After teasing fans with previous solo releases ‘Barcelona Beers’, ‘Until The Beat Is Gone’, ‘Carry Your Scar’, ‘Liar’ and the rapturous title track, Melbourne artist Felix Riebl has unveiled his third studio album Everyday Amen out via AWAL.
Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips sat down with Felix Riebl, our December Musician of the Month to discuss his career, his challenging year and the creation of his new solo album Everyday Amen. Photos by Jason Rosewarne.
Standing at 11-tracks, each song on Everyday Amen details the wonder and obscurities of life with joy and exuberance. The album is timely as it breathes life into a new world. Surrounding himself with a dream team of musicians, along with engineer Andy Baldwin (producer / engineer) and Ross Irwin (co-producer / arranger), the recording process itself was very free flowing and only took two weeks to create.
“Everyday Amen is one of the most exuberant, full-of-life albums I’ve ever been involved in. It brings together Worlds that are particularly special to me. One of them is international, full of fragments and scenes that drift around my mind after years of tour. The other one is my domestic life, equally over the top, but in a more insular, everyday way. For me, this album is the coming together of those different states. It’s a celebration of the extrovert and introvert in me, and the music comes to life at those points where the familiar flips and suddenly becomes magic.”
Drawing on evocative and colourfully haunting imagery that has been mentally sketched from a previous time and place – Hamburg, Cuba, Apollo Bay – songs like ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ came out of fragments of memory, acting as contrasts to life yet somehow affiliated in nature.
‘Barcelona Beers’ speaks of a touring pattern; a dream that plays on repeat. A forgotten memory in the morning that is relived each night as though it’s the first time.
Closing track ‘Are You Awake Love (Anya’s Song)’ is a lullaby for his daughter who struggled sleeping. It’s a love song; a quiet anthem for all those who are sleep deprived, half mad, but very alive all the same.
The album at its core is a celebration of life. It’s the interplay between insular domesticity and very extrovert overflowing international moments that drives the songs and allows the listener to reflect on their own Everyday Amen moments.
“For me the Everyday Amen moment is that instance where something that you think is expected turns on its head, or becomes curious, or funny, or mad. It’s just a moment where you’re back in life for a second.”
