Written by Fenn Idle
This conversation took place on December 7, 2022
Pickle Darling, aka Lukas Mayo, is a New Zealand-based musician who’s been making their own personal brand of bedroom pop for a while now. Their most recent album Cosmonaut tracks the feeling of falling in love through the metaphor of an astronaut leaving the earth’s atmosphere, while previous album Bigness chronicled the growing pains of one’s early-20s with a stream-of-consciousness realism that never failed to be engaging and emotionally affecting. Their music is cinematic on a small-scale — like the films we discussed in the interview. The actions and moments described in their songs (as well as the musical arrangements) are specific and precise but yield a great catharsis. After a couple of weeks of scheduling back and forth in DMs, we talked about movies on a Wednesday morning via the internet.
Lukas Mayo: “Seven years ago, I had this big break up of a five-year relationship, and I was still living at home, and I was just, like, miserable. We’ve got this boutique video shop in Christchurch called Alice in Videoland that has lots of art films and indie films and stuff. So I would just go there twice a week and watch three to four movies a week as a comfort thing. I would often ask the staff what their favourites were. I really like getting people’s personal recommendations. I think that’s how I’ve discovered most of my favourite films. I somehow got onto mumblecore films. The first one I watched was Hannah Takes The Stairs, and I was like, ‘oh damn, I’ve never seen a movie like that, that feels so cheap but feels like you’re really in the room with them.’ You’re getting all this sort of natural dialogue that any other film would just cut out.”
Fenn Idle: “There’s almost an imperfection to these films that makes them, sort of, connect on a deeper level when you’re watching them. It reminds me of a tweet of yours, in the context of music, you were talking about how it’s the imperfections of somebody’s voice that makes their music interesting to listen to. I feel a similar way about these films. Can you talk about the idea of imperfection? What is it about imperfection in art that appeals to you?”
Mayo: “I think part of what appeals to me about the films is that the director has their attention on things that other directors ignore or don’t think are important. Imperfection, letting yourself be kind of unfiltered or leave the mistakes in – it’s like we don’t actually know what’s interesting about ourselves. If I’m recording a vocal track, I actually don’t know what someone is going to think is interesting about it. And if I try and perfect it and get it all exactly right and, like, learn to be a better singer, all that kind of stuff. You don’t know if you’re cutting out what someone else might find interesting about it. Cos often with my favourite singers or favourite musicians, that’s always the stuff that I kind of cling onto or sticks in my head.
“It’s less about the imperfections but more when a film either accidentally or specifically gets at a really specific emotion that you’re like, ‘oh fuck, I’ve never heard that articulated before.’ It’s something that mumblecore films do, but also Charlie Kaufman films do. I guess he’s just such an intense writer that he knows every part of how the human mind works and explores it so intensely. Like in Synecdoche, New York where it’s like, there’s so much in that where I don’t even know what it means, but I’ve definitely felt that feeling. That’s definitely what I try and do in my music. Not try and paint broad emotions like, ‘this song is about this,’ but more just try and find the unexplored crevasses in your mind and try and articulate that even if you’re not sure what it means.”
Idle: “Have you seen I’m Thinking of Ending Things?”
Mayo: “Oh yeah. That movie rocks.”
Idle: “I like how at the end of that movie it becomes sort of a performance within a performance.”
Mayo: “Yeah, there’s that kind of meta element to it.”
Idle: “I feel like it’s a good example of what you were talking about – trying to explain an unexplainable feeling – where if he took it down a literal route it would be too obvious or might not work.”
Mayo: “Because I’m trying to explore that stuff when I’m making music, I’m always asking myself, ‘what am I thinking about right now?’ Instead of planning it out from the start. What happens if I keep going down this route and also acknowledge the fact that I’m making a song? All of my music ends up becoming about making music. [laughs] So many of my lyrics just revert back into that, like how weird it is to be feeling these things and also writing songs about it adds to that weirdness. I like movies that are not necessarily meta for the sake of being meta cos it’s clever or anything, but when they realise that that’s the only way to really highlight how absurd a specific moment is, I guess. When the director takes a step back and is honest about what they are doing as well and, like, shows how constructed their whole thing is.”
Idle: “It almost feels more honest, in a way. Some people find meta stuff off-putting or that it takes you out of it. I really love it.
“One of the things I find interesting about mumblecore films is there are a lot of movies where people are using their own names. It’s like this person is using their own name and they’re filming it with their ex-girlfriend who is using her own name.”
