Taking Cues From Queen & Enlisting Luluc

To date, three singles have dropped from Ryan Downey's debut full-length, Running, and even less-than-attentive fans of his last record will have picked up on a major shift in direction. "Yeah, there's instruments on there," laughs the singer.

For those who aren't familiar with the baritone crooner's history or his lush, alt-folk back-catalogue, Downey suffered a mild setback in 2015 when he broke his arm and had to down tools for six weeks. Rather than spending that time Googling one-handed hobbies, Downey conceived Me & Her, an a cappella mini-album comprised of two originals and five covers, all by female artists. People were curious at the "incredible insanity [Double J]" of covering Enya with nothing but body percussion, one-man harmonies and a can-do attitude, and then stunned at just how good the result was.

The accident delayed Downey's first official album, but, as Downey says, the chance to experiment "got the ball rolling in a good way" and, without this hold-up, we would likely never have heard Running.

"I was ready to make an album that had maybe half the songs that are now on Running and a bunch of other songs that I've since let go," shares Downey. "When I broke my arm that sort of got cancelled, which is a blessing because I wasn't going to make this record the way that I have now made it.

"It opened up this record to write more songs and finetune it, and I think it's got a better outcome now than it was going to."

When considering how much the songs and album have morphed in the years following his side-project, Downey draws a blank on individual changes, stating the key differences are much larger in scale. "Mostly, I think, some of the more important songs on the record came since then. I reshaped some of the others. The result of this album is probably not really what the last one would have sounded like. It's a lot less folk. Even though, you know, some of the songs still have an indie-folk backbone to them, we took it in different directions - had some pop and rock moments on there."

Once Downey felt he had a full set of completed songs he eventually tapped Steve Hassett from alt-folk duo Luluc to produce, having met, supported and befriended the pair in 2014. "I guess I had a bunch of songs to make a record and I'd just been waiting and looking for the right producer," says Downey. "In the past, I'd always self-recorded then got a producer to mix. This time I wanted to work all the way [through] with a producer. I knew he'd had a huge hand in producing their records and just, whenever we spoke about music in general or my own music or the recording process, his ear, and his attention to detail, and his work ethic always felt similar to mine. And so, I knew that he'd be perfect for it." 

The rich and varied sound of the record speaks for itself, but was it difficult to hand over the reins to begin with? "With Steve it wasn't. He was just one of those great facilitators. It was a lot of fun. He, like me, doesn't take moment to moment seriously but he takes the end result very seriously. So, we could have a lot of fun with what we were putting onto the record and remain relaxed - you know [laughs], most of the time - and come out with an outcome that we were proud of."

Hassett isn't the only contributing Luluc member. Zoe Randell duets with Downey on 1+1, a gorgeous and steadily expanding ode to finding strength in love. "I wrote that song years ago actually," tells Downey, "and never really knew what to do with it. I knew I'd need a really strong, powerful voice to carry the weight of that part, and then I met her and obviously she's got a breathtaking voice... When I heard that she really liked that song I asked her and she did a great job."

Running is pretty romantically inclined all over and Downey admits his core motivation for the album was he "basically just wanted to make an album about love". "Not just romantic love, love as sort of the force that gets things running in the world," says Downey, "and about how that comes into play in modern-day life." That sentiment creates an anchor for the LP, but it's most strongly tethered to the title track, from which the album took its name in "a last-minute decision". "I'd gone through other titles," he continues. "I think that song - we'd chosen it to open the record and it sort of most potently carries that theme and opens up the doors to the album, thematically and sonically. It just became sort of a perfect overtone for the themes."

Like love, Downey knew Running couldn't take itself too seriously, that it needed a certain level of humanity and humour to flourish, as well as attitude expressed in "moments of empowerment, instead of blatant bravado". But most importantly, it needed to be entertaining.

"When it came time to actually record, there was sort of a major influence that Steve and I looked at, and it's one you probably can't even hear on the record - in fact, I'm pretty sure you can't hear it - but it was more in our approach to the recording, and that is of Queen and Freddie Mercury. In particular, just to always keep in mind the idea that we wanted to make, you know, highly emotional, artistic music, but always with a backbone of entertainment. So, no matter how human the moments got on there, lyrically or thematically, just to always remember in the back of our minds to have that treatment of, 'This is entertainment'."

It's a rule of thumb Downey has also observed through his love of film. When he moved to Melbourne from rural Victoria, Downey briefly left music, "dipping [a] toe into filmmaking". "I would love to do soundtracks. I don't know if people can hear it, it's certainly an influence on this record, and all of my music really. Setting a real mood, playing with tension and dynamics the way that soundtracks can do, and sort of telling a story outside of the lyrics as well, you know. They're really important to me.

"It's amazing how sound can have a place. And that some sounds have the same place for everyone."