Interview with Riley Pearce: ‘I’m quite a reflective person by nature’

Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Riley Peace is gearing up to release an EP, Love And All That Stuff, next year, with the first single from it, ‘Electricity’ due out next month.

‘It’s an EP of love songs – I rarely write love songs, thankfully my girlfriend isn’t listening to this [laughs] because it’s always a balancing act to get them right and not to make them cheesy, although people have different interpretations of what’s cheesy anyway.’

While the other tracks on the album have yet to be finalised, ‘Electricity’ is about a young couple aspiring one day to buy a house and create a home together. ‘It’s about being happy. The song mentions that even if you don’t get there (buying a house), that person being there on the journey with you is enough.’

An introspective singer-songwriter, Pearce often writes about his difficulty coping with change and his love-hate relationship with nostalgia. ‘I’m quite a reflective person by nature,’ he said. ‘One of the main reasons I love music is that you make a connection between the songs. If you get stuck, you can sink yourself further into those feelings or you can use music to move yourself forward.’

With family spread across the globe – his parents and younger brother currently live in the UK and he lived in The Netherlands for three years as a child – as well as his own stretches of living in a number of different cities over the years, his lyrics reflect the human need for connection. His honest songwriting and relatable storytelling have resonated both in Australia and abroad, with over 50 million streams to date.

Last month, he released his second EP of the year, Maybe I Can Sleep It Off, which, somewhat fortuitously, he recorded along with his upcoming EP back in March, just before lockdown. A chance-find pedal at a second-hand musical instrument shop – Instrument Jets – in London and a special Japanese Fender Jaguar owned by his producer Andy Lawson kickstarted the inspiration for the album. ‘I was doing a bunch of shows around Europe in 2018 and on one of my last days in London I came across an old music shop. The pedal I found made a glitchy sound and it was a headache to use but it sounded great. At the time, I was listening to a lot of songs that had a tactile element to them, you could hear the softer strings. Andy had an electric guitar with heavier strings, so we turned it up loud but played it softly and that’s how it started.’

‘You’re pulled in different directions as a musician’

Pearce describes the 6-track EP as being ‘about my relationship to my songwriting’: ‘You’re pulled in different directions as a musician, what you want, what your fans want. It’s about realising that you’re making songs that make you happy.’ The stand-out track for me, is ‘Time’s Eye’, a beautifully reflective pick-up of a song about not stressing the little things and enjoying the ride rather than focusing on the end result. As the song goes: ‘Boy, I see that you’ve got dreams in your head, but dreams will only get you so far, I hope you find what you are looking for, you will if you’ve been working hard.’

Pearce notes the mood of the EP shifts as you move through it, and as the ‘darker thoughts’ make way for the final song, ‘Breathe & Release’, which is about trying to stay relevant in the music industry whilst maintaining the balance of who you are. The lyrics reflect that: ‘Not all my ideas will be good ideas, I’m just trying to stay away from the shelf, when all of my fear is surrounded by fear, it’s hard to get a grip on myself.’ 

He has ‘a bunch of different ways’ of writing songs, with snippets recorded in a notebook. ‘I might throw down phrases or concepts,’ he said. ‘ ‘I have voice memos as well. Sometimes it’s about pairing them together. The song doesn’t start until the melody, I do most of my writing on an acoustic guitar.’

Last year, he moved back to Melbourne – where he was born, but left before he was old enough to remember it – because of its established music scene, although lockdown has hampered that somewhat. ‘I moved here to embed myself further into the music scene, although this year hasn’t been what anyone expected. I am grateful that I snuck the recordings in before lockdown. We haven’t had bars and restaurants open since March, other than for two weeks when cafes opened again but it got out of hand.’

At the beginning of the year, he brought out another EP, Acoustic, which features a lovely track, ‘Elephants’: ‘Me and my little brother are quite close, as a family we’re close. He used to collect little elephants as a kid. Now, with the time difference, it takes more effort to keep the relationship strong and it made me think what it would be like to really collect real elephants!’

He had a big year of touring Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom in 2019 and is now planning to move back to Perth. He had an Australian show planned earlier this year as well as a few in Europe over the summer but nothing in the immediate future, and he acknowledges that he is at least in the fortunate position of not having to organise mass refunds and the logistical nightmare that comes with planning shows in places such as the US, where it can be tricky to get a visa.

Locally, there are also some great bands, he said, citing Cool Sounds – ‘they’re more a kind of slow groove band’ – and Alexander Biggs. However, the first CD he asked for for Christmas as a kid was Shaggy’s Greatest Hits. ‘I didn’t have any profound tastes,’ he laughed. ‘My mum and dad listened to Eric Clapton and Cat Stevens when I was growing up.’ He’s a fan of bands such as Coldplay and The Killers as well as Jack Johnson. If he could collaborate with anyone, he says that ‘Jack Johnson would be a good place to start’: ‘They say you don’t want to meet your idols, though, don’t they?’ If he could tour with anyone, he’d love to tour with Nick Mulvey, a founding member of British band Portico Quartet: ‘I think he’s classically trained but he’s got a bit of a South American sound (Mulvey studied music in Cuba for a while). His fingerpicking is amazing, so to tour with him, I’d never get bored of watching him play. You could learn from him every night.’