Funk to folk: Noah Hill of Parcels chats debut solo album ‘Ok ok now’
Noah Hill chats to TOPNOTE on launching his solo career with folk album, ‘Ok ok now’. Image credit: Melissa Gardner
“Most of the songs were written over many years, on back porches at home, or in quiet hotel rooms. Some are nearly ten years old, others more recent. Together they trace a period of my life shaped by a first great love and its ending.”
Noah Hill is living a kind of musician’s double life. By day, he’s promoting his solo debut album ‘Ok ok now’, bedded in heartbreak and vulnerability. By night, he joins the rest of Australian synthpop heavyweights Parcels, bringing up-tempo nu-disco dance music to the European cities he’s recently been touring.
Having grown up in Byron Bay, where Hill recollects his early memories of him ‘and the guys’ busking with guitars, the attraction to acoustic pop has long existed. Hill’s collection of songs, out for release on 4th September via Because Music, have been created and curated over a 10-year period, documenting non-linear fragments of a ‘once in a lifetime’ relationship’s end. Now, Hill is taking the great leap to an almost entirely self-performed and self-mixed record, and embarking on a solo tour for the first time.
In a moment of calm from a hotel room in Budapest, TOPNOTE spoke to Noah about the deeply personal project, and his experience of introducing the world to a brand new side of the musician.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
TOPNOTE: You’ve always been ‘Noah from Parcels’... but now you’re ‘Noah Hill’. How does it feel introducing yourself in this context with your full name?
Noah: It's interesting, like, yeah… I'm Noah Hill. I tossed up deciding whether to use my actual name, I didn't know if I wanted to create an alias. And then I decided that the music was so raw and authentically me that it just made sense for it to just be me, just my name. Now I'm, like, my own person… and it's feeling great.
TOPNOTE: This album is a real sonic departure from your band’s sound. How has the transition been, having all that time to think about doing it, and now actually releasing the music and doing the solo shows?
Noah: It's been a big ‘long time coming’ process. It's a big relief but also there's a bit of pressure, I'm like, whoa, I'm finally doing this. It's been really empowering taking control of the whole process from start to finish. I'm at a point now where I've learnt enough with the band and I feel confident enough in myself. I couldn't have done this earlier. The time's now and it just feels right.
TOPNOTE: You guys play such massive shows, which for many artists would be so daunting. How does that compare, being out on your own?
Noah: Yeah, it's way more scary, doing it on my own. I just played a couple of shows in Sydney and Melbourne and I purposely made them really small, like 100 people. And I was more nervous for those shows than I've probably ever, ever been.
TOPNOTE: Even over your biggest ever shows?
Noah: Yeah! There’s such a level of comfort about the band now. I feel, most of the time, so confident in what we do. Even when we haven't rehearsed enough or we're playing in front of 20, 30,000 people, there's still this innate feeling we'll do well and we'll make it through.
There was no precedent for my own stuff. So I was really like, what is going to happen? Having a lot of doubts, which is all natural. And being the main person and singing these super vulnerable songs, it was, really, terrifying. But I'm getting used to it now and I'm feeling good. Once I got the first one out of the way, I could sink in and enjoy it.
“It’s way more scary, doing it on my own. I just played a couple of shows in Sydney and Melbourne and I purposely made them really small, like 100 people. And I was more nervous for those shows than I’ve probably ever, ever been.”
TOPNOTE: Since this is a heartbreak album collated over such a long period, have you found it therapeutic, or that you've been bringing up old emotions?
Noah: Yeah, it's been a mix. I think I needed to do this to get through the heartbreak. This relationship was someone that I knew since I was six years old, it was so on and off. It never felt real, the times that we had broken up, but this one really did. I needed this to put the nail in the coffin. But in doing so, for starters, it just takes a while to make something like this. By the time it's completed and you're playing the shows, you’re in a different place to where you were when you wrote those songs.
And in some ways it’s tough as well that you keep churning the feelings up and reminding yourself how much pain you were in, or how difficult a time was. I have a bit of a funny, interesting relationship with it now. I'm grateful for it and I'm happy I did it. And at the same time I'm like, ah it’s hurtful as well (laughing).