Mayo: “Yeah, there’s a lot of real-life relationships that you see in these films. It’s pretty weird!”
Idle: “It’s really strange. Music, in a way, has a kinship with this kind of film-making cos you don’t have a huge budget, so the stakes are built by having something that feels real. And what better way to do that than by having real people act out their real relationships.”
Mayo: “Yeah. I did a real deep-dive into mumblecore films, like, I wanna watch every mumblecore film that exists. Obviously, I’m not even close, but I’ve watched the main ones that people talk about. Then I wanted to watch, I don’t know, like Joe Swanberg has an insane amount of movies. Maybe they’re not all good, but I feel like a lot of people skirt over the genre and are like, ‘A lot of these films are just pointless navel-gazing, and there’s a few good ones.’ But I feel like it’s kind of missing the point. I guess mumblecore isn’t meant to be a genre, it’s just people trying to explore these things really honestly. They might seem like they’re about nothing, but when you watch heaps of them, they’re kind of building a whole world. Joe Swanberg in particular, I watched a bunch of his where if you read reviews of them, everyone fucking hates them. But I quite like them.”
Idle: “Some of the best movies have, like, 38 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. I feel like I’d prefer to watch a low-budget movie that is not that good compared to something else.” [cat jumps up on Fenn’s lap]
Mayo: “Hi, cat. Sorry, just saying hi to your cat.”
Idle: “It’s cool. What am I trying to say… I’d prefer to watch a three-star mumblecore film compared to a three-star studio film, if you know what I mean.”
Mayo: “Yeah.”
Idle: “Cos even if there are major flaws in the movie, I can appreciate what it’s trying to do.”
Mayo: “And you can kind of see the— Something I find really appealing is not only seeing the fingerprints of the filmmaker on the film but also the scaffolding, and you can see their lack of money in the film, and you really have a good picture of the making of it. That appeals to me a lot: I don’t want that to be invisible.”
Idle: “Totally. This is a quote from somebody, but I don’t know who. They said that, ‘Every film is a documentary of its own making.’ It’s an interesting thing, but it’s especially true of these sorts of low-budget films. But anything that’s shot on location. This is a specific example, but I shot a short film with a couple of friends earlier this year. And since then, all the billboards have changed, and they’ve renovated the bus stop. So now when I look at the footage, I’m like, ‘Damn, it all looks different.’ Gimme a second, I just need to let the cat into the other room.”
Mayo: “Sweet.”
[20 seconds of silence as Fenn lets the cat into the other room]
Idle: “Let me actually read these notes a little bit better. I wrote ‘low-budget film-making compared to low-budget music-making.’ Did we talk about that?”
Mayo: “I guess, yeah. I like hearing not just the imperfections, but also the sound of someone’s recording equipment. You listen to Mount Eerie, and it’s like clearly there’s a lot more interesting things you can do. Like you can place microphones in a room and record everything really professionally, but there’s so many more interesting ways to record something. Where, you know, you can hear the hissing of the mic because you record it on the other side of the room. And you’re doing it wrong, but that is such an interesting sound, y’know? And I think I like that sort of stuff in movies as well: where doing things wrong or doing things in a broken way can be so much more interesting.”
Idle: “I saw [on your Letterboxd] that you’ve watched the movie Computer Chess.”
Mayo: “Oh yeah.”
Idle: “And I feel like that’s such a great example of what you’re talking about where you look at it, and it’s shot on this 70s black and white digital camera, and it looks so strange.”
Mayo: “Yeah, it’s a weird kinda period film, eh.”
Idle: “Yeah. And there’s this Super 8 sequence at the end, which I really love, where it goes into colour for, like, 10 minutes.”
Mayo: “I can’t even remember. I feel like I watched it years ago.”
Idle: “Doesn’t matter. But I guess the point is that he’s using this really strange equipment. Like with Super 8 the frame-rate is super uneven, so the dialogue is all out-of-sync in that section. And then obviously the really old-school digital camera, and then right at the end, they direct the digital camera on purpose into the sun. And it ruins the shot, like, it creates a black hole in the frame. It’s really great.”
Mayo: “I wanna rewatch this.”
Idle: “I love that movie.”
Mayo: “This movie that I’ve watched. This sounds awesome.” [laughs]
Idle: [laughs]
Mayo: “I love it when films break down, I think it’s awesome. Not just mumblecore ones. I’m just trying to think of some other ones. I guess Persona sort of does that at the end. There’s that Iranian director.”
