If fishing isn’t about fishing, what is it about? The answer lies somewhere in the soft moments and bold intricacies of Ruby Gill’s third record, titled – of course – Fishing is not about fishing. If you’ve ever lived in a home, searched for one, dreamed of one or left one, this record is for you. Ruby tells us more about it below.

Describe your new album Fishing is not about fishing in a sentence. An existential love song for our past, our parents, our partners and prawns – trying to find meaning in what is becoming of us and the places we live in.

You’re originally from South Africa. Tell us how your home appears across the new album. It appears in many ways literally – I could not shy away from lyrics directly about Zambuk lips in summer and this one bar I love in Soweto and the Bree St gas line explosion and of course, the reality of living there.

In the closing song “Librarian love”, there is my uncle in the prison he was taken to when he refused to be conscripted into the Apartheid army – a struggle he and my aunt fought so hard to help end. The opening song “Lord, let me be a pastry chef” holds a verse about how it’s one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, especially a black or brown or queer or trans woman, and how even our cries to ‘stop killing our sisters’ are met with violence, or some absolute Trumpian bullshit about white genocide. These are the things I think and talk about the most, so of course they are showing up in the words of this record.

But there is also so much of home here unspoken – the oral history traditions and almost-religious praise songs I was raised among. The rhythmic and lyrical sensibilities of Southern African folk music that will never leave me: eternal choir, call and response, complex phrasing and talking-melodies that I can only credit to Vusi Mahlasela, Miriam Makeba, Selaelo Selota, Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

What do you miss the most about Johannesburg? Huge, crackling summer thunderstorms. My dad saying “I’m going to put the braai on for dinner” as early as 2pm. Going to gym. Prego sauce from Espresso. Grey go-away birds, giant kingfishers and purple pigeons. The fresh rotis from the shop off Barry Hertzhog Rd. Going out ‘til 3am in Melville with no plan, except to eat hot prawns. Speaking at length to every single person I met in any situation ever. Checkers home-brand anything. Playing music like it was urgent, not like it’s a career.

Mostly I miss the person I was when I was there – it makes me tear up most when I say that – I was so lawless and bold and ready to take on anything and go into bat for myself or my people. In a place where I had the right to be scared of things, I was the most fearless. 

How has making Australia your adopted home influenced your music-making? Apart from my accent morphing into a mockery of both countries? I think this is the first record that I can hear this place’s music in my music haha – the radio has entered me despite my intentions to stay true to my raising. There’s a sense of jangle and desert and roughness in me now – I leave a lot more space in my harmony and I lean into the rocky shout. The punk, the country, the Melbourne, the quiet.

How did the place where the record was made seep into the music? I wrote this record while living in a rooftop tent with my now-wife as we drove 40,000km around Australia for a year on tour. I can hear every corner of the tent fabric embedded in the lyrics – I can feel Sophie next to me and I can see every one of those places we visited, both in the imagery (“ripped the salt bush from the red dirt”) and in the texture of the feeling. The South Australian sand wind whipping a hole in my skull is so present in “Porchlight”, even though lyrically it’s quite sheltered.

Then I travelled to the opposite place to record it: London in a heatwave, while Arsenal won the premier league outside our studio doors. I can hear the hot-box closeness of the mics and the wooden walls and the tendency to shout along like a football song. London is so “cool” haha – I can hear that too. I wore contact lenses to some recording days (which I never do back home) because that city made me feel like I could be anyone. I can hear myself playing with my identity (even while lyrically I’m sitting there trying to define it), inspired by such a hustle-place. I hope that comes through – it felt real to us in that little sauna.

What is one song from your new album that transports you back to your hometown? The title track “Fishing is not about fishing” is about a third home I had – a rental that my dad kept in KZN so we could have a place to call home when he visited once a month (I lived with my mum full-time apart from those visits). It was called Sakabula and it was this little rickety, ratty house bordered by a golf course on one side and a tiny dam on the other. He bought this whole kit of fishing rods and learnt alongside us in real time how to fish for tilapia and bass. We’d sneak down to the jetty at all hours of the day and fill our entire weekend with this random activity none of us were very good at – but it was full of so much peace. The rest of my childhood was not that chill, and when I hear this song about that time I am so quickly calmed and moved by his attempt to create this tiny oasis for us, for just a few moments a year.

If fishing is not about fishing, what is it about? Love, according to the record.

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