] we usually don't really try to turn that [narrative] into a verbal, conceptual form. It is what it is. It's music."

Mazzy Star's music is glorious: steeped in blues and country, but played at a slowcore tempo with Sandoval's glorious drawl draped over the top. Their 1993 single Fade Into You is a classic ballad, used in more films and TV shows than you could count; the band having long been loved by music supervisors. Sandoval has had the experience of sitting in a cinema and unexpectedly hearing a Mazzy Star song come on. "It's a bit strange," she says, "you're at the cinema, just watching a movie, then all of a sudden your music starts playing, super-loud."

In their early days, Mazzy Star grew out of what Roback calls "LA's late-night music scene". Their music always felt natural, their own. "We never really thought we were a backdrop for people to dance [to], particularly; we just felt like we had something to do, that we wanted to do," Roback says. So, do people ever dance at their shows? [incredibly long pause, this time adding comic effect] "I think there's been a recorded instance or two of people daring to dance."

Though this is Mazzy Star's first Australian tour, Sandoval came here, in 2010, on a solo tour (with her band The Warm Inventions) that showed local audiences her unease on stage. "It can be stressful, it can be nerve-wracking," she admits. "Standing there, having to sing, in front of thousands of people, it's just not a natural thing to be up there, with that many people watching you. But there's moments where it can be a really beautiful experience."

The duo are happy to still be making music together ("the thrill has not gone from working with Hope," Roback says) and the loyalty of a fanbase that's allowed them to. Since their return, the band have released their own music, and there's a dissonance between Mazzy Star's ways of being and the current musical climate (though, when Sandoval confesses, "I even Shazam, sometimes," with a laugh, she pokes at the idea).

"What's most different is how quickly things happen today, as opposed to the way they used to happen," Roback says. "We were a part of the musical underground, we existed in the shadows. Now, the way people consume information and music happens so very quickly."

Talk of the digital now leads to the subject that, finally, Mazzy Star are most outspoken about: social media. Roback dismisses the idea of an audience knowing an artist ("it's a fantasy in their minds, it requires a map of misreading") and Sandoval laments the whole medium. "I just think people are giving way too much information, and it's really boring," she sighs. "I think it's just something that people, especially younger people, just do. That's just their way. That's how they've grown up. It's just a part of them. If they have a cheeseburger, they want everybody to know they're having a cheeseburger. If they took a walk in the park, they want everybody to know they took a walk in the park. We didn't grow up that way. We grew up feeling that it's good to have some privacy, you should treasure it."