A playlist of songs for a long walk that inspired Jack Davies & The Bush Chooks.

Magenta: This song captures my heart in such a gentle way, it pulls you in and holds you like a child. I couldn’t stop listening to this song when I first heard it. The sparse piano and string arrangements make me want to dance, slowly, by myself. The instrumentation of Michael was definitely influenced by this song, the way the strings fill out the bottom end and leave room for the piano to dance slowly on the top was definitely an inspiration. But oh if only I could sing like Josephine Foster, she captures such a depth and wisdom in her voice, it’s incredible, the whole album is. You should check out the rest of the album!

Farewell Transmission: My friend showed me this song, I absolutely loved the guitar tone and grit of the song. When recording in a studio, it’s often helpful to have reference tracks for certain tones and vibes you want to bring out of instruments, the reference tracks help you communicate that idea to your engineer accurately. When we recorded Broken Glass, this was the one track that helped inform what tone we wanted to create with the electric guitars. The guts of the guitars in this song just blow me away. We ended up just cranking up the amp stupidly loud to get something nice and gritty.

Their Pie: I really love the dry violin sound (airy and without reverb). It’s divisive, I know some engineer friends aren’t into it, but I absolutely love it. I never considered making a violin drier, usually we want them sounding like they’re in a cathedral, but this song really changed my mind. There’s something really intimate and warm about the tone it brings out. That really affected how I wanted Mouldy Tea to sound, I wanted to make it sound real, like you could close your eyes and hear it being jammed on the porch around you.

Old Man: If anyone says they don’t like banjo, show them this song. For a song with hardly any banjo in it, it’s really an incredible example of how effective banjo can be as a rhythmic jangle to lift a section of the song. This song constantly makes me want to play more banjo on songs. In the rest of the section, in terms of arrangement it’s just incredible.

Highland Grace: This song just has an incredible mix, everything sits together like honey and sunshine. Oh and the piano! It’s a song I listen to when I just want my ears to melt.

Small Poppies: This song inspires the heck out of me. Courtney Barnett has always been a huge influence on me as a lyricist, the grunge and the wit and the freedom of the writing is always what I look up to. The guitar lines are also so amazing, just the texture and the soundscape too. I love how the words and the guitars kind of bounce off one another. It makes me want to play more electric guitar - I haven’t really played much since I was a teenager, probably because I have George with me who kills it. When he’s around I just stick to acoustic haha. But maybe in the future I’ll mix it up more! Very glad to have george.

Hymn To Freedom: Lately I’ve been in love with the piano. Unfortunately I’m just not great at playing it! Fortunately I can listen to all the world's best players on my laptop and this one in particular has had my heart recently. I feel like there’s a certain wit to Peterson’s playing. He’ll pull you in with a whimsical blues line, almost like cracking a joke before declaring a more serious melody. At about four minutes in this whimsical pushing and pulling erupts into what feels like some sort of spiritual release, like being thrown into a big space waterfall and realising lots of important things about your life. It’s magical the way music can transcend you into another place and time and I’m thankful to this song for reminding me of that.

Coffee Song: This is a song by our dear friends Frank’s Fish Tank. True freo troubadours who make me fall in love with folk plucking over and over again. Frank has a wonderful ability to write these down to earth and beautiful folk songs, it’s definitely a big inspiration and has accompanied many a bush chooks road trip. Recently I keep ending up jamming this song with friends at home, since it’s such a sweet melody to play and a beautiful chorus “go make my whisky! Make it good, make it strong”. Frank also designs lots of art for us and is an all round legend. An incredible artist both in the music and in the visual worlds.

Thank You: Speaking of an incredible mix, this song could nearly top them all. When recording a bunch of songs you always need refreshers just to keep you sane and remind you what great music sounds like. That is this song for me, the arrangement and tone of the song just feel like pure joy to listen to. It really make me want to get more flutes involved. Maybe in future?

Jim Cain: I’ve loved this song since I was a teen. It definitely has influenced my love for more acoustic instrumentation. Finding your chords and groove, before layering deliberate and soft textures over the top, like waves pushing and pulling between different sections. When the drums and violin hit at 0:18 it feels like I land in some sort of river and I’m floating along. I reckon this tune helped us layer the parts for Some Things Don’t Last a Very Long Time, and be a little more bold with those choices.

One of Us Cannot Be Wrong: Speaking of “Some Things Don’t Last a Very Long Time”, this song undoubtedly was the inspiration for the yelling at the end of the track. If you head to 3:20 of this song you can hear Leonard Cohen wailing away, broken notes and all, it’s incredible and I love it. It captures such a pure emotion, and I wanted to utilise that in our song when (in simplest terms) the song switches from sad to happy! George was a little shy when I asked him to yell, but he eventually obliged and it turned into one of my favourite moments in the EP.

Out of Control: The instrumentation and playfulness of this song really inspired a lot of choices in the studio. From the drums to the piano to the guitar, it’s just a beautifully, yet modestly crafted song that makes me want to dance and cry at the same time. Neil Young always makes me want to craft better harmonies and leave more space in our songs, to allow things to shine through. Our engineer Dan taught me heaps about arranging songs, and Neil Young was often the subject of those conversations, the insight he gave me on songs I thought I already knew was amazing.