There’s an unspoken connection that can only come from sharing a family’s history.
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Brother sister duo, Angus & Julia Stone from Sydney’s Northern Beaches take a lifetime of shared experience and create music that resonates with emotion and honesty. A pure sound that says a lot without trying.
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On their debut EP Chocolates & Cigarettes they showcase their considerable talents on six songs filled with sun kissed harmonies and evocative lyrics. All performed with a laid back, effortless charm. The shuffling drumbeats and percussion are provided by the backbone of the group Mitchell Connelly with Angus and Julia taking care of lead vocals, and guitar plus harmonica, piano and trumpet.
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On their new EP Heart Full of Wine you’ll be gently torn apart by a Julia song, like opener ‘What You Wanted’ before being scooped up and soothed by an Angus track, like the cocoon-shaped ‘Fooled Myself’. These are songs crafted from voice and sharp-picked acoustic guitar, musical waterfalls of subdued emotion amplified by those moments when the siblings’ voices collide and harmonise.
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The duo’s main influences are familial; music soaked up during their sun-soaked childhood – although Angus names records by Elliot Smith, Nick Drake and Joni as key musical mentors. Their music teacher dad was in a covers band Backbeat and now plays folk covers with his new wife and new band, Tallow Wood. “He looks like a weird wizard and she wears long velvet dresses. They do medieval acoustic covers of pop songs.”
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Their mother was also seeped in music. She had them at dancing at drama classes and crucially, got the siblings singing together. “She’d grown up going to camps and she knew loads of call and response songs that we’d always sing on car journeys when we were little.”
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 There was nothing straight-forward however about Angus and Julia’s journey into performing together, despite the fact that they’d been singing together as young children. Both Angus and Julia speak of their childhood with great sense of separation from one another. “We didn’t talk at all. We may have been close once, when we were 5 and 3 but I don’t remember ever having much of a relationship. There are nice photos of us holding hands then. We must have been friends. But through school we lived in different worlds, different circles. ” Angus never spoke to me and I never spoke to him. It wasn’t until I we left to go travelling that I suppose we found something that we both wanted to do.”
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In Chile, her brother joined her and they made their way through Bolivia, swept themselves up the Amazon and took the trail to Machu Picchu. “That trip engraved something in my head, that music is a beautiful thing,” says the ever-dreamy Angus. “It brought so much love. It had a massive influence on me.”
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On their return, Angus decided to showcase the songs he’d written and Julia decided to help him, organising a few gigs and singing backing vocals at his first sessions down at the local open-mic night. “Then I got the confidence to sing some of my songs and organised some shows for myself.” Angus, of course, provided backing – an arrangement which naturally morphed into a single set with the pair taking turns to sing their sleepy, atmospheric songs into the mic.
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After the gig they’d sell their (separate) CDs – until they realised they were putting their fans under unintentional pressure. “It got embarrassing! I’d be there with my CDs and he’d be there with his and people were standing around going ‘errr, I’ll have that one.’ So we put them on one CD.” That one CD turned into ‘Chocolates & Cigarettes’.
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Angus and Julia are siblings. But how similar are they? “He’s a boy, I’m a girl,” says Julia matter-of-factly. “There’s a billion differences right there. We are very different in a lot of ways but we’re from the same family. Our family experience has given us some kind of common wants. We’re always wanting to go, anywhere else… but often right at the same time or just a moment apart we also want to stay very still. We both find making choices very difficult.”
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