q&a: cosmo jarvis

While countless Australian bands fight for local airplay, Cosmo Jarvis, a rather precocious 21 year old Brit, has had his single, ‘Sure As Hell Not Jesus’ swooped up by triple j and whose star is quickly rising, with his controversial video clips and broad subject matter, from religion to gay pirates. But despite first impressions, this is one serious music-maker who’s even managed to catch the attention of renowned producer, Brian Eno.

He talks to lip about songwriting, bad poetry and, of course, gay pirates.

Can you tell us a little bit about your songwriting process and how your EP and your album have come together.
The writing process completely depends on the song. I usually write straight to recording, there’s no in-between, I don’t write it on a guitar first. Sometimes I do, but usually, it starts off with a musical idea or a mood that I want to portray somehow. And then I’ll kind of fill in the gaps depending on which area of the song is most well developed to begin with, whether it’s a riff or a lyric or just a story that I want to convert. It totally depends on the recording, the song even. The album has all been written…the tracks were already written at various times from when I was around 13 til now and none of the songs have anything to do with each other in terms of subject matter or musical presentation. It’s sort of more a compilation than an album, but I get in shit for saying that.

Is that because nowadays people do consider albums as a compilation rather than an entity in itself?
I don’t know, I guess so. To me, if you’re going to sit down and write an album as a work, as a complete work, that album’s written to be released under the one name and the one idea, then that will be an album to me. Because people are always saying, that’s a great album, whatever album it is, but it hasn’t been done this way for me yet. But it will be once I get rid of my back catalogue, once I’ve gotten everything out and done, I can just begin to release them chronologically as they happen, and then I’ll be making albums.

What is your back catalogue look like at the moment then, how much material have you got?
I’ve got loads of crap, loads of instrumental stuff, loads of songs, loads and loads of recordings made on these seven hard drives that wait until they’re summoned.

How’s your music being received? I know that here ‘Sure As Hell Not Jesus’ has been picked up by triple j, but what’s your reception been like in the rest of the world?
Um, pretty crap to be honest! Here, in the UK, it’s been going okay on a few stations and a few stations have been really really supportive and played me loads here, but the big dogs have not. And they give the most bullshit excuses. But it’s going okay, just a lot slower, it’s going to be more of an uphill climb I think, here.

Have you gotten much press in Australia then?
Yeah, a few things. The other day, triple j did a phone-in thing and that was cool, except I didn’t realise it was a phone-in thing and I swore all the way through but then they told me that didn’t even matter! So I was over the moon.

How seriously do you take your songwriting? Things like gay pirates don’t come across the most profound thing, do you ever see it as a bit of fun?
Not really because making recordings, playing music, writing songs, makings songs and acting, are pretty much the only things I do and have done for so long that it’s sort of just, it’s necessary just to improve on and to develop many of those ideas and just to try and keep making new things and that’s all there is. I take it more seriously than any human relationship I could possibly have, or anything like that. It is the most serious thing I have. In some cases, the only way of developing an idea to the point of creation is to just do it in a kind of funny way. In a way that isn’t going to be taken so seriously because bad poetry has just become poetry nowadays and so everybody can just scrap a few words together and make it sound like it’s really profound and then people will listen to it and say, oh my god, that’s so fucking deep.

Is music then your foremost priority amongst all the other things that you do?
Music, acting and film are on a rotation. I would like to develop film and acting more because I haven’t done as much of it and I feel like an old man with music because I’ve been doing it for so long.

Is there anything you really hate being asked in interviews?
When people ask me what the idea behind ‘Gay Pirates’ was!

Cosmo Jarvis’s EP, Sure As Hell Not Jesus, is now digitally available worldwide. His album, Is the World Strange or am I Strange? will be released on August 15.