| Spaced-out pop maestro; blue-eyeliner wearing rocknroll genius; Australias answer to Brian Wilson - Luke Steele - aka The Sleepy Jackson - has already been called all these things and more. No wonder he lives in the most isolated city on Earth. Anywhere else, with all these critical garlands, he could end up suffocating. I like the peace and quiet which comes with living in Perth laughs Luke down a late night phone line. It suits me. Theres lots of space, theres no one around. I can walk down the main road and feel like Im a professor. Then I can go back to my laboratory and conjure up some more potions.... |
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| The Sleepy Jackson story to date has already seen its fair share of explosive incidents and stunning eureka moments. Formed in Perth in 1999, the line up currently consists of Luke and long-term drummer Malcolm Clark. |
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 Rewind. Having established a foothold here in Australia with highly collectible psych-pop eps Caffeine In The Morning Sun and Let Your Love Be Love and a series of stunning, Hendrix-esque live performances, Luke announced himself on the world stage with 2003s debut album Lovers.
Personality is The Sleepy Jacksons new album. Written over the course of the last two years and recorded over three months with producer Scott Horscroft in Sydney during the Spring of 2005, it is proof that the symphonies constantly playing in Lukes head have no equal. If his debut was a small screen marvel, Personality is its widescreen equivalent, with all the trials and tribulations that entails. Getting the record finished wasnt easy he explains. The original plan was to record in Sydney and then finish it off with Dave Friddman in Buffalo later in the year. But it just didnt work out. The songs cried their way back home. We ended up doing some of the vocals in hotel rooms and round at my flat until we got it to sound how it did in my head. We finally finished it on New Years Eve. |
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| Put simply, Personality is destined to battle it out at the top of those end of year polls. From the opening bars of You Needed More to Todd Rundgren-esque closer How Was I Supposed To Know? we are witness to a songwriting masterclass with a production sound Phil Spector would be proud of. Grand pianos arrive by the score; batallions of trumpets emerge at every chorus; backing vocals arrive by the lorry load and string sections soar with a celestial abandon. Above it all, Luke applies thunderbolt guitars and a lead vocal seemingly constructed from candy floss. Imagine a thirties Broadway production of The Beatles Revolver and youre still only halfway there. Its hard to explain, but I wanted to achieve something phonetic with the vocals yet with the rhythmic appeal of Prince explains Luke. Vocally, I guess its to do with the sound Brian Wilson achieved with the Beach Boys, but musically I wanted to steer away from that rigid format of rocknroll. I wanted it to sound more like jazz really, that feeling of the music blowing with the wind.. |
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