‘We were exhausted – mentally unwell’: Empire of the Sun on the downside of success

“Things are good. I don’t think things in the Empire have ever been better. We’re in a thoroughly creative flow state right now. We’re on a vision quest of sorts,” says Nick Littlemore, his honeyed voice simultaneously intense and strangely laid-back.

“Lord” Littlemore is calling from Hawaii, where he and “Emperor” Luke Steele are already working on their fifth album, having dropped their fourth, Ask That God, just a month ago. “Well, we waited so long to do the last one,” Littlemore says. (It was eight years.) “We thought, without further ado – because there’s certainly been a lot of that.”

Logical schedules are not relevant in the world of Empire of the Sun and perhaps that’s why they have maintained such an idiosyncratic and challenging career. Their hook-drenched electro pop music is unique enough to withstand the winds of fashion, while their Aztec-on-Mars visual aesthetic brings out the playfulness and joy of their tracks. They’ve discarded the Native American headdresses they used to wear; Littlemore has previously spoken about being more sensitive to cultural appropriation, saying: “I’d hate to think we ever offended anyone.”

Both Steele and Littlemore have flourishing careers outside Empire of the Sun: Steele has released two critically acclaimed albums with the Sleepy Jackson as well as a solo record, and has worked with the likes of Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Littlemore, meanwhile, is one third of the dance music act Pnau, which has a longstanding relationship with Elton John. In 2021 Pnau produced Cold Heart, a disco medley of John songs sung with Dua Lipa that became the biggest song of that year, with more than two billion streams.

Luke Steele performs as Empire of the Sun in Paris in 2016.

But Littlemore and Steele are two artists with reputations for perfectionism, which are naturally going to clash. Over almost 20 years of collaboration, there have been long periods of no communication. Littlemore acknowledges there were battles of the ego in the past, but says they have reached what he calls a “harmonic resonance”.

“I feel like the noise has settled into a sort of perfect tonality. I think we’re in the quickening right now,” he says.

“Success is often something that crushes you to the point where you don’t know who you are any more. It didn’t quite happen to me, but the effect on us collectively has been challenging. I think it was Snoop Dogg who said, more money, more problems?”

Nonetheless, Steele and Littlemore are drawn to each other. There’s a mutual fascination. “I love how hungry we both are,” Steele says. “That hunger is what kept the band searching.”

“I feel that he [Luke] has the voice of a generation. It’s a privilege to work with him,” Littlemore adds. “And it’s super cool if we can come up with stuff together. That’s super powerful. In the last two years, it’s been really quite energetic and we’ve been a lot more in touch with each other. The communications have been really open, which I love. I think that happens when you become older artists.”

“We work hard to find the magic,” Steele adds. “We’ll fly around the world four times and work on a song for three years … We’ll abandon things and then resurrect them and do whatever it takes. And we’ve always worked like that, to the point of exhaustion, to make sure it has a real precious beauty about it.”

A binding factor in Empire’s longevity has been the spirituality that underpins the music. For Littlemore, music is a transcendent experience, sometimes accompanied by sacraments; he first dropped LSD at 13 and named the fifth Pnau album, Changa, after a psychedelic cocktail. Things have calmed down in recent years: in 2019 Littlemore had to retreat while he recovered from Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a version of shingles that paralysed half his face and affected his hearing. And last year, he became a father for the first time.

Steele’s spiritual journey started when he was born-again. “I was in my 20s and I put everything in my strength to be the hero of the pop world and then it just came crashing down,” he recalls. “I just got cornered. I’ve been through those big depressions where you just cornered and you’re like, no way out.”

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Steele’s brother Jesse, who had also played in the Sleepy Jackson, realised he was not coping well and, in Luke’s words, “rescued” him by taking him on a midnight stroll on a pitch-black night, then to church the next day. “And there was this Irish preacher there, Colin Murphy, who was just put on the planet to talk to Luke Steele,” he says. Ever since, he has put his faith in divine guidance, especially when it comes to music. “For things to work,” he says, “it’s got to have God’s favour on it. It has to be spirit-led.”

Littlemore and Steele began working on Ask That God back in 2017. Both were “really determined” but “it just got really, really tough”, Steele recalls. “Nothing worked and we just got really frustrated with each other. We were exhausted – mentally unwell.”

The pandemic halted their recording sessions and they “abandoned the whole thing”. Littlemore split his isolation between Sydney and Los Angeles, while Steele and family hunkered down in a Unabomber-style cabin in north California, where the local store sold only beer and ammunition.

“Looking back, it was a great moment to leave the castle and just say, it’s over,” Steele says.

Eventually they returned to the album, pulling it together over the past two years in recording sessions in Japan, Sweden and the US. Steele has spent the last few months developing the new Empire of the Sun live show for their world tour, which starts in Australia in October, before heading to Mexico, the US and hopefully parts beyond. He envisions the shows being “like an opera”.

“I’ve never liked the idea of just throwing in songs here and there,” he says, before adding what might be Empire of the Sun’s vision statement: “We’re really hungry for something that’s not like everything else.”