Hot Pick: Lior - Interview

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At the sound of the second stroke, the time will be 11:20am on Wednesday December 5, 2007. Beep, beep.

Almost instantaneously the telephone rings with Israeli-born, Sydney-based singer-songwriter, Lior’s friendly voice greeting the interviewer. This musician does not fit the typical “rock” stereotype; he is punctual, self-effacing, generous and isn’t shy about having a laugh at himself, among other things. So imagine my surprise when later on in the interview, the conversation with this conscientious, clean-cut rock poster boy who is dutifully mixing some new songs in the studio, turns to more tawdry subjects like Hollywood affairs and sharing a hookah (a water pipe device for smoking), with a couple of seasoned musicians.

In addition to spending some time in the studio putting the finishing touches on his sophomore album, "Corner Of An Endless Road", the follow-up to the successful debut, "Autumn Flow", Lior is also in the middle of performing a series of shows in intimate venues around Australia. It can be a nerve-wracking experience, particularly as Lior notes that prior to this, he had not performed in Australia for over a year. But he is happy to reconnect with his audience and showcase new material, something people may liken to letting one of your children go free. Lior quickly quips with some fake sobbing, “You’re growing up so fast!”

Lior has a slew of new material, or children if we continue with the analogy, and when asked about this, he offers an interesting interpretation. “I think it’s a lot broader, dynamically, it’s a more adventurous album. Whereas, I think with Autumn Flow, there were very tight constraints and it was literally a way of mapping songs that I had been playing live for a while, using very limited resources. This is more a studio album, it developed over time, we experimented, there were lots of collaborations and obviously I had more time and resources to do stuff like orchestra recording and stuff like that. It was something that took longer and it was more ambitious and experimental. But I think at the end of it, I can look back and say I’ve managed to closely match the emotive function of the music and the lyrics”.

There are many who would claim that Lior has already achieved the feat of matching the emotions of the music with the lyrics on his debut album, and in particular, on the song, ‘This Old Love.’ Was it originally written with the intention of being performed at weddings or to feature on mix-tapes?
“No it was the furthest thing from my mind. I literally wrote that as a little ditty. It was meant to be, sort of like, a little Darren Hanlon-y little ditty…But I was blown away when people started saying they were playing it at weddings, and that was really amazing. I did have a joke that that song was either going to be the most loved or hated song (laughs)”.

It may seem curious in hindsight but Lior admits that he almost didn’t include it on the record because he was worried that people would find it overly sweet. Moreover, Lior did not choose the song as a single, he instead gave the album to Triple J who singled out the song and began playing it, something Lior notes was very rare but that he refuses to take for granted.

While Lior is appreciative of his past successes, he is also proud of his new material, describing the lyrics as a document rather than a project with a consistent theme. “What I found was really, they were about relationships and landmarks during that time. I think what surprised me was how deep I was willing to go in terms of expressing the dark periods of relationships. And it’s not something I thought about at the time, it was just a natural vent for me, which song-writing tends to be”.

Evident in Lior’s song writing is a raw honesty he shares with his listeners. This begs the question, does he ever censor himself?
“I don’t mind being personal but I suppose sometimes there will be a very personal line which just won’t have any meaning for anyone else. And that’s when I went, ‘Well, maybe that should just stay in the recesses of my notepad.’ But very rarely. I really do try and keep it pretty raw and what comes out is what goes in”.

Some may argue it is the role of the songwriter to be honest in their music. Lior disagrees, “No I don’t think it’s the role of the songwriter. It’s the role of the songwriter to be honest to themselves and if that’s what happens to be an honest projection, then that’s what I think a good songwriter is. It’s just someone that can maintain a purity between creative vision and application”.

The song-writing process can be an interesting journey. Lior offers, “It’s a little bit of a puzzle really. Generally a musical idea will be born and I’ll just be singing and humming over the top of that and develop it as a musical idea. And I will pretty much sit on that until a lyric comes that I subconsciously kind of link to it, or that I have a spark and kind of match to it. I won’t go ahead with it until lyrically I know what I want to write about and I have a very clear idea about what I want to express. Once I get that, it really flows, but it’s finding that thing the song’s about that takes a long time”.

