Interview: Julia Jacklin - Phantastic Ferniture (AUS) Tour of Aotearoa New Zealand

Fronted by Australian songwriting star Julia Jacklin, Phantastic Ferniture reemerged from a seven year hiatus with the eminently catchy double single drop of 'Change My Mind / Dare To Fall In Love', their first official release since 2018's self-titled debut album. An acclaimed songwriter herself, Tāmaki Makaurau's Zoë Larsen Cumming aka Babe Martin (whose superb new Not A Bee, But A Wasp EP released last month) got on the line with Jacklin, who spoke about the collective's deep friendship roots and more. Go catch Phantastic Ferniture's first ever headline tour of Aotearoa New Zealand next week, rolling into Tāmaki Makaurau, Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Ōtautahi — brought to you by 100% Good...

Phantastic Ferniture - Dare to Fern in Love Tour

Thursday 11th December - Double Whammy, Auckland w/ Louisa Nicklin
Friday 12th December - Meow, Wellington w/ Dropper
Saturday 13th December - Loons, Christchurch w/ Mim Jensen

Auckland and Christchurch tickets on sale HERE via UTR
Wellington tickets at phanfern.com

Zoë Larsen Cumming: Who are Phantastic Ferniture? Who are the people that make up this project?

Julia Jacklin : Phantastic Ferniture is me and Elizabeth Hughes. We both grew up in Springwood, in the Blue Mountains just outside of Sydney. We've known each other since we were about twelve years old, we did dance class together when we were kids. We started a band when we were about nineteen, which was called Salta. It was a folk trio band with another friend.

Then around twenty / twenty one, Ryan Brennan moved into her house from Perth and joined the band, because we needed a drummer. We were in this folk band for a bit. It was actually my twenty fourth birthday, we went out and drank too much and were like, "Let's start a band."

Beautiful.

We'd already played in a band together, but we all had separate projects as well. Ryan is a producer and engineer. We started Phantastic Ferniture, it was genuinely a bit of a laugh, just something you can do in your twenties. We started playing shows and it caught on organically in the Sydney scene, in a way that kind of shocked us all. We had no team or no social media, no plan. We just ended up building a really organic local fanbase. The we made one record in 2018 with all the songs we had.

And now you're back.

And now we're back. We've got Harry Fuller on bass, who is also from the Blue Mountains. I also grew up with Harry, we went to the same high school. It's like a real old friends project, that we can't quite let die. [laughs]

As you said, your album came out seven years ago, 2018. What's the catalyst been for releasing these two songs, 'Change My Mind' and 'Dare To Fall In Love'? Why now?

Honestly, we had to have a band meeting in the first time in years. Because I stopped working with my manager, who was also technically managing Phan Fern — even though we weren't doing anything. W had to discuss really boring stuff, like where's the measly amount of money we're earning from our album going? We just caught up. We all moved to different states too, we no longer live anywhere close to each other, so we don't get to see each other that often. We were chatting on this call, I think Ryan was like, "Should we just play some shows?" Initially I thought no, that would be really weird.

Did he change your mind?

Yeah! My mind was changed. I think I was quite apprehensive until we played the first show. It reminded me — it's a very special project. All the music is very collaborative. I got to write in a way I don't write in my solo project. I get to perform in a different way. I get to be more of a traditional rock 'n' roll front woman, which doesn't really feel like me, but I get to exercise this different version of myself. The shows have been really fun and silly. People just love this. We have a very small but dedicated fanbase, who love this one record we put out.

We only had nine songs, so we had to flesh out the set. We're not great at doing covers, so we thought we'd write two more. We played them on the tour [in Australia] and people liked them, so we recorded them. Then we thought, why don't we play some more shows? There's no plan, there's never a plan. Just try and do things if they feel right and fun, and not overthinking it.

Some of that dedicated fanbase that you're talking about featured in that music video for 'Change My Mind'.