Idle: “Close-Up?”
Mayo: “I haven’t actually seen Close-Up, but it’s the same director… Taste of Cherry. Right at the end- I don’t wanna spoil it, but the film kind of takes a big step back when you’re expecting the story to conclude. It’s really kind of crazy.”
Idle: “I feel like that director [Abbas Kiarostami] must enjoy that. There’s a story of him making Close-Up, and apparently he saw it and the projectionist mixed up the reels. And instead of being annoyed about it or whatever, he re-edited the film to be in the order of the mixed up reels. Which is insane. Like, that’s a level of embracing imperfection that is kind of out of this world. There’s also a sequence at the end of Close-Up where the audio keeps cutting out, so you just get these little snippets of dialogue. But the interesting thing about Kiarostami is apparently he did it on purpose, like, he just cut out chunks of the audio. But in the film it’s presented like the equipment is malfunctioning. So there’s all these layers to it.”
Mayo: “I’m gonna watch that this week.”
Idle: “It’s an insane movie. One of my favourites I think. It’s one of those movies where you just keep thinking about it for days.”
Mayo: “There’s definitely something where I feel like more blockbusters now are like… the newer meta films, but they’re done with kind of a cynical, like, winking at the audience. When they’re like billion-dollar movies that are like, ‘Yeah, we know we’re billion-dollar pieces of shit, but isn’t it cool that we know it?’”
Idle: “Oh god.”
Mayo: “Do you know what I mean?”
Idle: “Yeah.”
Mayo: “And it makes it seem like, ‘cos we’re acknowledging we’re pieces of shit that makes us like a cut above all the other billion-dollar pieces of shit. We’re so smart, and you’re so smart for getting it.’ But there are so many other films that explore that stuff but in a really honest way to get at something really specific they’re not just trying to be… winky about, I guess.”
Idle: “Yeah, I really hate the Marvel wink to camera. Cos I love meta-textual techniques, I think they’re so interesting and can be really beautiful or can be all these different things. But the way it’s used so often is in this Shrek kind of way where it’s like, ‘remember this thing?’ or, like, Captain America cameo in Thor 3.”
Mayo: “Yeah.”
Idle: “Let me just look at my notes document. I wrote ‘making movies that feel like real life’ – we definitely talked about that. This is kind of a funny question, but do you have an opinion on what makes good twee vs. bad twee?”
Mayo: “Hmm. Cos I think I wasn’t consciously trying to make twee music. It’s just a lot of the music that I happened to like, happened to be described as twee by other people. And I think I’ve just embraced it cos if this is what I sound like, I’m not gonna apologise for it. I remember when my first EP came out, there was one site in New Zealand where one of the critics kind of hated it, like ‘this fucking twee bullshit.’ That site doesn’t exist anymore, so I guess…” [laughs]
Idle: “I guess you won that one. There’s a good Jonny Greenwood interview where he’s talking about he wants to use instruments just for the sound of them, and he’s talking about it specifically in the context of using ukelele and glockenspiel. Which I find kinda funny, and I think it’s so true.”
Mayo: “What Radiohead stuff has ukelele and glockenspiel? “No Surprises?” Is there a ukelele in that? That would be crazy.”
Idle: “I’m not sure, I’ll have to find this quote.” [The actual quote: ‘I sometimes wish taste wasn’t ever an issue, and the sounds of instruments or synths could be judged solely on their colour and timbre. Judged by what it did to your ears, rather than what its historical use reminds you of.’]
Mayo: “It’s definitely interesting that different instruments have such specific responses to them. And I think people don’t seem to want to accept that it’s a sound and if you associate it with stuff you hate, it’s kind of like… You can get past that as a listener, if you want to, and just try to listen to something as like a new thing.”
Idle: “Completely. The time’s gonna run out so—”
Mayo: “Oh sorry.”
Idle: “No, it’s fine. It’s cos I haven’t updated my Zoom. I’ll just quit the thing, and then we can restart. Is that ok?”
Mayo: “Ok, sweet.”
[they restart]
Mayo: “I feel like I sometimes bombard through your questions.”
Idle: “No, that’s good, cos I have a really hard time asking questions instead of saying opinions.”
Mayo: “I would find your job really hard.”
Idle: “Yeah, I’m trying to learn how to do this on the fly. [laughs] So I asked you to think of some recommendations, so if you’ve got one or a couple, let’s talk about them.”
