Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes lead a dream music career. Despite a tricky band name (pronounced pin-yow) and a homespun debut in 1999’s Sambanova, the duo scooped up a surprise ARIA for it. They went on to dominate the Aussie dance scene with 2003’s Again and 2007’s guests-laden Pnau. Then came an eccentric collaboration with the Sleepy Jackson’s Luke Steele, whose self-titled Empire of the Sun became a global phenomenon. (Even Jay-Z perked up his ears.)

That was just the beginning. Adopted as protégés by none other than Elton John, Pnau are working on an album that will drastically reimagine the legend’s back catalogue. Littlemore has recently acted as composer and music director for the Cirque du Soleil rock opera Zarkana, and a spin-off record is in the making. A second Empire outing is also on the horizon, and the London-based Pnau are coming back to Australia this month for Splendour in the Grass.

On top of it all is the new album Soft Universe. It positions Littlemore on lead vocals and sees him convert an anguished break-up into singalong mega-anthems that graduate from dance to epic pop and rock. They’re huge and hugely catchy, elevating every chorus into the stratosphere. In the below interview, a tireless Mayes puts the album as well as Pnau’s insane workload into context.

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Are you in England right now?

Yeah, I’m in London. We’re rehearsing this week and working in the studio. There hasn’t been a lot of sleep.

What are doing in the studio?

We’re working on the live show, and how that’s all going to pan out. And we’re actually doing a Cirque du Soleil record. Nick’s just done the Cirque du Soleil show in New York, and we’re doing a record in September. So we’re just doing some preproduction for that. And recording various parts. It’s very constant at the moment.

Is Pnau still based in London?

Yeah. Nick’s living in New York right now, and I’m in London. We’re always everywhere. I’m here now, but I’m not really going to be here much for the next six months.

So how are you going to make the new album work live?

We’re just gonna play it the best we can (laughs).

But it’s a full band?

Oh yeah, sorry, you mean specifics? (Laughs.) Yeah, there’s five of us now on stage. We’ve got a new girl who plays keyboard and sings. We have a drummer, I’m playing guitar, we have another guitarist, and then Nick is singing. It’s a five-piece band. It’s good. It’s much more like a live show. It just feels like playing a show, much more so than what we’ve done before.


Pnau - 'Solid Ground'

The new record is a transition from dance music to pop and rock. What did you have to do differently from a production standpoint?

It didn’t really feel that different. It just felt like what was right for what we were doing at the time. It wasn’t like I sat down and went, “Oh, I’m going to have to change my kick drum.” But I did, anyway. I did consciously go for a different sound. But I didn’t really think about it. It just happened. I think the songs are just so much better than what we’ve done before. The most important thing to do with a song is not ruin it with the production. To make sure you just enhance the song. That’s the reason everyone’s listening. No one wants to listen to production. You feel production and it affects the atmosphere and the setting of the song, and the way it touches and communicates with you. But you don’t sit there analysing it like I do. (Laughs.) Normal people don’t do that.

It works behind the scenes to make you feel things.

Yeah, exactly.

How much was this record affected by Empire of the Sun? You can hear some of the same soft-rock influences.

Totally. I think the ’70s soft-rock sound, and to a certain extent the songwriting associated with that, has been an influence on us for a while now. Maybe it’s only come out in the music in the last few years. But absolutely. The last [Pnau] record was still quite clubby I guess. The Empire of the Sun record was kind of an evolution of that, with more lyrics and song structures. And then this record again is where we’ve evolved from that. You can’t help being influenced by what you’ve worked on and who you’ve worked with, more importantly. Obviously working with Luke is an amazing experience. He’s incredibly talented and one of the greatest singers around anywhere.

Are there plans to work with him again soon?

Yeah. Nick spent a little bit of time with him in the studio a couple of weeks ago. So they’re working on that. I don’t know yet, because everyone’s calendar is constantly changing, but I think in the next couple months we’re going to get together, hopefully in New York, and do some stuff. But it’s really exciting, actually, to head into a second Empire record. Because obviously [the first] did very well. We weren’t really expecting anything to happen, so it was a surprise.

And you’re working on an album with Elton John as well?

Yeah, which isn’t finished yet. Basically a couple of years ago, when we first started working with him, he and his manager at the time came up with this great idea of giving us all the multi-tracks [of Elton John’s back catalogue]. Not to make like a mega-mix record like other bands have done, but to do something new and make an interesting musical landscape out of different excerpts or whatever you want to call them. Get all these musical phrases and incorporate them into new music.

So that’s what we’ve done: we’ve made songs that weren’t recognised as traditional Elton John songs, either because they have components that were more left of centre or were so obscure that people haven’t been exposed to them because they’re not the massive hits. He’s done so much great stuff, it’s really hard in a way. There’s such a great catalogue, and it’s all very accomplished music. (Laughs) It’s hard to improve on ‘Rocket Man’ or ‘Tiny Dancer’.

It must be intimidating.

It is. It’s actually quite daunting to play it for him, more so than anything. Because, y’know, he wrote it all. Him and [lyricist] Bernie [Taupin]. It’s pretty incredible, really, to do it. We could have done it the easy way. There’s lots of software around that makes things like that easier now, but we’ve chosen to do it properly and do it the old way. Which is doing everything by hand.

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