I just think there's no other way to do it. You can't make something that you don't 100% care about, there's not really any point. But then, life moves on. That dissonance has always happened, in the band even, and it's always been an interesting phenomenon, and a difficult one to come to terms with. It was great to have the guys to talk through those feelings. But now I know that, so I feel well placed to lean in and accept that process, and pay homage to the original intention.
TOPNOTE: A lot of ‘Ok ok now’ is self-deprecating, but in ‘Sympathise’ it sounds more like you’re targeting someone else. Can you talk about the lyrics in that one?
Noah: I wrote that song when I was really, really young, before I moved to Berlin. I must have just turned 18. It's the oldest one on the record by far. I didn't know what that song was about at first. As the years went by, I realised it was about myself. Back then I was very self-deprecating and self-critical and had no empathy for myself. The first few years in Berlin were actually pretty tough, and I look back on that time, and I was like, wow, I was really going through it.
TOPNOTE: The album has interludes throughout, I wanted to pick out ‘Oranges’. Why did you choose to include an interlude about spots?
Noah: I was doing a voice demo on my phone of one of the songs that ended up on the record, I think it was ‘Read Your Mind’, when she came up and just interrupted. It was just cute because it made her feel inside of the room of the album. And also just to talk about pimples is such an intimate thing between two partners. To me, it's sort of a gross thing that just felt really funny and intimate.
What was the inspiration for the album title and its artwork?
Noah: ‘Once In A Lifetime’ was the album title at some point. I was thinking of using it because I did feel like this relationship was the first big love of my life, and it felt like it was going to be the only one. I decided to go for ‘Ok ok now’ because there's a sort of subtle resignation I found a little bit more interesting.
“When I think about the relationship, I see the ocean, but then I wanted to symbolise the drowning and drifting apart that ended up happening, with myself out there in my clothes, sinking.”
And then the artwork, that was an image I always had in my head from the beginning, myself underneath the ocean with a suit on, the colours all felt blue to me. Also the ocean was a big part of our relationship. We come from a small town in Australia, Byron Bay, where we’d be swimming in the ocean every day, we spent so much time together at the beach. When I think about the relationship, I see the ocean, but then I wanted to symbolise the drowning and drifting apart that ended up happening, with myself out there in my clothes, sinking.
TOPNOTE: You’re coming to the UK for a show here in September. What can people expect?
Noah: A very intimate show, where I play the album from top to bottom, all the voice notes and everything. I try to create a space where it’s very vulnerable and intimate, and I sit down and just lean into the feelings of that album.
TOPNOTE: Do you think this is something you’re going to continue?
Noah: I think it's definitely going to be a long-term thing, yeah. The way that the band is these days, it's really healthy for us to have individual things going on. We’re all such creative, energetic, people who need a lot of space and outlets. There's just not enough space for everybody to get what they need inside of the band wholeheartedly, and there’s so much music I'm making and thoughts and feelings I want to express that will just naturally become part of my solo world.
I'm already thinking about the next one. I did everything on my own this time so I'd be interested to work with other people and producers and start experimenting along this path, while continuing the band. The band stuff is so established, but this feels like such an exciting journey where anything is possible. These days I really love like Phoebe Bridgers or Adriana Lanka or Lucy Dakus, these indie folk pop artists, I love their storytelling. That’s the world I want to get into.
Well thank you for your time, I hope you have a great show tonight. It must be a bit of emotional whiplash to go from talking about these deep topics to suddenly… gotta entertain loads of people!
Noah: Yeah, it is weird! I'm definitely ping-ponging around inside my mind. It's been tough, I've been working so hard on the solo stuff and we went straight into this tour. So I'm still just processing everything that's going on, like, on the road and then going up on stage, then getting on another plane. It's been quite chaotic. But I'm so used to it, and I wouldn't want to do anything else.
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Noah Hill’s solo show comes to London on 14th September at The Lower Third.