Anyone in their twenties can relate to this EP…
Love, heartbreak, growth and regret, a person’s twenties are some of the most tumultuous years in their life. It’s made up of countless missteps and fumbling to make sense of the world, all while trying to find one’s identity amongst setting themselves up for the next twenty, thirty or forty years. It’s a tough time to say the least, and especially with a global pandemic looming over you. But, if you’re like me and at times are struggling to make sense of it all, we recommend you chuck on Eves Karydas’ new EP Reruns, which is out now.
The latest body of work from the ‘Complicated’ singer is the Brissy muso at her most introspective and vulnerable; outlining the rise and fall of personal relationships along with the mental patterns that can plunge oneself into unhealthy places. Getting out of such places can feel next to impossible at times, but Reruns serves as more than just a collection of catchy indie-pop songs; it’s Eves’ way of moving on from that part of her life. It’s her reclaiming the power and self-respect that has helped her craft hits like ‘Complicated’ and the more recent ‘Lemonade,’ and whether you’re currently in or have already gone through all the craziness of your twenties, there’s a little something everyone can relate to on the new project.
We caught up with Eves ahead of the release of Reruns to get the drop on how she’s been throughout the last year, talk about the tales that inspired the EP and find out just how she pulled off that ‘Lemonade’ video. Check it below.
I’ve caught you right before the release of ‘Reruns’! How are you feeling?
I’m feeling relieved. It’s funny. People think that this time is usually really exciting, but it’s a bit anticlimactic. You put so much work into making a record, and there’s so much stress involved with meeting deadlines. And it’s also about trying to figure it all out, just in terms of “is this right presentation of myself?”
And then when you actually get to the week of release you’re like “Oh shit! Have I done the right thing? Can I just move on? Can I let go of this now?” But no, it’s good. I’m proud of this body of work and I really helped myself by writing it, so I’m happy to put it out there.
Are you in that stage of being able to let the EP go now?
I think I am. I’m feeling surprisingly chilled out about it. I’ve got enough of the songs out of the way already that I am feeling like, “Okay, there’s one song left that people haven’t heard.” And at this point, it’s out of my control.
It’s definitely come at a really cool time as the nation starts to get a little bit of hope again. As an artist whose about to have a new body of work ready to tour, is there an added sense of excitement?
I have no idea. I was lucky enough to do a tour in May, but that was just in Queensland. I would love to just get out of the state. Like there are festivals over New Years Eve. If they happen, I think that they’re going to be some of the best shows anyone has played. No one will be taking anything for granted. In the past, during that New Year’s period, you’d always get so tired, because it was just back to back shows and you’re flying heaps, especially if you do something like Falls. One day you’d have to be in Hobart, and then the next day you have to be in Perth, and it’s just ridiculous.
You’d just get a bit like, “Oh my God, this is so much effort,” but I don’t think I’ll let myself feel that way again. If I get the opportunity to do that sort of thing again, I’ll be much more grateful. It would be great to tour this body of work. I haven’t put out a body of work in nearly three years, so a lot of my set is old songs. I like them, but I would love to put the new songs in the set.
Obviously the EP is rooted in a lot of experiences you’ve gone through in your early and mid-twenties. As someone who’s in that part of their lives, do you have any advice for me?
Advice? I can’t offer much, because I’m still figuring it out myself [laughs]. I think more than anything, it’s just that you’re not alone in feeling like, “Holy shit, what have I done with my life? How did I get to this point?” When you’re in your early twenties, you just think the whole world literally revolves around you.
I feel like around 21 or 22 you think it’s the most important age there could ever possibly be. And then you grow out of it and you’re like, “Oh my God, I was such a fucking idiot” [laughs]. Just in terms of doing things you’re not super proud of or dealing with situations badly. But I’m really glad I went through that stuff in my early 20s, and now I am a much better person. I think I just think of it as like “I’ve got to this point. Think about how much better of a person I’ll be in five years time.” And that’s really exciting to me.
Amongst all the craziness and everything you were going through, when did this EP begin to take form?
I think a lot of the EP content happened quite before I started writing about it. I just needed to process a lot of the information that was going through my brain. ‘Cardboard Box’, for example, that’s about the relationship that I wrote my whole first record about, which obviously didn’t work out, which is so wild because I thought that was a forever thing. Then enough time passed that I was able to be like, “Yeah, that was just a phase of my life.” But I obviously wrote the song almost two years after that relationship ended.
