march 1 2024

DEBBY FRIDAY TALKING TO: DARCY BAYLIS

OK, so first things first, how would you like to introduce yourself? My name is Darcy Baylis. I'm an artist, producer and songwriter. Probably the easiest way to describe it. I'm based in Melbourne right now. The music that I make is pretty wide reaching, I would say. But I feel like the common thread that holds it all together is just this deeply emotional songwriting in everything that I do.

True, it is emotional. Do you think that has something to do with the fact that you're a Pisces? Probably. I mean, like, personally, I don't read into it that much, but everyone I've ever met, they always read me immediately and always either identify that I'm a Pisces or are able to predict my tendencies and personality traits within five minutes of meeting me.

Yeah, I remember when we were in Melbourne, I knew immediately. I was like, you've got to be a water sign. What do you think it is that gives it away? I think…you have this softness of demeanor, a softness in your aura that reads as very water sign-like to me because it's something that is not typically associated with men and the way men interact in the world. I could just sense it. Okay, yeah.

How do you feel about that, though, about the fact that you can be read easily by other people? Yeah, I mean, there's not really any point in trying to change it. I think I'm all about leaning into your nature and leaning into your edge. The thing that comes naturally to me is that I always have been highly sensitive but I think that's the reason that I'm good at making the kind of music that I do. There are certain things that I feel like I'm the only one that can observe in situations or pick up on in certain interactions. It always comes back to music and it always comes back to the art that I'm making. Those observations always inform whatever I'm doing so I don't have any interest in changing it. I think it's dope.

Well, Pisces is one of the signs that rules over music in astrology. And I always find that people that have Pisces placements are very creative and they're also able to tap into the collective unconscious naturally. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, so you guys have an empathy for what it is to be like a human being and the fullness of that experience, both the good and the bad. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Pisces also rules over film so…what's your favourite movie? Magnolia. Oh, really? Have you seen it? Yeah, I've seen it, but it's not my favourite from Paul Thomas Anderson. What’s your favourite? Punch Drunk Love. A great movie. Yeah, it’s fucking great. Why do you like Magnolia? I first saw Magnolia when I was 18 years old. I think I was just getting into film and trying to watch films that were critically revered, you know what I mean? I remember watching all three hours in one sitting and it just floored me because it’s the culmination of everything that I find interesting about art. And it's the culmination of everything that I've ever tried to do with what I make. I watch it once every year, usually around Christmas time. It's a Christmas movie. Haha. Even though it's kind of fucked up. And every time I watch it, there's a new character that I really resonate with or identify with and just find something to take away from it. The most recent time I watched it, I was really obsessed with the quiz kid, Donnie Smith, who works at the electronics store and is obsessed with getting braces. His whole life he had fucked up teeth and he is holding onto this idea that if he gets adult braces, then he'll be worthy and he can make people fall in love with him and then he’ll gain the same level of significance that he had in his head as when he was a child. It's such a sad but universal and relatable thing, this idea that once I get this external, material thing, then I'll matter. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I get you. Do you feel that you relate to that on a personal level? Oh, of course. I feel like I switch between feeling really content and feeling really sure of what I'm doing, that the place that I'm in right now is exactly where I'm meant to be. And then swinging the other way and getting caught on this imaginary point in my head that I'll reach, that I'll be happy when I get there. And everyone I've ever spoken to who makes music experiences some level of this.

What does that point look like to you? Well, that's the problem. It changes all the time. I already now have so many things that I've wanted for ages. I've worked with so many people that I idolized when I was younger and I’ve played shows in different parts of the world and just all this stuff that as a kid or as a teenager, I really wanted. And now I've already got. Your ambitions just keep growing if you're someone who is driven and who is ambitious. I’m really happy with where I'm at now, but it's by no means the end point.

I feel you on that. I started feeling a kind of way after I won the Polaris Prize last year. You almost have this existential crisis when you achieve something that you've been wanting for a long time, when it goes from being just a fantasy in your mind to real life. And then after it happens, you have to make another goal for yourself and it's this never ending moving target. I think it used to make me feel very hopeless, in a way, because there is no end. There's no goal that you're going to be able to reach where you don't want anything more. But these days, I have an acceptance of that. I understand it as part of the human condition. It's just the way that we are as human beings. Totally. It's hard, the balance between gratitude and ambition. Sometimes you can trick yourself out of striving for more because you think “I should be grateful for what I have” but you should also wear your heart on your sleeve and be very open and direct with your goals and what you want out of life.

