Interview: Womb 'One Is Always Heading Somewhere' Release Tour

Womb are embarking on an Australasian release tour of their new Flying Nun Records album One Is Always Heading Somewhere, beginning this weekend at Ngāhinapōuri's Te Rore Community Hall and Tāmaki Makaurau's Double Whammy. Oscar Toy (Lavender Menace) chatted with Cello Forrester and Haz Forrester about the Aotearoa sibling trio's (with Georgette Brown) new record and more...

Womb – Album Release Tour – NZ/AUS

Friday 28th March – Te Rore Community Hall, Ngāhinapōuri w/ Big Sigh*
Saturday 29th March – Double Whammy, Tāmaki Makaurau w/ Hun Lynch*
Saturday 5th April – Meow, Te Whanganui-a-Tara w/ Juniper May
Friday 11th April – Space Academy, Ōtautahi w/ Mona Vasa*
Saturday 26th April – The Curtin, Naarm (AUS) w/ Pastures, Japes

*Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Oscar Toy: I’ve got a couple of questions lined up for you, and the first one, my mum actually wanted me to ask you guys… are you really siblings?

Cello Forrester: Yeah we are. Me and Hazzy are twins, and our sister Georgette is in the band, she’s the drummer, so she’s our older sibling.

Haz Forrester: I was gonna say, we’ve got kind of like a blended family, so we’ve got different dad combos, and we’ve got three other siblings in Australia.

What is it like, working with family members like that?

H: What’s it like working in a band dynamic? It’s pretty easy, I think for me. I do a lot of small projects with other people, but I think it’s really fun to be in a band with siblings and I wouldn’t want to be in a band with other people. What about you Cello?

C: I've been thinking about it a lot because me and Hazzy are together right now, but usually Hazzy lives in Nelson, so we don’t get to see each other that much. I think, especially being siblings with distance from one another, it’s such a special thing to get to do, to make music together, and just to be working on this thing that keeps us really connected and close, even though we’re living in really different places.

Is it ever awkward, or do you feel like you have to behave around each other?

C: Maybe the opposite! I feel like we can be...

Less professional?

C: Yeah!

H: If you’re with like, your friends, you kinda have to… I feel you’ve gotta behave better. I feel like the worse (we’ve been) is like, bratty, just saying what’s on your mind and not being censored.

C: I feel like maybe it helps us be quite transparent in making music together, because then you can be really straight up about what you think about something, and I think that really helps have clarity with getting to the closest sound.

You’ve already got that bond — you don’t have to come together over time, you’re already close.

C: It feels really lucky, it feels like there’s a natural way we all want to make music together, through our upbringing and what music we listen to. There’s like a language there that we already know to speak with one another.

You used to be all Wellington based, but now you’ve moved out to different towns, and you did everything (on the new album) in your own home studios. Is that a big change of pace from how you normally work?

C: We’ve always done a lot of home recording, I think the one exception is with one album that we did, the first album that we recorded with Rohan Evans at the Wine Cellar here in Auckland. But apart from that we’ve always kind of done home recording, like bedroom recording, so that felt pretty similar in that way…

But normally you’d be closer together?

C: Totally, I think that was quite a difference. That was strange, to not be together. But it also, like I was saying before, really showed me how special it is to get to do that with Hazzy and Georgette, because otherwise we would be really far away from one another!

How did that work? Did you send files between each other? Are there songs where maybe one person is playing everything?

H: We kind of all made little demos that we’d share. That would be our own little corners of the Womb world, and that was the early start of it. Cello is the singer and lyricist, so they would work on a bunch of stuff with guitar, I was doing some some instrumental kind of stuff and then Georgette was working on some different percussive elements, and then we bring it together. Then we got fortunate enough to get two really nice times together, one in Whanganui, when I was living there with my partner, and then also at this spot in Wellington, that was Georgette's studio, Mycelium, there was a space that we used for a bit. Those were really charged times where we could do a lot of work together, but other then that it’s a lot of sharing stuff online, which can be less exciting.

It’s actually a bit funny, because, I live in Wellington, but I'm actually doing this interview in Whanganui, because I'm up for the weekend visiting my parents.

C: That’s perfect!

H: I was living at the Tylee Cottage, through the Sarjeant Gallery.

C: Hazzy’s partner Chris was there doing a residency. A lot of the development of the songs came through a couple visits where we came up and saw Hazzy and Chris for a couple days a time.

Do you think being in small towns influenced how you were writing and what you were writing about?

C: I like that question, what do you think Haz?

H: I don’t think it was the small towns specifically... we’ve spent so long in Wellington, that was kind of a central part to our friend community and also the music community that we’re a part of. When we were branching out, with Cello and Georgette moving to Tāmaki, and I was living in Whanganui, then Whakatū, Nelson for a bit, and I think that experience maybe helped us appreciate us being in this country. I think the landscapes are definitely very important.

C: Yeah definitely…

H: Do you know Roy Montgomery? Musician from Christchurch… and then Grouper put out, more recently, this album called Scenes of the South Island... it’s a cool album, I feel like you get the sound of Aotearoa and the landscapes.

The way the land is shaped and everything?

H: Yeah, and the unique climate here. I feel like with the record, you get a really good sense of the climate. But I don’t know if we tried to… maybe…

C: Yeah I reckon it’s there, somewhere, in the album. It even makes me think — the final track on the album, 'One Is Always Heading Somewhere', there’s cicadas sampled in there. They were recorded at the festival Camp a Low Hum in 2024. So that kind of landscape is in there, physically, in that way as well.

