What’s the story behind the name CLEWS? Grace: When we were both in high school, we had a vision of being in a one-word band like Blur or Oasis (and we wanted to sound like them too, though that feels like a fever dream now). Lily rang me as I was walking into school one day and said, “If we’re ever in a band, I think we should be called ‘clews’.” Since then, the word and name have taken on a meaning of its own as we’ve built the CLEWS world.

Sum up your new album, What’s Not To Love?, in a sentence. Lily: When the world is rushing by and the walls are crushing in, I will still find something to love again and again and again.

The album embraces the power of love in a bleak world. Where did the ideas that underline What’s Not To Love? come from? Grace: We believe love is both a luxury and a choice. It’s a sacred value that needs to be taken seriously, practiced and taught. It needs to be reflected through our decisions and conversations. The title of the album is a phrase that reminds us of the empathy, joy, connection and power that’s accessible when we see the world through loving eyes.

Lily: In the lead up to putting the album together, we were finding being in a band stressful instead of fun. So many of our shows got cancelled during COVID; we had our eyes on a very narrow horizon of success that kept evading us. Touring became more and more cost-prohibitive, and making music played second fiddle to being active on social media. So, Grace and I made a pact to shift our perspective. CLEWS became a ticket to having unique experiences (international tours with our best friends, making an awesome podcast, seeing more of our beautiful country) and we took the pressure off ourselves to make money for our team – to make it at all. Instead, we decided to say yes to CLEWS opportunities that would bring us joy, not just because they would bring us one step closer to that ever-moving goal post of a successful music career.

CLEWS has made so many of our dreams come true, so we started to say to each other, “What’s not to love?”. Singing with each other – what’s not to love about that? Getting to visit new cities and connect with people – what’s not to love about that? Having a creative outlet in our otherwise busy lives – what’s not to love? The glass half-full ethos was already engrained in us through our upbringing, and since we’ve been tapping into it through music, we’ve let it ripple out through the rest of our lives. When the sun is setting over another day, when we’ve called our mum and had a picnic with our friends, when we’ve told our loved ones how we feel, when we’ve tried to leave a good mark on our little patch of life, we look at each other and ask, “What’s not to love?” Love and gratitude are what the world needs now.

 

 

 

 

 

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Why have you chosen to be self-managed and independent? Grace: Up until recently, we had all the trimmings and trappings of management, a booking agent and a record deal for CLEWS. There are few tangible blueprints for success in the music industry, and even when we technically ticked every box with those mechanisms around us, we learned there’s still so much we couldn’t control. We had to loosen our white-knuckle grip on CLEWS and create new goals that shifted our focus from high expectations to deep connections. Otherwise, we’d burn out without the kind of external progress we were looking for, and we’d stop making music together. We’d never make an album! And that would be sad.

Lily: We’ve been lucky enough to work with really talented and passionate managers who have been the wind beneath our music wings. But the pressure to make a team a commissionable income was detracting from that pure joy we wanted CLEWS to be. Becoming indie again is a whole different story, one I’ve probably repressed haha! To this day I’m not sure if we were dropped or if we left our label, but we still love the people we worked with there. Grace and I have been students of the industry now for the best part of a decade, so at least if we’re captaining our own ship, we only have ourselves to thank/blame if we sail into glory or hellfire.

 

 

 

 

 

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What are some of the perks that come with having full creative control over the art you’re creating? Lily: Thank goodness we’ve never had anyone tell us what we have to do or how we have to sound, but having our creative project be totally our own has been incredibly rewarding. Being indie and self-managed is also I think a more neutral place creatively to be able to make music. We’re putting out songs we like without trying to appease or aggravate the people we work with, either to make them happy or prove a point. I always feel proud of our songs, but now I feel proud knowing the work we personally put in to get them out into the world.

As well as make tunes, you also do research and production work in and around the music biz. How do you think your insight into the industry in these varying ways informs your creative practice? Lily: Researching gender-based harm reform in the music industry makes me want to never stop writing, gigging and being seen as a woman in music. Especially as I get older, people around me start having kids, women’s careers stop or plateau while men age into bigger and bigger shows – I don’t want to be another woman over the age of 30 whose stories don’t get told. Women don’t have to be a new, bright, young thing on the scene just to be in the light.

Grace: Working in podcasting and creative producing as my 9 to 5 has trained my brain to filter things through a certain lens. What is most compelling and helpful to others? What do people want to spend their time listening to? Being an artist, we get to plan each creative era like seasons of a show. I think about what to reveal and when, and how to build a real community outside of social media.

Which CLEWS song would you recommend to a first-time listener? Lily: A personal favourite is “Better Than Before”. That song really cemented a CLEWS sound that we love to this day. But from our new album, it’s “The End (Of Us)”. We love the little postcards of memories that song sends to us every time we sing it.

What do you love about making music with your sister? Lily: I love how Grace’s musical brain fills the gaps in mine. I love how much music means to our family and how singing together for people feels like we get to pay our dues to all the amazing experiences we’ve had because of it. 

Grace: Lily’s a fabulous songwriter. Always has been. I think her lyricism is unmatched. I have an ear for melody and groove above all else, so I think we complement each other really well in that way. Being sisters is a fixture in our personal and working relationship, and it took a lot of effort to shift clashing patterns into a more harmonious dynamic. People can change, we both have, and we work hard on this sisterhood. 

CLEWS' debut album What's Not To Love? is out November 12th.