CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 150: PICTURE THIS ON RETURNING TO AUSTRALIA FOR THEIR HEADLINE TOUR

Interview by Angela Croudace.

After making their Australian debut in October, Irish four-piece, Picture This, return down under for a headline show in May. Futuremag Music caught up with them ahead of the tour.

FMM: You've gone from a small-town Irish band to selling out arenas pretty quickly. Have you ever got a chance to actually process how fast that all happened?

Picture This: I don't think so. It's only when somebody kind of says stuff back to you that I find that's when I really believe we did that. I think both of us and the whole band are always so focused on what's happening next, and we're always looking forward.

I think there's definitely moments of reflection that you have, but for the most part, you're in the middle of it and everyone else is just kind of witnessing this whirlwind that you're part of, which I think is actually a good thing. We’re very lucky.

FMM: Giants is all about reclaiming that childlike confidence. Was there a moment where you felt like you'd lost that and had to find it again?

Picture This: Yeah, there definitely was. I think everyone has the same experience, but when Coronavirus came, I think it hit our industry most. And for us, we were still a new band really, breaking into new territory and that just kind of stopped everything. It's the first time you look back on yourself and everything you've done and you start blaming yourself for things and you start making stupid decisions. I guess that's when confidence might have been low, but I’m actually glad we got to that point and we knew what it felt like so that we could come back stronger, really. And I think that's what we did, thankfully.

FMM: Did it have you thinking about the past and nostalgia?

Picture This: Yeah, obviously, it was a terrible worldwide thing to happen, but for us, it came at a good time because it allowed us to reflect for the first time. That first half of being a band from 2015 to the start of 2020, that was just a total whirlwind because that was your life going from zero to a million in a short space of time. We would have just kept rolling with the punches, but having that time to reflect was welcomed. I think it allowed us to look around and be like, okay, what do we want to do going forward when the world starts spinning again? It was actually an amazing time. It allowed us to clear out a lot of stuff that we didn't need to take back into the world with us and take on some things that would help us. It was a great moment of reflection, I think, for everybody. But, for us, it was amazing actually.

FMM: The music video for Giants made me teary. Where did the idea come from?

Picture This: I just had the idea of a fairytale figure as a personification of innocence in childhood and how you often think of children having an imaginary friend, but never really an adult having one. It was a personification of what if an adult did have that imaginary childhood friend come back and show them you can still have innocence and fun, even as an adult. That’s what I wanted to get across in the video. The character was a clear way of doing that, and I think it came across really well in the video.

FMM: Did you guys have any imaginary friends as kids or do you have one now still?

Picture This: I had one as a kid. I don’t really remember anything else, but I do remember it's a memory in the back of my head. I think I have one now. It's a good idea, actually. I might pick that back up.

I had a few when I was a kid and one of them was a caterpillar. My parents started to get worried because I started talking about them a lot, but they're gone now.

FMM: Do you think that message hits differently for fans now given how heavy the last few years have been?

Picture This: I think it does, yeah. I think now more than ever, the world has become so not innocent. That's a terrible, terrible way for the world and for civilisation to go. I think in us you need innocence. You need an ability to not be looking at everything through a cynical lens, and it's really difficult to not do that in the times we're living in. So I think if we, especially as adults, can reclaim a bit of innocence and a bit of childlike wonder and a bit of empathy… I think when you're young, you have a lot of empathy for yourself and for everything around you. You feel everything. I know I did when I was younger, and you maybe lose that. You can get a bit jaded as you get older and bit worn by the world. I think now more than ever, having a bit of naivety is good, because everybody knows everything about everything, or thinks they do, and that takes up a lot of mental energy.

I think it's okay to kind of let your mind wander off into more creative realms and more interesting kind of prospects than always being stuck in the hard fact world that we kind of are forced to live in.

FMM: You guys described the Hamburg session as effortless. What was it like being in the room together, creating that song in real time?

Picture This: I remember that day being quite interesting because we had spent a lot of time in Berlin. We got on a train to Hamburg, and were meeting Michael for the first time, who is a superstar in Germany, and we've heard about him a lot. When you're meeting someone to write a song with them, it’s weird, because you’re strangers. It’s something that we don't like necessarily. But then, it was just nice to find someone who was similar to us and treated it similarly to the way we would treat it, and very natural. It's an interesting thing when you're writing a song with strangers. It can go a million different ways, and you always hope that it goes the way that it went for us when we were writing Giants. You always kind of want to aim for that kind of session, so we were lucky we got that. But ,I think it is down to the kind of person Michael is, and the two guys. We also wrote with Patrick and Ricardo, and we were all on a similar mindset. We wanted to do a similar thing. Ryan brought in a brilliant idea, which was the verse you hear now, and the concept was already there, which Ryan brought in. Sometimes that’s great - you just inject a great into into a room of creative people and it just grows legs. We’re just thankful that’s exactly what happened.

FMM: The turnaround was pretty quick on creating this song, yeah?

Picture This: Yeah, we just did in a day, and we just thought, ‘That’s it - Let’s go release it.’ And Michael and Ryan both sang their verses in their parts, and it just felt like it clicked. It was 100. There was nothing else to think about and it was done. That’s the dream for creative people.