Mayo: “Yeah, there’s a few. There’s a movie that a friend recommended to me, and they said, ‘Don’t look up the [review] score before watching it.’ And I looked it up afterwards, and critics really did not get it. It’s called New Jerusalem. God, who’s the director?”
Idle: “Rick Alverson.”
Mayo: “Yeah, I don’t know anything else they’ve done.”
Idle: “He’s done a great movie called The Comedy which stars Tim Heidecker if you wanna watch another thing by him.”
Mayo: “Oh I think that’s on my watchlist. Yeah, I think I went through his stuff. I was kinda going through a phase of watching all the movies with Will Oldham in it. I love Old Joy. He’s in A Ghost Story, I’m pretty sure. Like one scene right in the middle.”
Idle: “Yeah, he has that monologue.”
Mayo: “He has a whole monologue cutting to the heart of the film, and then the rest of the film is trying to prove him wrong. It’s kinda crazy.”
Idle: “Yeah, that’s a wild movie. So, New Jerusalem.”
Mayo: “Have you seen it?”
Idle: “I haven’t seen it, but maybe you can explain what it’s about and what you like about it.”
Mayo: “There’s this Irish immigrant, and he’s a war vet from Afghanistan. The film is aware of a lot of the injustices: it doesn’t hide from anything like that. There’s a lot of baggage that comes from talking about US war vets.
“He’s a mechanic, and his co-worker is an evangelical Christian. The war vet suffers from a lot of PTSD and depression, and he kinda deals with that on his own, and the Christian dude is trying to help him out in a really unhelpful way. It’s an interesting film because it doesn’t really resolve in any way. But there’s that conflict where there’s this person who really deeply cares for this other person but is going about it so horribly and just does not get it. I really like stories where there’s no clear good or bad person or good or bad motives. Most people probably have really good motives in any situation, but our worlds are so different that sometimes it just clashes.”
Idle: “That sounds great.”
Mayo: “Yeah it’s really good. Probably one of my favourite movies.”
Idle: “I wrote down a quote from that director cos I saw New Jerusalem was one of your top movies. He did a bunch of tweets that are kind of funny, but I think quite interesting. He wrote, ‘Time to start talking about narrative as a toxin. Narrative as escape, as victory, as tidy understanding. Narrative as settled evening.’”
Mayo: “Hmm…”
Idle: “So this guy hates narrative. Well, not exactly. But what I found interesting about the movie that I’ve watched by him, The Comedy, is that it’s not a story in the traditional sense, it’s more a collection of moments that add up to create this greater meaning. And it sounds like from what you’re saying that there’s less of a resolution in New Jerusalem as well.”
Mayo: “Yeah it’s kind of interesting where you expect a film to be super aware of its meaning and to construct everything to reinforce this idea that the director wants to get across. But, like, real life isn’t like that. It doesn’t mean that it’s not meaningful, but it’s like often it’s so… I don’t know, I think it’s cool when a song-writer or a film-maker is bringing meaningful stuff to you, but they’re not curating it, I guess.”
Idle: “Yeah, real life doesn’t follow a hero’s journey arc all the time. Sometimes it does.”
Mayo: “I’m gonna follow this guy on Twitter.”
Idle: “He’s got some hot takes for sure.”
Mayo: “That’s great.”
Idle: “I like how artistically committed he is to being difficult.”
Mayo: “Yeah, I love that stuff, even if I don’t agree with all of it. It’s important to have that in any medium. You need some cynics that, like, hate everything else in their genre.”
Idle: “Oh, completely.”
Mayo: “Like have you seen Funny Games?”
Idle: “No, I haven’t.”
Mayo: “That movie is fucked, it’s like… a bad time. The whole film is being like, ‘This is what American films that desensitise their audiences to violence, this is what they do. And I’m going to give you a movie that’s just the horrible parts of that with no catharsis and just make you feel really bad.’ And it’s really meta in a really punishing way. Like, he just hates the audience.”
Idle: “I knew that I wouldn’t necessarily wanna watch it so I read the Wikipedia synopsis.”
Mayo: “It’s really good, it’s not gory. It kinda hides it from you.”
Idle: “Yeah, I probably will watch it one day cos I love the meta twist that I read.”
Mayo: “It’s real interesting, cos you watch the film, and it’s real meta. You would think you would be able to remove yourself from the film and just be like, ‘OK, I’m gonna not get invested in these characters.’ Because I dunno, the film is telling me that this all made up or whatever. But you just kinda can’t help it, and you just feel horrible.”
