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 SIMON UBALDI catches up with ex-pat troubadour BEN LEE, back in the country visiting us from his palm-baked home in Los Angeles as the guest international local at this year’s Splendor in the Grass festival.
On the verge of his thirtieth birthday, the loquacious, self-satisfied musician brings us a new soundtrack project, new songs and his trademark self confidence. And true to form, he’s full of it: it’s all Hindu marriage, Barbie feminism and eco-pop in the wild world of Ben Lee.
“The last year has been interesting. It has been about really maturing. It’s a big step, turning 30, and my relationship to music is really maturing and settling too. It’s not so restless, in every area of my life, the way it was five, six years ago. I feel like I’m entering a whole different stage of my life,” he adds, “I’m psyched.”
A long-time, though long distance, star of the Australian indie scene, Ben hit the big time in 2005 with the release of his double platinum album Awake Is The New Sleep. The whole country caught his disease, and Ben was catapult to brand new heights as a freshly minted commercial radio icon – a different world for the erstwhile Triple J darling. Then, in 2007, he released Ripe, which debuted and peaked at Number 11 on the ARIA charts. It was just another notch in the belt of a fifteen year career for Ben, but a relative failure by Awake’s high standards.
“One of the benefits of having an album not be a huge commercial success is that you get to work on lots of other projects,” he says magnanimously, “I’m a glass half full kind of person. When you have a hit - like with Catch My Disease, I lived and breathed that song for three years, and it’s a hugely intense experience. And when you just put out a record and some people like it, but it’s not a crazy runaway success, you actually get to have a life and work on a lot of stuff. It’s interesting, the ebb and flow of a career in music.”
With the last album barely a year behind him, Ben has already produced another record – the soundtrack to a highly anticipated film by red-hot young Aussie filmmaker Nash Edgerton (brother of Joel). Nash, who has directed a few clips for Ben called on his old pal to write the music for his feature, a gritty crime drama called The Square. It seems an odd choice, what with Ben’s penchant for fluttery and insubstantial pop clichés, but Nash knew exactly what he was getting into.
“Me and Nash have an interesting experience where we just sort of trust each other. Like with all the videos I’ve done with Nash, I’ve just said to him ‘what do you want to do, let’s do it’. And he’s done the same with me with music. He just wanted me to be involved.”
Recognising the limitations of his own untrained voice, Ben set about writing songs for the film and looking for someone else to sing them. He landed finally on Jessica Chapnik, an ex-Home & Away actor who does backing vocals for Sarah Blasko and Old Man River.
“We were hanging out in India and I just suddenly said to Jessie ‘let me teach you this song and just take a punt.’ It sounded amazing. I emailed an MP3 to Nash and he was like ‘that’s the voice, let’s do it.’”
Jessie visited Los Angeles earlier this year, attending an acting workshop with David Mamet and recording with Ben on alternate days. And as soon as that project was packed away, Ben launched himself into a new solo album. With a wedding on the way and a step-child into the bargain (Ben will be married to eighties hipster Ione Skye in India this year, in a ceremony to be conducted by his “spiritual teacher”), he seems freshly concerned with the problems of society, and the role pop music can play in setting them to rights.
“I’ve written about my consideration of what it means to be an individual in the world. Looking at things, whether it’s like the environment, or feminism. Not just to be a musician, but just to be in the Western world and not living in poverty, these are really great luxuries. And I find myself writing about what it means to have hope in the world when there are so many crazy things going on,” he explains.
When pressed to clarify how his new songs are really different, he says he’s no longer fixated with writing universal and timeless lyrics – the malleable ephemera of pop. The new Ben Lee defines himself as a political animal, although his references seem customarily slight.
“There’s a lot of sexual politics on the record, like there’s one song called Boy With A Barbie, about how I had a Barbie when I was in kindergarten and got teased a lot. And there’s a song called I Love Pop Music, which is all about trying to tackle really huge political issues with a song,” he enthuses, “And there’s a song called I’m A Woman Too, which is about feminism.”
Ben talks about song like I’m A Woman Too with the kind of unselfconscious gusto that has always made him seem slightly out of place in Australia. He also refers to himself as an artist quite a lot, although his really distinctive talent has always been lacking irony and making friends with famous people, which may be why he has made his home in Los Angeles. On the eve of yet another Australian tour, he seems absolutely certain that LA is the place to be.
“I love the culture of creativity and the pop culture of entertainment. I actually find it a hugely creative city and people come here because they want to be creative and work,” he says, “but I’m in Australia five or six times a year, touring or doing promo or whatever. So I do feel like I live in America as an outsider. It does give me an interesting twist on things. I’m in it and I’m outside of it at the same time.”
Of course, he claims to feel exactly the same way when he comes home. That’s just the burden of being Ben Lee.
Original songs from and inspired by THE SQUARE, written by Ben Lee, performed by Jessica Chapnik is out now on Igloo Films/Inertia.
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