FMM: Is there anyone else you're thinking you'd like to collaborate with in the future?

Picture This: We're always open to that, for sure. We've collaborated with a few people now, actually. It's always fun. We’re in between album cycles at the moment - we’re not in the middle of an album campaign and we don’t have one coming out anytime soon. I always love collaborating with other artists in that period because we just love writing and creating all the time. We could just go away and not release anything, but this is a period where we can experiment a bit. We’re always open to it. I think there's a lot of artists who never want to collaborate and that's cool., but for us, we've always kind of enjoyed it. You always learn something from a collaboration. Like with Michael, he was just such a professional I found in the studio when it came to cutting his vocal and doing everything. I learned a lot from him. Even if the song never comes out, learning something is enough. Well, it's not enough. You want something to come out, but learning something is a great bonus and we definitely want to collaborate again.

FMM: What's the most random or unexpected thing that's inspired a song for you?

Picture This: We have a song called LA House Party. That was a totally random night we had. We are from a small town in Ireland and it’s very different to an LA house party. We showed up to a house party and there was security outside, which I’d never seen before. There were a lot of blacked-out cars and it was a guy who owned a record label. When we got in, it was just crazy - low lights, people with their hoods up, a lot of looking around to see who’s who. We’re just used to fun at a house party in Ireland - everybody’s chatting, telling stories and playing music. This was the opposite. I was just so compelled to mark that in history by writing a song about it, because that was so strange that we can’t just move on from that.

FMM: Did you party hard? Or did you take it more relaxed?

Picture This: We had just come from the club and we were ready to go, but it was just buzz kill when we got there.

FMM: When writing a song like Giants, do you start with the lyrics or melody first?

Picture This: It really depends on the song. Sometimes, it’s melody first. Sometimes, it’s an idea - mostly they come together like a melody and generic lyrics. I had the idea for Giants, as a concept - the lyric and melody of the verse came together as one. I know, Jimmy, you'd sometimes refer to it as word vomit from me, where it just comes out. That was a nice way of doing it, because that’s something I don’t usually do . Usually when I start a song, I’ll finish the whole thing, but with Giants, I’m really glad I didn’t finish it because it meant I could bring in just the verse to the room that day and allow everyone else in the room to bring their magic in. That, I couldn’t have done myself. But, every song comes out different.

FMM: Is there a song you wish you’d written yourselves?

Picture This: For me, it's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith. I think that's one of the greatest songs ever written. I'd love to be able to say I wrote that song.

I think for me, you were always on my mind - that song. I'm a big lyric lover.

FMM: Did you guys step out of you comfort zone when writing Giants?

Picture This: I don't think so, really, to be honest. When you're being creative in a creative scenario, you always want to be out of your comfort zone, in my opinion. You want to find things that are uncomfortable and kind of transcend you a little bit. I don't feel like we're out of our comfort zone, but writing in general with other people is kind of going out of your comfort zone. It’s risky. That could ruin your whole day, your whole week, or ruin the track. I would say, objectively, probably, we were out of our comfort zone, but at the end of the day, you forget all the bad things.

FMM: If someone watched you guys Behind The Scenes for a week, what would surprise them most?

Picture This: I've never been asked that question. Really good question. I think probably how quiet we are, maybe. When you're in a band, everyone thinks that you're kind of full on all the time, and you're constantly supercharged, which we are when it comes to creativity, but I think we’re actually quiet. That comes form a certain level of comfort we have with each other. We can sit. Me and Jimmy have done car journeys where an hour passes and we haven't said a word to each other. That comes down to a really close friendship. That goes for me and Jimmy, but it also goes for the four of us in the band.

I've often felt that from other people where they're like, you guys are quiet. That's just where we're from and our dynamic as a group, and I think that’s would surprise people.

FMM: How does that affect you when you step onto stage in front of thousands of people?

Picture This: I think it's actually the perfect balance because you're ready for that at that point. When we first started playing shows, that was an absolute shock to the system. I still don’t think my nervous system has ever recovered from that first time. That's the release that when we get onto the stage, we can be as free and wild and loud and energetic as we want. I think we'd just be worn out if we were the same on stage as we are off stage. Some artists are like a lightning bolt both on and off stage, and I don’t know where they get that kind of energy from. I like we have the balance of both.

FMM: You guys are coming to Australia for your first headline tour. What are you guys envisioning?

Picture This: We were in Australia recently in October, and it was one of the most enjoyable times I think we've ever had collectively. Australia is such an incredible place in general. We played some shows as a support act and we also did some pop up shows and I just love going to the opposite side of the world and seeing someone who actually knows who you are. That is such an amazing feeling. We recently saw the ticket sales and it’s amazing to see so many people who are buying tickets. We have to put on the best show imaginable. You can't go down to Australia and half arse it because it's far away. We really want to put on the best show possible for these people because these are brand new people for us. We've toured Europe a lot of times and Ireland and the UK, but we've never done a headline tour in Australia before. We don't know who's going to be there. It's going to be brand new fans and brand new people. The idea of putting on a headline show in Australia excites me so much.