Idle: “That’s an interesting idea that I also wanted to talk to you about. The idea of feel-bad films and feel-good films. I’m somebody who really leans towards movies that don’t make me feel too terrible. I know some people love to watch war movies [laughs]. But yeah, I can’t do it.”
Mayo: “Yeah, I’m the same.”
Idle: “But the thing I’m always seeking for is something that doesn’t make me feel horrible but makes me think a lot, and I feel like that’s really hard to find. Some of the movies we’ve talked about already fit that category. What did I write down… Punch-Drunk Love, for example.”
Mayo: “Oh yeah.”
Idle: “Like you watch that movie, and you feel pretty great afterwards cos it’s like this beautiful love story. This is almost not a question. I just wish there were more movies like that. Or like Close-Up. Movies where I feel like I’ve changed as a person after watching it, but I don’t feel like I’m in a depression for two days afterwards.”
Mayo: “I’m a big fan of when a film isn’t wrapped up real neatly. Where it’s like, as the viewer, you’ve gotta finish the narrative yourself. Or like, not necessarily finish the story, but the film itself is like a weird thing and when you contextualise it with your own actual experience of the world, that’s where you see what the film is saying. I think it’s something that happens a lot. When you see something in a film and then the way it ends is clearly not what would happen in real life. But then, when you’re watching it, you know that this would never happen. And then that’s what makes it a sad ending. It’s hard to explain.”
Idle: “I guess there’s that indie movie cliche of having an ambiguous ending. But it’s not exactly that that you’re talking about.”
Mayo: “I’m trying to think of a good example…”
Idle: “The Florida Project?”
Mayo: “Yeah! That’s a perfect example, actually. That does it at the end, where you know what’s gonna happen, and the film just breaks. And it’s filmed in this weird digital, and they go to Disneyland or something. And it’s like, you know that doesn’t happen.”
Idle: “A lot of people really hate that ending.”
Mayo: “Yeah, why do people hate that ending?”
Idle: “It took a second for it to grow on me. When I first watched it, I was like ‘what the?’ But I really like it now. And you’re right, it is kinda sadder in a way, to retreat into fantasy.”
Mayo: “When the reality is too sad, so the film itself doesn’t wanna go there.”
Idle: “I think Pan’s Labyrinth kinda does a similar thing.”
Mayo: “I’ve actually never seen Pan’s Labyrinth. I should.”
Idle: “Oh. Well, I just ruined the ending. [laughs]
“I find it interesting how the ending of something can completely change you feel about a movie. To go back to I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Even though what is being implied is pretty bleak, because of the theatrical way that it ends, it doesn’t feel horrible to watch it. Or like musicals, for example, it doesn’t matter how bleak the subject matter is, they often end with this huge group number that makes you feel uplifted when you leave.”
Mayo: “I feel like I haven’t gotten into musicals. There’s a few that I like but I haven’t y’know—”
Idle: “I used to hate musicals.”
Mayo: “What was the one that pulled you in?”
Idle: “It’s really embarrassing to say but it was actually La La Land.”
Mayo: “Oh awesome. What was the last big mainstream musical that everyone saw? Did that get Best Picture?”
Idle: “It almost did.”
Mayo: “That’s right. They said it did, and then it didn’t.”
Idle: “I can’t think of a recent movie musical. Like an original musical, it very rarely happens. It’ll either be a jukebox musical like Bohemian Rhapsody or it’ll be, like, Cats or something from Broadway. Original movie musicals don’t really get made that often.”
Mayo: “I feel like I haven’t seen my favourite musical yet. I feel like it hasn’t been made yet.”
Idle: “I feel like Andy Shauf albums are basically indie musicals.”
Mayo: “I think I tweeted something like, ‘I want a jukebox musical where it’s like Mamma Mia but with Andy Shauf songs.’ Cos his songs are stories with recurring characters, it’s like, ‘you could do this.’”
Idle: “He could, but he chooses to deny us.”
Mayo: “Yeah.”
Idle: “Like The Neon Skyline is like the movies we’ve been talking about where not that much happens but it has these really beautiful, interesting insights about life. Like the song “Living Room” where the lady is talking about how her daughter gave her a drawing and then she didn’t put it up on the fridge, and then she felt really guilty about that.”
