USA-via-Sydney performer Alex Cameron is feeling alright. He’s in a good place; he’s currently in Los Angeles, rehearsing and getting ready for a slew of U.S. shows. The man you might know better as the melancholy failed entertainer ‘character’ from his 2013 album Jumping The Shark has returned for the new record Forced Witness, and with a bang: while Jumping The Shark was initially released for free on Cameron’s website, Forced Witness was a major label affair, with hype drummed up by cultural tastemakers as varied as Pitchfork and Henry Rollins.
“I always enjoy playing in Australia,” Cameron says. “I’m sad not to come back. I wish there was more work for me there. There’s a way you can work every night here, which is not the case in Australia; you’d play, max, two times a week on average as a musician. As someone who wants to get better and improve, you have to work regularly to get sharper. It’s hard to do that in Australia, so I jumped at the opportunity to come to the States. I look forward dearly to come back to Australia. When I come back, it’ll be kind of exciting.There’s an attitude that’s unique; they [audiences] like to involved.”
While listeners loved Jumping The Shark for Cameron’s downtrodden protagonist, the ’80s inflected melodies softening the blow of our narrator’s self-pity and shame, Forced Witness strips away the artifice of our craggy-skinned host and keeps things more real. Not, mind you, that Cameron has abandoned the streak of darkness that defined his debut, or its interesting penchant for sleaze.
“The songs were better than I was giving them credit for. I was employing a lot of different ideas to get the message across. It was satisfying creatively, but I prefer when the songs lead the way. I’ve been playing with this act for four years, and I’ve learnt that I appreciate the songs more than I do the theatre of it. I’ve just become more comfortable performing. I have embraced the exposed element of getting on stage; welcoming people to that world, like a gothic theatre… It’s grotesque, is what it is.”
Cameron’s music may be rather mournful – not to mention more than occasionally downright creepy – but he maintains that it is designed to be resilient above everything else. That’s thanks largely to his refusal to engage in ‘happy/sad’ binaries, and his habit of accepting contentedness; of the adequate rather than the extreme.
“I stopped being concerned whether I was happy a long time ago; I’m aiming at satisfaction,” he purrs. “If I can go to bed at night knowing I’ve done right with my loved ones, knowing I’ve learnt something about how the world works and the way humans work, gained an understanding of the habits of people, and I can find that thread of hope through my writing or conversation, then I am satisfied. I think happiness is a by-product of satisfaction. You don’t get to plan to be happy. You just get it when you get it, and you’re grateful you have it. People should be aware of that. It’s a chemical response in the mind to satisfaction.”
You don’t get to plan to be happy.
For Cameron personally, satisfaction is achieved by surrendering oneself to the throes of romance. And although his albums wail with the sound of bad sex, sleaze and depravity, Cameron thinks it important that his music has room for a female influence, lest it became a machismo echo chamber.
“From time to time we get an opportunity to relax. I really do recharge when I’m in love; I get a feeling of having a sense of good fortune when I’m with my girl. There’s a really important female influence on this record, all the way to the subject matter to personnel on the record. Even the sound engineer, in my opinion, is the world’s leading sound engineer – she mixed a good decent chunk of the record and two singles. My record is written from a male perspective, but I am under no illusion that I am singular, and that I could get the job done myself. I want collaboration and I, especially, want women involved.”
That said, Cameron’s ‘business partner’ and saxophonist Roy Molloy is his go-to; the two are happily carving out their niche in a fussy world, and working like mad to ‘live the dream’.
“I needed his tone on there; it’s kind of like a totem.” Cameron explains. “It’s an important part of what we do; every chance we have, we get the sax on the record. That’s what he does. He plays a type of sax that’s less pop solo-driven and more melodic. It’s a kind of beacon symbol for what we like.
“He’s a hard-working guy, Roy. We’ve been touring non-stop and we share that mentality, like, ‘Why on Earth would we want time off?’ Why should we, as musicians, expect to do nothing with our days? Between me and Roy, we’ve worked in every kind of field: we’ve done retail, Roy has done physical labour and hospo, I’ve done clerical and government jobs… Roy is highly educated; he went to uni. I didn’t. If we want to make a living off it, it’s gonna take a lot of work.”
Alex Cameron plays Laneway 2018, and the Oxford Art Factory on Tuesday February 13.
While you’re here, have a gander at our 2013 feature with Alex, won’tcha?
