On the back of their wildly successful debut album, Angus and Julia Stone have literally conquered the world with a slew of festival performances and a world tour. Yet for all the hype surrounding this laidback brother and sister duo from Sydney’s northern beaches, they remain the down-to-earth strummers whose folk ditties have brought punters out in droves. OUTinPerth was lucky enough to have Julia take time out from A&J’s sold out national tour to answer a few questions…

Your first full-length album is entitled ‘A Book Like This.’ How is your album a book? What stories does it tell?

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I suppose it is like a book, in the sense that it tells a story for us of the time we spent making the record – the people we met, the songs we wrote, the places we lived. Every day inside of that time has a story and somehow those stories come through in the record.

According to your bio, your musical talents come from your family. What are your earliest memories of music? At what point, did you realize that you were meant to be a musician?

I don’t think we ever realized ‘oh this is what we are meant to be.’ It sort of happens like you think this is fun… yeah, oh cool… I like singing…. I love being in the school band… I like playing open mic nights… I could play another show…. it’s a trip recording… and so on. It is still happening a bit like that. Every day we find something new that makes it great to play music. Our family is musical but they are so many other things. It was never set in stone that we were going to play music as a full time thing.

How would you describe your musical collaboration? What makes it work? What are the greatest difficulties in being a brother-sister duo?

What makes it work and what makes it difficult are the same thing – we know each other pretty well. We can finish conversations in our head. That gives me a great sense of knowing and belonging… and sometimes you plain just annoy each other.

Although you grew up in Northern Sydney and released your first EPs here, your music career seemed to really take off with your move to the UK. Why do you think so many Australian artists have to leave the country to be appreciated back home? What did you learn in the UK that which you could not have found in Australia?

I don’t think you have to leave Australia to be appreciated. I think leaving Australia is the same for us as it is for anyone who wants to travel. We had a chance to see the world and we took it. We miss being home all the time, but traveling and spending time in London has brought us all as a band together and we have been through so many crazy experiences that we most definitely wouldn’t have had if we had stayed in the comfort and loving surroundings of our home town.

What are your favourite Angus & Julia Stone lyrics?

I always love what Angus writes – he has a beautiful way of describing the world he sees. I like seeing the world through his words. Right now I am thinking of ‘the circus came, and packed up their things, when there’s no one around, we’ll be high as kings without the things, like jewels and gold.’

You are well-known for your free-spirited dancing and twirling on stage. Will fans ever get to see Angus do a little jive on stage?

Angus always has a little dance… he is dancing inside his mind….with colours and shapes…

What is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you on stage?

We always leave things off stage, start songs and don’t have the trumpet or the harmonica [and] have to run around looking for it while the song plays on.

Many of the images on your website and MySpace seem to evoke a musical period of protest songs and Woodstock. Where did the ideas for these images come from? What drew you to the costumes and colouring you used in them?

Our drummer Mitchell takes the photos. I have always liked pictures with not too much colour, but enough that the eyes can fill in the rest, that the imagination can paint the rest of the colours in and make them whatever they want to be, like black and white. There is so much more space and quiet for the imagination to sing.

Likewise, your music videos, particularly the one for The Beast, seem taken straight from the pages of a childhood fantasy. Where did the concept for it come from? What is the story that it is telling?

It is something about light and dark, god and the devil at work in a small factory in Zeebor – a town on the outskirts of this universe – facing the ever evasive truth of why we are here. Like, is that road through the dark forest, through the very essence of our evil, going to give us the true freedom we all crave so? Must we be bound fiercely to these chains before we can understand love? Or should I just go back to the castle and drink tea and eat cookies and forget this ever happened…

There is no argument like that between siblings – what’s the biggest row you have ever had?

Something about sunglasses and stardust… where they both come from.