July 25, 2024 at PDT
Ask That God
“This album definitely feels like a rebirth,” Empire of the Sun vocalist/guitarist Luke Steele tells Apple Music. It’s an apt description given that the Australian electronic duo—completed by Nick Littlemore—had, for all intents and purposes, quietly called it quits some years earlier. “After the pandemic it was like, everything was abandoned—the Empire is over, it’s finished,” says Steele. “I’m leaving the castle, I don’t care if it becomes overgrown, or bears break in and steal my guitars. I just walked away. That was a great feeling after working together for 20 years to just go, I don’t need it anymore.”
Steele pursued his solo album, 2022’s Listen to the Water, while Littlemore focused on his longstanding dance project PNAU. Somewhere along the way, though, via phone calls and “little breadcrumbs here and there,” the two halves of the duo reconnected. “You just start realizing what was so special about it in the first place and what was so special about your friendship and how you make music, and what it means to the world as well,” says Steele.
The years apart provided a fresh perspective on their creative goals. “We’re much wiser now. We’ve gone through having the worldwide success and through all that mess of trying to remake what was the hit [‘Walking on a Dream’]. I think all the trials and tribulations and understanding what was happening, how the band was breaking down and getting kind of diffused and distorted before, we’ve gone through that and understand that now. We feel recharged post-pandemic. We’re back.”
Though writing for Ask That God began in 2022, Empire revived some of the songs they’d begun working on following the release of 2016 predecessor Two Vines. Closing tracks “Rhapsodize” and “Friends I Know” reach back to a series of 2017 sessions in Tokyo (“It was going to be this whole techno Tokyo album, which we scrapped”). “Music on the Radio” hails from 2016, while “Revolve” dates back to the Two Vines sessions when they were working with Wendy Melvoin of Prince’s Revolution.
The end result hues close to the band’s trademark brand of cosmic indie pop, while incorporating elements such as ’80s British synth-pop (“The Feeling You Get”) and disco (“Music on the Radio”). Here, Steele breaks down some of the key tracks on Ask That God, its title a reference to the fact that everyone has a different entity that guides them, spiritual or otherwise.
“Changes”
“This is a collab with Swedish writers Vincent Pontare and Salem Al Fakir [Madonna, Katy Perry]. It was obvious that this was what was happening with Empire of the Sun after so many moons. We’re literally evolving into a new phase. And it just sounds like an Empire comeback. It’s got to be the first track!”
“Cherry Blossom”
“I was in Stockholm and we were writing with Fat Max [Gsus, aka Swedish musician Max Grahn], who is one of Max Martin’s writers. The first thing he said to me was, ‘All these damn Christians wanting to get people into Heaven. Why don’t they get Heaven into people?’ It took me back a bit. That’s sort of how the theme of the song came about—it’s about realizing the paradise that lies before our eyes and getting Heaven into people as opposed to spending time trying to get people into Heaven.”
“Music on the Radio”
“This is just such a hip jam that Nick brought in, and it’s got his quintessential Nick Littlemore cryptic lyricism, which is so cool. It’s kind of like a rave to the underground, and I instantly fell in love with it. I cut the vocal in two days. It’s quite a snappy song.”
“The Feeling You Get”
“I live in this small fishing town, and I went to an open mic night. Andrew Fagan from [Aotearoa New Zealand band] The Mockers had come in and he was dressed as the Statue of Liberty, and he had a spray bottle filled with water. He’s walking around spraying everyone saying, ‘This is the holy water.’ He got up and performed a few songs. He was just so drunk and would fall over into the amp, but get back up. The next day, I basically wrote ‘The Feeling You Get,’ and it was influenced by that. You don’t know sometimes what you do, why you do things, why you should do something and why you don’t do something, but you do. It’s just the feeling you get.”
“Happy Like You”
“What a beautiful song. You really value joy after you’ve been through a massive depression. I really value peace now after living in America. When you go through those depressions and you look at someone smiling, your heart just breaks. You’re like, I just want to feel like that without this heavy burden on my shoulders.”
“Revolve”
“It was when I’d come back to Los Angeles after leaving, and feeling the whole city shake and the ground shake and realizing, ‘I’m not meant to live here anymore.’ It’s quite obvious.”
“Ask That God”
“One of our best fans on socials would message us on every single post. She went into hospital because she was sick, and then died in hospital. It was a real shock. At the time, we were in the studio writing a song called ‘Eternal.’ But we wrote ‘Ask That God’ pretty much that night.”
“Rhapsodize”
“We’re always fascinated by the toys of Japan and them sort of [having] a life of their own. The narrator [Avatar: The Last Airbender’s André Sogliuzzo] is basically telling the robot words and teaching him languages, and then he starts going through the different animals that God’s made, and you slowly hear the robot getting its tongue around them.”
“Friends I Know”
“‘Friends I Know’ was written from the perspective of sitting in those small Japanese bars late at night. We’ve had that song forever, and I got my son to do that ‘Goodnight, my friend, sweet dreams’ [line at the end]. And it felt like such a beautiful closer, that sentiment, like everyone’s kind of your friend. It touches a little bit on that bent sort of Japanese element that we wanted to bring in with ‘Rhapsodize.’”
12 Tracks