But then ‘Complicated’ was just born out of the moment when I was thinking “Oh my God, there’s so much going on in my life right now, and I need to just write this song.” It’s funny putting this EP out now, because I’m actually in a really wonderful relationship and I’m like, “Oh, no one really hurt me so much. It was just relationships ending.” But I’m good now [laughs].
Just to dip into the track listing it was really cool to see you open it with ‘Complicated.’ That track has taken on such a life of its own since its dropped. What’s it been like watching it grow and flourish?
It was really comforting. It was funny, because I wrote it before the pandemic and I didn’t ever anticipate that it could take on such a different meaning. I think the underlying themes are still the same as what the song is about. But putting it into context in the year of 2020, I think people heard it and just resonated with the sentiment of “What the fuck is happening in the world right now?” So I couldn’t have anticipated that. And because of that, I’m very pleasantly surprised with how well it did last year and is still doing. People seem to still be finding that song, which is really cool.
There are a lot of questions you’re asking on that song, but now that we’re on the eve of your EP being released, is life still “Fucking complicated?” Have you gotten an answer to those questions?
Maybe some of the questions. When I wrote that song, I was reckoning with my mental health for the first time. I hadn’t quite done that before. I’ve always been a really anxious person, but it wasn’t until around the time that I wrote ‘Complicated’ that I was like, “Maybe I should go and see a therapist.”
So I would say that has changed and I’ve definitely found peace of mind. But I mean, at the same time, everyday I wake up and I’m asking myself “What am I doing with my life?” Am I doing the right thing? Am I a good person? Are my issues even proper issues?” It’s anxiety inception or something.
‘Lemonade’ is probably my favourite track on the EP. On the hook you sing about realising that your significant other isn’t putting in the same effort as you. Was it creatively empowering getting out of that situation?
I was going through a lot when I wrote that song outside of a confusing relationship. I’d had a similar time to when I wrote ‘Complicated.’ I was really anxious. I was overseas a lot. I was really homesick and I was dealing with a lot of writer’s block.
So I think in writing ‘Complicated’ and ‘Lemonade,’ it definitely made me feel a strong sense of relief because not only was I making sense of a situation, but I was also coming out of writer’s block through putting thoughts to paper. So I was like, “Thank God.” I’m always like, “Bring me more drama” [laughs].
Was there a sense of freedom after putting ‘Lemonade’ out into the world? Did it help you move on in a sense?
Yeah, I think so. I wanted to counter it with the music video which is so lighthearted and fun in terms of the outfits and stuff. I just love how empowering the song makes me feel. I’m just dying to play it live for the first time, but I feel people are already connecting with that track and that makes me feel really nice as well.
I’ve been wondering this for a bit. Did you have a budget just for lemons in that video?
There was a lemon budget [laughs]. And I think it was the lemon farm that we shot on that made a deal with us. They were like, “If you buy our lemons, we’ll let you shoot on our property.” It was beautiful as well. It was such a stunning location. It was sort of like Northern rivers somewhere north of Byron.
You’ve got the title track in the middle of the tracklisting, and it’s quite vivid in its lyricism. You’ve talked about you felt stuck in a loop and were mourning past versions of yourself. How did you get out of that pattern?
I think it’s a coping mechanism. I noticed last year, I couldn’t grow as a person in the way that I was used to growing. In the years before the pandemic, I was overseas all the time and meeting heaps of new people. I was just living my dream in a way. And so then when the pandemic put pause on all of that I got so stuck in reliving the good old days. I felt like that stereotype of a washed up middle-aged man sinking beers in a dingy bar, reliving the glory days. Maybe not quite that depressing [laughs], but my way of feeling okay about being stuck at home was to just relive memories and and memories with people I used to be friends with.
I just started rehashing them over and over. It wasn’t healthy because I couldn’t see that there were some really good things right in front of me. And I had been home again for the longest amount of time that I had been in years and I was able to reconnect with my family and my friends here. I just didn’t realize how good I had it, because I was just grieving old versions of me. And it was really hard to get out of that.
I still do it from time to time, but I think I’ve just made a habit of recognizing when I’m doing it. And I think those kinds of thoughts can make you really not like yourself and who you are now. And I’ve found that kind of thought and thought pattern to be really aggressive. And so I was like “I have to be aggressive back and be really positive about who I am right now and where I’m at, because this is the only version of me that I’ve got.” So I think I just had to train myself into finding happiness in present times again.
That seems like a good way to handle it.