Yeah, that's true. It's a balancing act, really. Mhm. Speaking of which, you took three years off from releasing music. What was going on with you during that time? Man, like…so much. There are so many different reasons why I didn't release any music during that time. I got sober a little bit after the last release. And while I was still making music all the time, I was also just dealing with a lot of bigger life questions. First of all, just how to live sober and what that looks like. In the early days of that, it took so much work that even thinking about my music career was just like…no, I didn't have the room to do that. Real. Yeah. And the only reason I have the ability to continue doing this is because I spent all of that time sorting that part of my life out. When you spent the first part of your life or the first part of your twenties living a certain way and then you pretty much change everything about your life - which I did when I got sober - you change. I wasn't even listening to the same music that I was listening to when I was still drinking and using drugs. I didn't want the same things. I changed so much that it was really difficult for me to get back to the place I was in when I was making those songs. And so for a while, I was thinking “what will it even look like if I keep doing this?” because I feel like I'm such a different person but I have all these songs that I’ve just been sitting on. But after speaking to a lot more people, I underestimated how much of a desire there was from people to hear these songs, even though I'm still a relatively small artist. But once I started putting out into the world that I had new music, it just felt like it was the right time to go about doing it.

Super real. I feel you heavily on the getting sober. You do have to completely change your life and change almost everything about yourself and the way you live. It's almost like a second puberty in a way. Literally. Yeah. Now it's like you unfiltered, like truly unfiltered because you don't have a substance or anything mediating who you actually are. A hundred percent.

And I'm curious, how did you feel when you first went back into music after that time? I mean, more specifically interacting in spaces that you had been in before? You know, weirdly for me, that was never the difficult part, being around people or even being in clubs and stuff. I had no trouble doing that sober because that was never really my issue. What I struggled with more was being by myself, Like being in my room. I was like, what the fuck do I do here, you know?

Would you describe yourself as an introvert? Yeah, I spend a lot of time around people but I still would describe myself as an introvert. And I think even in the way that I used to drink or party or use drugs, I wasn’t really the bender party guy. I was more just…laptop on the floor, playing songs on YouTube. Just like…sad, you know what I mean? Yeah, sad boy at the party vibes. Yeah, exactly. It was more of the tortured thing than the party thing. So I actually really liked going to shows and playing shows and entering public spaces. Because I felt like I can actually see what's going on and I can actually meet people where they're at. Yeah. But I think I still struggled with the aspect of releasing or putting stuff out into the world with no filter. I think that was the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome. Because, as you said, in those early days, it's like that second puberty thing. You are pretty raw and you really just overthink a lot of stuff. And it took me that time to get to the place where I'm at now, where I genuinely don't really care what people think about me anymore. And I'm confident enough in what I do to just put it out into the world without needing that positive reinforcement, I suppose.

So in a way, you're free now. Yeah, I literally feel freer than I've ever been before. I can do whatever I want.

And so with the song that you just put out, I Want To Be Tranquilized, when I listen to it, I feel that it has this really beautiful, nostalgic vibe. And yet it’s very of the moment too. It has this essence of translation between past and present. And it's also very sincere as well, which I think is part of that freedom that you're describing. Personally for me, that sincerity is an element that I feel is missing when I'm listening to music sometimes. Especially more recent stuff. We're very irony-pilled as a culture right now. It's not cool to be sincere but I really loved that your song felt so sincere. Tell me about it. The lyrics, how you made it, everything. Totally. I mean, during that first year of sobriety, I basically didn't listen to any music newer than 2002. I just completely lost interest. I just felt so detached from now and so detached from anything cool. People were sending me music and I didn’t want to hear it. And it was this bizarre reaction that I had where I felt the need to tap out of what's going on right now and do my own thing. So this song is one of the first songs that I made from the record and it was born of that period of only listening to late 90s, early 2000s…folk music, basically. All of the lyrics were improvised. I didn't write anything down. I just sort of one-take’d it and then finessed that. So they're pretty simple, but it was just a very, very direct expression of how I was feeling at that time. And I think it just goes back to how we started this conversation. Like, there's no point in me trying to be someone I'm not because I'm not the cool, detached, ironic guy. I am the sincere, emotional guy. I'd rather do that good than try and do something else half-heartedly.

For sure. I wish that was the general consensus. I’ve been so cynical lately and thinking about all this pressure that comes with music. And it’s often pressure that comes from people who are not musicians but they are the people who are running this whole infrastructure and everything for us. And they always have this idea of how you should be expressing yourself and how you should be presenting yourself to the world. And they fall into this bad habit sometimes of wanting you to follow what they think other people will want from you rather than what made those people interested in you in the first place. Yeah. Do you ever get A&R feedback like that? I've gotten…suggestions. But I employ this technique where I just say “okay, sure” and then just do whatever I was going to do anyway. I don’t like people telling me what to do. Haha!

