Joel Sena was 11 years old when he met the love of his life.
But the story of his prepubescent romance is less Romeo And Juliet and more The Taming Of The Shrew, and it wasn’t exactly a case of instant mutual appreciation. Indeed, the subject of Sena’s adoration was forced upon him by his parents, and he initially struggled with his chosen partner.
“I started playing saxophone when I was 11,” Sena says. “It was in year six in primary school … My parents chose it for me because my brother had been learning sax. I tried piano and it wasn’t really my thing, but they really wanted me to play some kind of musical instrument and I decided the sax was a little bit cooler. It was only a couple of years after playing it that I fell in love with it.”
Now, all these years later, the sax has totally taken over Sena’s life. It’s the instrument he has used to craft his self-titled EP, due out this month, but it’s also the tool he uses to make a living wage. “I do a variety of little things for work,” Sena says. “I do a bit of instrumental tuition and odd stuff like that. But it’s all music-related. I play weddings on the weekend, all that stuff.”
Additionally, Sena’s classical training at the Australian Institute of Music played a large part in the formation of his craft. “I mean, different people have different opinions on AIM,” he says. “I was lucky to be there when there were a bunch of really great musos, and really great teachers set me on the right path. Just my understanding of musical harmony really took things to another place.”
Harmony being the key phrase. Sena writes and performs fluid, sensual pop songs – tunes perfectly suited for both late-night listening and the thrumming confines of a house party. He writes often, and with a keen ear for melody, proving unafraid to embrace the mainstream.
“I think now I try not to think about songs as I’m writing them too much,” he says. “Initially I did try to think about them a lot. But I mean, with a song like [single] ‘Be With You’, it was just about the sounds that were in my head. It just started out with that melody – just the progression in the chorus – and kind of went from there. I added in parts to that as I heard them.”
A lot of the difficult-to-determine nature of Sena’s creative process comes down to the influence of session musicians, outliers he hires largely because he is excited about bringing in fresh sets of ears to his evolving work. “Definitely going into the studio and hiring musicians to generate unusual sounds – that changes the songs,” he says. “I actually love that. It kind of takes the songs to an unexpected place and really adds to them.”
Of course, being in charge of his own sound – becoming the master of the ship, so to speak – required some effort on Sena’s part, and he had to work hard at assuming his rather authoritarian role as bandleader. “I’ve hired bands before, but this is my first release under my own name,” he explains. “So I was a bit shy at first about telling them, ‘I want it like this’ or ‘I want it like that.’ But as we did more sessions, I got a bit firmer with that.”
The self-titled Joel Sena is out independently on Friday November 11; and he plays Slyfox on Thursday November 24.