Mayo: [laughs]
Idle: “I feel like that could easily be a monologue from a mumblecore movie.”
Mayo: “That album is amazing cos I think it gets at — Y’know how before we were talking about movies where there’s no good or bad guy?”
Idle: “Completely.”
Mayo: “It’s like so many songs—I don’t know if it’s a recent thing in music or if it’s just how it’s always been—often a lot of the big songs are getting at the most reactive versions of ourselves. Either we’re really spiteful, or we’re the good guy, and we, like, destroyed our ex.”
Idle: “People like to frame themselves as the hero in their own stories.”
Mayo: “Yeah, there always is like a really clear bad guy. The person who broke your heart or whatever. I don’t think there’s anything bad about that, but when that’s the default of songs that catch on, it’s kinda weird. Where it’s like with any other medium, with novels or film, we really want them to explore other versions of ourselves. Not just the most reactionary, spiteful… I dunno. I’m trying to explain what I’m getting at. I feel like there’s not many song-writers that explore situations where… I guess the whole Andy Shauf album where it’s like, bump into your ex, and there’s still all these weird feelings there. Like, there’s still affection there. There’s still like ‘this didn’t work in the relationship.’ You still miss each other a tiny bit. And there’s no clear good or bad guy, but it’s like this weird jumble of emotions that is really bitter-sweet.”
Idle: “I love all the flashbacks on that album. Like, I was thinking about what you said before about ‘people have good intentions, but they sometimes do bad things or hurt each other.’ In that song “Thirteen Hours” where he, like, doesn’t tip the cab driver, then she goes back to tip the driver and gets hit by a car. It’s like nobody is intending for anything bad to happen, and then something really bad does happen. I like that he isn’t afraid to make the first-person protagonist in his songs look like a fool or be all these different things. Like, be someone who is thoughtful and a good friend or funny but then also maybe selfish or obsessive or weird or whatever.”
Mayo: “Yeah, I mean the whole Party album.”
Idle: “It’s so good.”
Mayo: “It’s one of the best albums of all-time, ay.”
Idle: “What a genius.
“So I’m just looking at my notes to see if there’s anything that I missed. I just wrote as a dot point: ‘epic post-rock indie movie soundtracks.’ This is not really a question, just a thing that I hate.”
Mayo: [laughs] “What’s an example of an epic post-rock indie soundtrack?”
Idle: “I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Beautiful Boy?”
Mayo: “No.”
Idle: “It’s like tremolo guitar, and it just swells at the climactic emotional moment in the film, and the music is telling you ‘Feel something! Now!’ This probably won’t be included in the interview, it’s just a huge pet peeve.”
Mayo: “I really like when a film doesn’t tell you what to feel at a specific moment. Where it’s like you watch it and everyone watching it will feel different things at different times. I think it’s awesome.”
Idle: “Yeah, and it’s so tied to the soundtrack. You’ve done some soundtracking, right? You had that video game [Shelf Life] you were doing the soundtrack for.”
Mayo: “Yeah, I’m still working on that. That’s definitely like a dream career, doing film soundtracks. That’d be awesome.”
Idle: “I feel like you’d do a really good job at it.”
Mayo: “I hope some powerful people also think the same.” [laughs]
Idle: “What you’re saying is totally the right attitude in terms of film scoring. Or it’s like an interesting attitude, not being like ‘feel this now’ or ‘it’s the sad part – play sad music.’ Having music that is more ambiguous is a lot more interesting.
“Well, I think that’s probably good. I don’t really have a way to sign off or anything but was there anything else you wanted to talk about in particular?”
Mayo: “Umm, trying to think… I have a new album coming out.”
Idle: “Awesome.”
Mayo: “But it’ll be next year. I don’t know if I can officially announce it, but there’s some exciting stuff.”
Idle: “I like the regular updates that you give about your work.”
Mayo: [laughs]
Idle: “I like how it’s like, ‘60% done’ or ‘85% done.’”
Mayo: “Yeah, I don’t know if that’s like cringey to do. If I’m supposed to act all, like mysterious.”
Idle: “Nah, I like when people aren’t mysterious. I think it’s more interesting.”
Pickle Darling recommends:
The Saddest Music In The World (2003)
Pickle Darling has recently signed to Father/Daughter Records. You can listen to their latest single “King of Joy” below:
Fenn Idle is a musician from Sydney who makes bedroom pop under the name Fenn is cool. He has a degree in composition and was shortlisted for the Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer Competition in 2012.
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