I was there for that festival and I remember there being lots of bugs…

C: Yeah! So that’s there, present in the album as well.
 

What’s it like getting tracks that you did in home studios — sort of lo-fi tracks — what’s it like getting tracks like that mixed at a world class studio like Roundhead?

C: Really fun. I think that was such a special thing for us to do, it just felt really cool to get to work with De (Stevens) as well. I think that kind of process worked really well because we did the production of the songs ourselves, so we got the songs sounding where we wanted them to be before we went into Roundhead. Then we were really lucky to work with De and brought out all the sounds and made them a lot more hi-fi. I feel like that kind of combination was really special, us getting to be really hands on with everything, and then getting De to do stuff at the end felt really amazing. Then we worked with Adrian Morgan to master it, he’s based in the States. He did a really amazing job as well, he just kind of made everything sound smoother.

H: I think with me going to Roundhead, just because it’s such a prestigious spot, De welcomed us in and immediately was just like, “Do you guys want a cup of coffee?” and was real gentle.

C: He was such a sweetie, we love him.

If you don’t mind me asking, is there a big difference between the finished song writing demos and the mixed version you can buy?

C: I think our songs are essentially demos, which is a fun approach we like to do. I think we always fall in love with the demos way more then the mixed version of the song, so I feel like that’s a cool aspect. What you’re hearing… they are the demos, in a way? But I think they would sound pretty similar. I think the production is all there, but then there’s that hi-fi hand that De lent to everything.

A lot of these songs feel really lived in, sort of personal experiences. Is there any truth to the lyrics? Are they all true stories, or are some of them fiction?

C: All of them are true, because I write the songs, I do various writing, and I definitely like to write fiction. I like to leave the fiction to the fiction that I write, and then these songs… they’re all just completely true. All real moments in my life that are probably kind of personal and I need to reflect on them in some way?

Do you keep a diary?

C: I journal every day. Like right now. I started doing that when I wrote the album. These days I write every day, it’s a nice way to start my morning.

When I was listening to the album, that’s how a lot of the songs came across, like diary entries.

C: I think they definitely have that, they are quite personal for me so that probably translates. I like what you’re saying with the kind of…lived in experience, because I think with us all recording at our own studios and bedrooms, just whatever house we’re living in… I think it’s nice to feel the presence of those homes in the album. Having those little touches feels really nice.

The way I try to write the songs — they’re both quite private, and quite open at the same time? I feel if I’m listening to a song, there’s a lot more context that a listener that didn’t know my life wouldn’t know. It’s hidden behind some stuff…

H: I feel you’re still holding the door open in a way…

C: Yeah, it’s kinda vague.

It lets you apply it to your own life.

C: I think that's my favourite thing with listening to other peoples music, if I'm like, “I know what they’re saying, but I don’t really know what they’re talking about”. But I can apply my own life onto a song, I think that’s a really beautiful thing that art can give people.

I’ve got a couple more questions here, just because we’re running short on time, I'll try to hit you with some more heavy ones. Do you like to align yourself with the current really big dreamy indie pop stuff that’s happening in New Zealand? Like Vera Ellen, Fazerdaze and Office Dog, or are you more… outside of that rock world?

H: In terms of what we listen to — I think we just listen to such a variety of stuff. I think the music that we make is just based on our ability to be, as musicians, what sonically we were led to? Cello has a sound on guitar and a way of playing that they built and stuck to over the years. I am drawn to different synth sounds and Georgette has got quite a unique drumming style. She learnt drums in the last ten years and is kind of a newer drummer, and less trained. So I feel like the sounds that we make are from those influences. I think we all listen to a lot of pop music, but we definitely have a deep appreciation for New Zealand music. Like all the bands that you listed, and then the bands on Flying Nun and our collaborator Ben Woods, who’s down in Ōtautahi, in Lyttleton…

C: It feels like in a wider sense, that’s kind of a community that we belong to. Which feels really special, to just be in community with those artists, and various others.

H: I think we share an approach and stuff. From what I know about Vera and Fazerdaze, in that they both do a similar process to us, with doing lots of our own demos, and then taking it to someone, and then building the songs that way? I know Fazerdaze is like an icon of bedroom music... That’s shared with a lot of bands that we’re associated with.

I got one last question for you — is there any new music that’s coming out that really excites you?

C: Oooh so much. The School Fair album, which De Stevens is in. That album, I've listened to it like a hundred times, it’s so good. That’s definitely been on repeat a lot.

H: Yeah, there’s heaps of albums coming out here, like Marlon's new singles... I'm looking forward to that album (Te Whare Tīwekaweka). Our friend Martin Sagadin has a bunch of music that’s gonna be released. Martin’s a film maker, but also a musician.

C: Honestly so many. I always feel kind of astonished by people making music here. It’s just amazing, I feel so lucky.

H: All the bands we’ve been playing with, I’ve been listening to a lot. So on the tour, we’re playing with Japes, Pastures in Melbourne, Hun Lynch, who I’ve never seen play before, but I’ve listened to their music and it’s really incredible. Mona Vasa in Ōtautahi is a newer project, which I’m very, very excited for, the songs I’ve heard are incredible. Who else?

C: We’ll be playing with Juniper May in Wellington, Then with Big Sigh we have our first show in the Hamilton region.

H: All awesome acts that we’re very excited to join up with.

Thank you so much guys, for coming out and doing this. This has been a really pleasant conversation.

C: It’s been so lovely to talk to you!

'One Is Always Heading Somewhere' is out now via Flying Nun Records — you can order the clear vinyl LP edition HERE.