Tinpan Orange On Creating "A Separate World"

Their music has always had a somewhat grandiose quality to it, but on their fifth album Love Is A Dog Melbourne indie-folk darlings Tinpan Orange have expanded on this aspect of their existence even further, crafting a beautiful, lush soundscape to house frontwoman Emily Lubitz's warm lyrics and vocals.

Helped once more by her husband Harry Angus (of The Cat Empire fame), who co-produced the album, Lubitz explains that they attempted to harness the band's innate synergy in the live realm while in the studio crafting the album.

"It wasn't intentionally trying to write a concept album or anything — but a lot of the songs have this feeling of the downside of good things."

"We wanted to create a separate world in the feeling and in the sound, and we did that — I think there's a kinda thread through the album that links [the songs] together in some kind of musical, sonic, vibey kinda world," she reflects. "I don't [know] what or where it is but it's a place we created, and that was a real aim. Other than that I think we just wanted to record our songs in a really live and honest way, and that's it. We didn't want to reinvent ourselves too much, we just wanted to be honest.

"Sometimes we'd take a long time to get the right sound, and also the right take of us playing together. We really wanted to capture that feeling of us playing together — myself and my bother Jesse and Alex Burkov, who plays violin, have been playing together for ten years, so there's a lot of instinct and intuition we share when we're playing together. We really wanted to just capture that, that feel of us playing together, and that would sometimes require a few takes to get right. Plus we were so busy [with our lives] — my brother had a baby and I had my second baby, Harry was touring a lot with his band — that really, on paper, this album shouldn't have been made, but we were very determined. We love the band and we felt that there was place for another album to be made.

"I think Harry has a lot to do with the musical direction — he's kind of our MD, although Alex also comes up with some string arrangements and stuff like that. All of that was really live but we rehearsed and made sure that we were prepared so that when we got to the studio it came out right."

From a lyrical perspective Love Is A Dog examines the illusion of happiness, although Lubitz concedes that this wasn't entirely intentional.

"I guess we noticed after the fact — it wasn't intentionally trying to write a concept album or anything — but a lot of the songs have this feeling of the downside of good things," she muses. "Like the downside of loving someone too much, or the downside of wealth and privilege. I was reading [F Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel] The Great Gatsby at the time of writing a few of the songs and I was interested in how you can have that world of real wealth yet no one seems to be really happy, and those ideas crept into the album."