Clementine Zawadzki: You recently spent some time in Paris. Was the plan to always film the video for Sunlight there?
Jarrod Mahon: Well, the trip basically happened because my girlfriend, Tina, lives there at the moment. I did Ariel Pink’s Australia tour last year, and then I did the King Krule tour at the start of this year, and then I just had this break afterwards and realised I could go and see Tina and see Paris. Sunlight was released when I was over there, and I knew I wanted the video to be filmed on a Handycam and not be too polished or anything. So we just set off and took loads of footage that we cut and pasted later. I watched it the other day and I’m stoked with how it’s like a visual diary. I’m glad there’s an essence of it I can look back on, because I think I struggled being present at the time. It’s cool how it’s a representation of that trip and where I was, but also all of this stuff happening at the same time too.

CZ: You make it all sound so easy.
JM: [Laughs] It’s just really strange how everything kind of happened when I was over there. I had nothing planned for those three months, and I came back with a finished single having played a headline show in London, it was the most natural thing. Being in Australia now, it took me a couple of weeks to readjust to where I’m living at the moment because… I don’t know… I was actually a bit afraid to come back.

CZ: Afraid?
JM: Because it looked like I’d done so much stuff overseas, I kind of felt coming back to Australia would be… because Australia in a sense has tall poppy syndrome, so there was a worry it’d look like I’d done all this stuff on purpose, but that’s just my self-confidence.

CZ: Emerson Snowe has been going since your school days – and you’re also in The Creases – so how has this particular project drifted in and out of your life over time?
JM: It started out as a way to show friends my music under a different name so I could get an idea of if they enjoyed it or not. The stuff I was doing at seventeen was probably a lot more influenced by Sufjan Stevens and Bright Eyes or something like that. After I moved to Brisbane and met Joe [Agius, The Creases] and started doing Creases stuff, it took a back step. I wished I could keep doing the Snowe stuff, but looking back now, if I fully committed to it at that point it wouldn’t be the same as it is now. I feel I would’ve put something out and then instantly regretted it a few years later, because my interests have changed so much. It’s a strange thing, when you get to an age thinking you know who you are and you’ve figured it all out, and then years later you look back on it like, “Ahhh, different.” Artists like Beck and Dev Hynes inspire me, it makes total sense to keep changing.

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