Broods Talk New Zealand House Parties and Europe’s Most Inspiring Music Cities

Broods have come a long way from their little beach town of Nelson, New Zealand where they performed with their brothers and sisters in an ABBA tribute band. The indie-pop artists with Universal Music Group have since collaborated with “Royals” hit maker and fellow New Zealander Lorde on their album “Conscious,” and performed at one of the biggest music festivals in the world, Coachella.

Marriott TRAVELER sat down with the brother-sister duo, Caleb and Georgia Nott, at Coachella 2017, to talk about the city where they got their big break, Auckland, and other inspiring musical cities around the world.

Tell us about the music scene in Auckland.

Georgia: In hopes of becoming musicians, we moved to the “Big Smoke”, Auckland, which worked out pretty well for us, apparently. There’s a really cool music scene with lots of bedroom production and collaboration. It’s the kind of musical community where everyone goes to everybody’s shows. It’s very tight-knit.

Caleb: Lots of city support, too. A lot of money goes into the arts and music.

What are your go-to music venues in Auckland?

Caleb: The Powerstation is a really good venue in Auckland. There are heaps of little ones, too.

Georgia: There are lots of local bands up in Wellington, the capital. Lots of fruity music comes out of there – fruity being a little on the weirder side.

Caleb: There’s a crazy house party scene there as well. Every weekend there would be these house shows at people’s houses and there’s a community of those. It’s like two or three bands and 100 people in a house. It’s really cool.

What are your favorite neighborhoods to hang out in Auckland?

Georgia: I think Ponsonby is such a cool place to go and eat.

Caleb: Britomart in the city is also really good for eating out.

Georgia: If you can afford it.

Caleb: The little gems are outside of the city like Dominion Road is where you get the best Chinese food.

Georgia: The cool thing about Auckland is that it’s this massive city with so much happening, but it’s less than an hour drive and you’re in these beautiful beaches and native forests. That’s the thing that’s great about New Zealand; you’re never too far from beautiful nature. You’re never too far from the coast because it’s so skinny.

Where else have you been that has impressed you musically?

Georgia: We just finished doing a tour in Europe with Tove Lo, but we don’t really get a chance to go out and see music.

Caleb: But you could tell that there was such a cool community of musicians in places like Berlin.

Georgia: Berlin was a very, very arty city, not just the music but visual artists.

Caleb: And Stockholm is insane if you’re into pop. Pop runs through their veins, I think.

Georgia: We had an opportunity to go there and actually stay for a decent amount of time. We went there to work and write with some producers. It’s a really awesome city. It’s got the fairytale old history of all those European cities, which coming from New Zealand, we don’t really get.

Does travel inspire you? Do the places you go find their way into your music?

Caleb: I think your environment inspires you a lot without even thinking about it. Like the space that you write in or what view you have when you’re writing, brings on different emotions.

Georgia: For us, going around Europe was especially inspiring because we don’t get to go there that often and that was one of the first tours where we got to see places like Paris and Berlin and Amsterdam for the first time in a really long time. There’s something very special about those places that’s very inspiring. I don’t know if I’m the only person that does this, but every time I travel to a new city, I picture what my life would be like if I lived there. I think: Maybe I’d live down that street, or that would be my house or that’s where I’d have a coffee each morning. I would write in my notebook and it would be like a movie. I live in my imagination.

How do you travel? Do you travel light or pack a lot?

Caleb: We definitely aren’t light packers, especially Georgia.

Georgia: I find packing difficult because I always seem to either take too much or not enough. I never find an in between.

Caleb: I always fill my suitcase until I really can’t close it and then on my travels when I get new stuff, I just drop out the least thing I want in my suitcase.

So, you leave a trail of clothes everywhere you go?

Caleb: Yes, I leave things like socks or T-shirts in the hotel.

Georgia: Don’t pretend you do that on purpose.

Who are you listening to when you travel?

Georgia: It really depends, especially if we are on a bus when there’s 12 people max and everyone wants to listen to different music.

Caleb: At the moment, I’m listening to a bit of Stormzy, quite a bit of hip-hop and Nelly Furtado’s new record. It’s a bit different, a bit rocky.

What’s your favorite memory of traveling together as a family?

Georgia: When we were little we took a family trip to Holland because our mom’s Dutch. So she wanted to take us to where she used to live. We went for like seven weeks and it was some of the best travel memories we have.

Caleb: Holland is very small, so it was very thorough. I think we went to every small town in Holland.

Georgia: It was great trip because our parents were the kind of parents who taught us not to expect too much. So when they did spoil us it was like, “Oh, my god.” It really was an amazing adventure for us.

Where to Find Broods:

Twitter: @broodsmusic

Facebook: @broodsmusic