It’s a work in progress. It’s funny because I do it with songs as well. Songs that I hear which take me back to a period of my life. I would just listen to those songs over and over. And it would be a way of remembering the feeling of a previous time. And I was just like “This is really unhealthy”, but I think we all do it. And I think it’s important to remember who you used to be. You shouldn’t just move past it and forget all the experiences you’ve had, but yeah. You have to do it healthily and like yourself at the same time.
You end the EP with ‘Freckles’ with is a really moving record. On Instagram I saw you say that there’s a sense of torment and unrest in the other tracks aside from ‘Freckles’. Can you just walk me through that duality?
‘Freckles’ was probably the hardest song to finish just because all of the other songs were so introspective and it was about finding words for things that I was feeling, things that I hadn’t really seen written out before. I feel there are a lot of lyrics, especially in ‘Get Me So High’ that I really needed to write, because those thoughts and feelings helped me identify what I was feeling. You have all of this unrest, bubbling on the top. It was like “What’s the root feeling here?”
But then with a song like ‘Freckles’, it was looking up instead of down, and just taking off the glasses and looking at what’s in front of me.
It’s interesting because it’s also one of the first songs I wrote for this body of work. Again, it was around the time of ‘Complicated’ and ‘Lemonade’. So, in that moment, when I was going through all those things, I needed to write ‘Complicated’ but I also needed to write this antidote to it. At the time I didn’t quite think they went together, but then I kept writing songs and I was like “Actually, it does work,” because it feels there’s an arc to the story and the EP. So I’m really happy with ‘Freckles’ as a closing song.
After cutting it, did you feel you were getting some closure to a lot of the issues you were singing about on the other tracks?
Yeah, more so since writing it rather than since putting it out. When you put a song out it suddenly doesn’t become yours anymore, but it’s been nice seeing people resonate with it in the way that I resonated with it when I first wrote it. There’s a lyric “When did I get so fearful?” And I think it’s probably the first moment in the EP where I almost pull my head out from under the water and ask myself “Why am I so afraid of everything? How did I get to this point in my life?” So it’s cool that I was able to do that and not just put out this body of work that was angsty and frustrated. It gives it a heart.
Just to cap off, it feels like you’re really going into a new chapter with this release. How are you feeling for this next phase?
I’m feeling good. Now that this EP is out of the way, I’ve got my next on the stove. And it’s a really positive body of work. I mean, I can’t call it a body of work yet, but this next collection of songs that I’m working on at the moment they feel different. It still sounds like me, but it’s definitely evident that I have moved over the hill and I want some happier greener vibes.
Super uplifting and Stevie Wonder type of vibes?
I wish! It’s definitely got this perspective that I have now with what I’m inspired by and in needing to write for myself. It’s like the music has a different purpose now that I feel like I have a bit more peace of mind. While writing this EP, I think music for me was a way to make sense of everything that was happening around me and inside. And now I’ve kind of gotten to the bottom of a lot of those thoughts. So the music I’m working on and what I need to work on as an artist is cultivating a good feeling, if that makes sense.
Just to visualise, say everything goes back to normal with COVID and the industry goes on full steam ahead, where can we expect to see you in a year?
The first thing I want to do is go back to Europe and work with the people that I collaborated with a lot on this EP over Zoom. I just want to go and feel a connection with the people that I’ve been collaborating with over the last couple of years. I’m desperate for it. So that’s probably my number one thing I’d like to do, but I didn’t know. I think I also kind of need space from putting music out. It’s weird because I’ve barely put any out. But I’m really looking forward to finally connecting with people in real life rather than online. Like ikt would be so nice to do this interview in person, you know?
We’ll get there, but I’m trying not to look backwards and or forwards too much. I’m just trying to focus on right now. That’s kind of what’s getting me through everything.
Lastly, there are a lot of lessons throughout this EP. If there’s anyone out there going through the things you did on ‘Reruns’, do you have a piece of advice for them?
Just to go easy on yourself. That’s a big thing I’ve had to learn. And when I’ve been in situations and relationships which have been not great, I’ve learned to take the power back for myself. And just ask myself things like “Why am I giving someone else the power to make me feel less? And to make me feel like I’m crazy or make me feel sad.”
That power should only ever reside in me. So that’s something that I’ve learned and hopefully other people can take that away from this EP as well. It’s just about reclaiming your self-respect.
Eves Karydas’ new EP Reruns is out now. You can buy/stream it here.