The process is obviously an ongoing one of self-discovery. “Yeah it is, and that’s the thing, sometimes you’re just not feeling inspired to write about anything. And then sometimes you feel very passionate about something or you’re very happy about something and you want to write about it, and I sit down and jot down some lines and sometimes they match a musical idea. And sometimes they take over two years before I can actually hear that being sung over this musical idea. Then it’s a process of refinement and getting rid of the clunkiness and all the clumsiness in the words and making it flow and sounding as if I’m a total genius and wrote it in five minutes- which couldn’t be further from the truth”.

Lior is far too modest, so I decide to guide him to be arrogant so we can use the headline: ‘Lior claims - I’m a genius!’ Lior laughs, “You’ll give my words the New Idea editing.” He playfully adds in a voice expressing mock outrage, “I didn’t say that!”

But rather than create my own unimaginative tabloid fodder, I ask Lior to make up a story that I can blatantly exploit and take out of context. “I did a duet with a great singer called Sia who’s an Australian singer and she’s known Nicole Kidman…If I wrote a track with Nicole Kidman maybe we could go and say Lior gets intimate with Nicole Kidman. But that’s not true”.

Thinking aloud, I express my annoyance at a lost opportunity, as I could have made a reasonable fee from that ‘exclusive.’ Lior adds, “Have you got this side business selling headlines to New Idea? Dammit, I’ve really got to learn to censor myself. Speaking of censoring myself, this interview’s over!”

Instead, I decide to turn the conversation to Lior’s musical influences. “Early on probably the most influential artists were Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, just because of their sheer musicality. That is what drew me to them above other rock bands, I guess; and their diversity, their acoustic stuff. Then as I grew older I was probably drawn to more songwriters like Nick Drake, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. The parallel to that is I’ve always had a strong affiliation for the music I grew up listening to in Israel; the Egyptians in Yemen, that sort of stuff. So I grew up and that was around me as well. I was always drawn to an Eastern slant of singing and string arrangements, so that’s where that element comes in”.

“One of the discussions on this album was, ‘Where are we coming from?’ And something Franc [Tetaz (Gotye, Architecture in Helsinki)], the producer understands very well is my influences. Looking back, we summed it up as Led Zeppelin meets Nick Drake at a teahouse in the Middle East, and that pretty much, stylistically, sums up the album”.

Just as Daniel Johns jokingly claimed to share a bong with Bono and Peter Garrett when writing Silverchair’s Young Modern, could Lior see himself sharing a hookah with Nick Drake? “Pass the hookah, Nick. 'Here you go junior'- that would be pretty awesome.” After some thought Lior adds, “No, Jimmy (Page), Robert (Plant), Nick and I in a Middle East maqha (café) smoking a hookah, that definitely does it for me.” And it goes without saying that a kebab would be required afterwards. “It’ll be a great kebab because it’ll be in the Middle East, so it’ll be authentic”.

An interesting scenario, indeed, so I am curious about whether Lior would be working in the creative industry, had he not become a musician. Conversely, Lior says he would, “Probably (be) a doctor, I think. Just because I see that as the ultimate way of helping people and that’s something I feel very strongly about. But music was always far too great a passion for me to pursue anything as life encompassing as being a doctor”.

Ironically, Lior’s new single is ‘Heal Me,’ in an interesting case of art imitating imagination. “It sums up a difficult year that I had in terms of strains on relationships and things like that. I was really proud of the lyrics. I liked the fact it was sort of dark and didn’t conform to the sort of pop formula that’s generally expected of artists when they have a successful first album and with a second one everyone wants to hear a big pop hit single come out of it. That song felt really true to me, it was resonating at the time. So musically I think it sort of ties in, the rich acoustic guitar and orchestral string arrangements with an Eastern slant, it incorporated that. So it just felt right for me to go out with that”.

Taking Lior’s lead, I decide to finish the interview on that note. But Lior leaves me with some parting words, tongue firmly placed in cheek, “Good talking to you and if you do sell any of that stuff to New Idea, just give me a little bit of a cut, alright? I’ll chase that up with your lawyer anyway. We’ll chat about that later (laughs)”.

Corner Of An Endless Road is slated for release in February 2008 and Lior will be performing at the dates below. Alternatively, you can also keep your eyes out for Lior gracing the pages of New Idea some day soon.

Lior and his relaxing tones - this weeks Web Wombat Music Hit Pick!

Enjoy.

Brought to you by The Dwarf

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