THE SOUND OF JOY

A new baby. A seventh album. A song born on a Greek island under a red Saharan sky. Angus & Julia Stone are leaning into joy, and it sounds like this.

Written by Donna Rishton-Potter

“Humans often look for what makes us different, and music seems to remind us of what makes us similar, what unifies us.”

For nearly two decades, Angus & Julia Stone have occupied a unique space in Australian music. Hazy, layered and hypnotic, their sound has always been something you feel rather than have words for. In a culture that has traditionally favoured the brash and the bold, bands that kick the door down and announce themselves at full volume, the sibling duo have always done something different. Their significance within our country’s musical landscape now feels, in retrospect, both unlikely and entirely inevitable.

Album to album, you can hear two artists evolving in real time. The shimmering tones of Angus’ vintage Fender Telecaster. The layered harmonies. A sound both nostalgic and familiar, shot through with something that feels like memory.

Since recording their debut EP Chocolates and Cigarettes in their father’s living room in Sydney, they have built a body of work that has travelled far beyond Australia’s shores: sold-out nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London, L’Olympia in Paris and Town Hall in New York. And yet despite the platinum records and the phenomenon that is Big Jet Plane, there has always been something unmistakably human, even a little unhurried, about the way they move through the world.

That’s what sets Angus & Julia Stone apart. They don’t demand your attention. They invite it.

And now they’re inviting us into their joy.

Right now, that joy has a very specific shape. Julia has a new baby daughter. The duo’s seventh studio album, Karaoke Bar, arrives September 4 on Virgin Music. Talking to Julia ahead of the album’s release, the connection between the two is immediate.

“The most obvious thing to me at the moment is how lucky I feel,” she says. “Every day is extraordinary, to witness her in the world and how happy she is to be here. Children are incredible, the way they show up and just want to experience things. We all start like that. I feel like that sometimes, excited to just be here for the sake of it. Writing and recording music with Angus has moments like that — where I get lost in the pure joy of making music.”

Where Cape Forestier (2024) was stripped back, born of a period Julia describes as “particularly introspective” for both of them, Karaoke Bar has a different energy entirely. It was written on the road while the pair were touring Cape Forestier internationally and, by Julia’s account, having the time of their lives.

“We couldn’t have been happier on that tour,” Julia says. “We were remembering that none of that other stuff matters when we’re making music and playing it to our fans. We were so stoked. So, in Hydra, France, Mexico City, all these places where we recorded, we were writing songs that felt joyous because that’s how we felt.”

Nowhere captures the spirit of the record quite like Hydra. The Greek island, mythic for its ban on cars and winding stone paths, sits in the Aegean Sea just steps from the former home of Leonard Cohen. The studio felt, Julia says, like it was from another time: big old tape machines, nothing too shiny or organised, yet somehow a perfect fit for the music they were creating.

“The Saharan sands had blown up and made the sky red,” she recalls. “It was like being on Mars. We set up on the middle floor with these huge windows looking out over the Aegean Sea, the red sky just filling the room. Cigarettes being smoked in the kitchen downstairs wafted up through the floorboards and added this cinematic haze… it was pretty cosmic. You just don’t find recording studios like that very often.”

The album title carries the same instinct that has always defined their work. Julia describes a karaoke bar as a place where everyone has the chance to be heard, where strangers become companions and the things that normally separate people fall away.

“I didn’t start writing music with any grand intention,” she says. “It was just a way to express myself. But twenty years on, I can see how music has an incredible way of dissolving differences between people. Humans often look for what makes us different, and music seems to remind us of what makes us similar, what unifies us.”

It’s a philosophy that plays out in their own partnership too. Individually, both Angus and Julia have carved out successful and distinctly different solo careers. Angus is currently on the road with Dope Lemon, a project with a devoted following of its own, and one Northern Rivers locals feel particularly close to, given he has made his home and studio, Sugarcane Mountain, right here in the hinterland. For Julia, the space their solo work creates only makes the duo stronger.

“There’s certainly an ease now with how we create,” she says. “A mutual respect for each other as artists. We have our specific family story, a shared childhood. But I’m more of the mindset that the time spent after that is what continues to make the music interesting to us.”

“Working on our solo projects is what makes the work we do together function,” she continues. “We need that space for our own creative expression. There’s less of a push to have our own vision dominate, which allows something to emerge that feels more natural, something that unfolds on its own.”

For this region, the Angus & Julia Stone story has always carried a particular warmth. The Northern Rivers runs through their family history: their mother born in Lismore, their grandparents raised in Nimbin, childhood holidays spent among the hinterland and coastline.

Angus, for his part, has found his anchor here. Dope Lemon is a sound that feels deeply at home in this landscape: unhurried, warm and rooted. While Julia speaks of returning with affection.

“There’s something about the area that feels very familiar,” she says. “A mix of melancholy, nostalgia and comfort.”

It's a connection that has played out on stage too. From multiple appearances at Splendour in the Grass to Bluesfest, the duo have performed on our stages again and again over the years. Most recently, Angus brought Dope Lemon to Groovin the Moo — a homecoming of sorts for an artist who has well and truly put down roots here.

It's that same spirit of gathering, of being in a room together, that runs through Karaoke Bar. For a region that has weathered more than its share of difficulty in recent years, and for all of us navigating the particular uncertainty and exhaustion of this moment, an album that simply invites you to feel something joyful is not a small thing.

“In the spirit of the record,” Julia says, when asked what she wants listeners to feel, “just feel what you feel. And whatever that is, is okay with us.”

The single Karaoke Bar is available now on all streaming platforms. The album arrives September 4, 2026 via Virgin Music. Angus & Julia Stone’s international tour is underway.