I have a camcorder, so we passed the camcorder around on tour. I edited it on iMovie, so it was a free music video. I think we thrive in the live setting, even though we've never been outside of Australia, until we're coming over to you guys. Not many people have seen us live, that was a good way to capture that element.

Is creating a visual world for the music to exist within quite important for you? Because you do it in your solo project quite beautifully. Do you want to bring that into Phan Fern at all?

I do. I designed the front cover of our 7", which I had a lot of fun doing. I like to experiment with Phan Fern. But I also don't put as much pressure on myself as I do with my solo projects. We allow Phan Fern to be a bit chaotic and messy and not that consistent visually. Especially these days, it feels like a lot of pressure to have a very coherent image for a band. I think we allow ourselves not to get too caught up in that. We also don't have visions of big fame and fortune with this band, so it does feel very DIY, in the true sense of the word.

On a personal, almost spiritual level, what's the difference in fulfilment you get from performance and writing as a band, as opposed to when you do solo stuff? What's that like for you?

It's just a lack of pressure. I love making music but it does come with a lot of pressure. This is my only experience really, where I've been in the situation where I collaborate with the writing of the music. It's good for my ego, because I can tend to want to be in control. Phan Fern has really helped me to let go of control and just trust other people. We all bring something to the band that is important, but very different.

We've always never had that much time, we've had such time limits on this project. Sometimes it does feel like first idea is best idea. Which is not how I work with my own music, I will labour over one line in a song for six months. Whereas with Phan Fern, a lot of the lyrics are stream of consciousness. Liz will just come up with a guitar riff in the moment and we're like, "Great that'll do." We get to share the pressure, which then alleviates the pressure. As cliche as it sounds, we really try to remember that it's just fun. Because that is the hardest thing to maintain I think, the longer you do music.

Do you think you history you have with your band members — how do you think that influences being on stage together?

It's really cool. We played a show in Sydney a little while ago. On stage I looked at Liz and I was like, we've been playing music together for over fifteen years. I don't take that for granted anymore. When you're in your twenties it's a bit easier to take your friends for granted, especially long term friends. Just looking around and seeing how we've all ages and we've all grown, the fact that we're still able to come together is actually rare and special. I know that now, being older.

It feels almost like a family band... it almost feels like we're cousins or something. A cousin band. We almost have that kind of relationship with each other. We can kind of get on each others nerves in the way you do with family, but you move through it in ways that you can only do with people you've known a really long time. You can see them as teenagers and you just have a lot more context for who they are and where they've been and been through. That's a really beautiful thing on stage that we get to share together. Quite rare in this industry and world.

These two songs, 'Change My Mind' and 'Dare To Fall In Love', to you do they exist as a package / in tandem, or are they seperate?

They were written at different times in a way, but they feel like little sister songs. I kind of can't believe we wrote new Phantastic Ferniture songs. We always talked we're one and done with an album. That was an interesting creative process of being like, what does Phantastic Ferniture sound like? Especially as we hadn't played together in years when we recorded those two songs.

It was really cool, even debuting those songs at shows and playing them. People started singing along really quickly, even though they weren't out yet. Which has always felt like the Phantastic Ferniture way. We played in Sydney for a few years before we even recorded songs. People would come to the shows and sing along to songs that didn't even exist anywhere. We didn't have much money or time, so we didn't get to record songs for a long time. That's always been a very special part of the band, almost feeling like we don't even have to exist online. Super strange but really cool.

Can't wait to come to the show, I'll be there. Actually some friends of mine — you might know Rachel Ashby, she used to host the Breakfast show on 95bFM — we've been making a music magazine together and we're having our little party just before your gig, at the bar.

Oh what's the magazine called?

It's called In The Pits. It's a podcast, we've done one season interviewing people in the creative scene here, who are doing interesting stuff. We'll be celebrating that and then we'll be coming to your show.

That's great, can't wait to see it.