Do you think an artist needs to be sincere in order to be a good artist? I think that an artist needs to be truthful in order to be a good artist. I don't know if it's necessarily just sincerity but like however they present themselves, even if that is the cool, insincere, whatever, they need to be that person in real life. If they're not that person in real life, you can see that shit from a mile away. And it's also incredibly difficult to keep up a persona long term if it doesn't exist. I think people get really caught on this idea of building a personal brand and masquerading as an artist in a certain way. All the things that I've done, that people have responded to the best have just been me being the most authentic version of myself. And it's such a cliche, but you can forget it when you are looking at how everyone else is doing things. If you just lean into your own nature and double down on who you are, I feel like that will pay off in the end.

That's very true. I agree with you. So you make music under your real name. Is it fair to say there's not as much separation between the idea of you as an artist and you as a person? Zero separation.

Does that ever feel invasive? What do you mean? I mean, have you ever had an interaction with someone who hasn’t been able to distinguish between you as a person and you as an artist? Has it ever gotten weird? It's interesting that you say this because I've never tried to separate those two things. To my eyes, they're the same thing, you know. But as far as that stuff goes, I mean, sometimes I think just due to the personal nature of the music that I make, people will send messages talking about their own experiences, which is super nice. It’s a really nice thing to have happen but it is a bizarre experience that I don't often enough interrogate. Like just how fucking bizarre it is and how most people in the world go through not having that experience. But I think if I stop to think about it too hard, it trips me out.

True. So another thing I wanted to talk to you about was the music video that you made for I Want To Be Tranquilized. Who'd you work with, how you came up with the idea and also what's up with the title card at the end of the video? It was directed by Tom Mullen, who's from here in Melbourne. I had seen some videos he worked on for a few artists that I really liked. And I basically just want to do something really classic, you know, just like that late 90s, early 2000s white room, three guitar amps, a jazz master. It's just super straightforward. But I wanted to do that through my lens and just bring it into now. The shot on the bridge was actually a reference point to this movie from 2001 called Long Island Expressway. It's actually Paul Dano's first film. There's this shot where he is standing on a bridge that overlooks a freeway. And in the movie, he actually climbs on top of the scaffolding and he does this (gestures), over the cars. We went to the spot and tried to figure out a way that I could climb over and do the same shot. But we realized, if you do that, you’re most likely going to die, which sucks because I wanted to do it shot for shot. Haha. And then there's a repeating phrase on the record that's in three or four different songs and that is the title card at the end. I wanted to put that there because it's this looping phrase that comes in and out of the record and because the whole record is about repeating cycles, repeating behaviour. Looping thoughts that you can't seem to make stop. So I wanted to put it at the end of the video just as a callback to that thread that runs through the record.

OK, last question. So we met last North American summer/Australian winter, was it? Yeah. And that was when we made let you in together and worked on some music. For me, that entire process made me feel really optimistic about music as an industry. I vacillate a lot, depending on the day and how much money they’ll give me for a video. Hahaha.

Anyway, it made me feel really optimistic about music because this is an art form that I really love and that experience encapsulated the best part of this art form, which is its power of connection. The fact that you don't even need to speak the same language as whatever the song is but you can feel the energy and still connect with it and connect with other people through it. I saw it as like…we live on opposite sides of the globe and we were still able to be brought together by music. That was very powerful and beautiful. And it’s one of my favourite songs that I’ve ever made. I really love that song. Anyway, all of that preamble is so I can ask, what are your feelings about music as an industry? I mean, what do you think about the future of music as somebody who's been making music for your whole life? Yeah, that's one of my favourite songs that I've made too, and it just came together so seamlessly because we had similar influences in certain regards. And it also made me really positive about the music industry. Because it’s like…Uda, one of your managers, reached out to me to do the session and then we made the song. Then later, I reached out to Uda to help me find someone to put my record out and they've been helping me out with more sessions, which has led to more shows. That's when I feel really good about the music industry. When it’s the trail-on effect of the people that you meet, the opportunities that you're afforded, and the art that those opportunities create, which can then influence more people to make more music. That, to me, is when the music industry is functioning at its peak. That's how it should be - people with shared goals, trying to help each other out. Yeah. I feel like I have two options, right? It’s either to be pessimistic and be like, it's all doomed and streaming has ruined everything. But, personally, I just feel like that doesn't lead to anything positive. And I'm trying to look at the abundance in everything, like how easy it is to make and release music, how easy it is to connect directly with fans all over the world.

That's a good attitude. I could have nothing but I have this phone in my hand right here that is a key that unlocks every opportunity in the world. Obviously, it’s not always easy to think this way because for every W I cop, there'll be like, three Ls. Hahaha. Seriously! It's kind of like pushing a boulder up a hill. Sisyphean. As you said, at the start of this conversation, I don't think there's ever a point where you're done. You know what I mean? I've also just accepted that this is the life that I'm willing to live in order to make art forever. Oh, I love that. How wonderful.

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