SJD - aka Sean Donnelly - has just released his ninth album Sweetheart, which he describes as "a game of two halves" with synth-pop dominating side one, while side two takes more of a singer-songwriter approach.
He is a musician and songwriter from Tamaki Makaurau, but he is currently based in Ōtepoti for the Mozart Fellowship at Otago University.
Photo: SJD
SJD is one of Aotearoa's most lauded songwriters, winning two Aotearoa Music Awards, the Taite Music Prize (in 2013 for 'Elastic Wasteland'), and being shortlisted for the 2007 APRA Silver Scroll for his song 'Beautiful Haze'.
His new album tackles thoughts of isolation, loneliness, and depression.
[audio_play ] 'I think of the first side as the sweet side and the second side as the heart side' - SJD
Asked where the name Sweetheart came from, SJD says at the time it had a certain mystery to it.
"It just seemed something that had a warmth to it, I like the everydayness of it but also sort the multitude of meanings that it could carry."
The album was "very much a game of two halves", he says.
"The first side is kind of my synth-pop with a dash of hyper-pop side and the second side's more the organic singer-songwriter kind of thing and I think of the first side as the sweet side and the second side as the heart side."
The synth-pop side subsumes influences from around 1980-1983 which for SJD was a golden age for music.
He name-checks Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Gary Numan, Human League and Soft Cell as influences for the first side of the album.
The album is out on white vinyl and it has a seagull on its cover.
"[The seagull is] on the one hand happy to be alive, on the other hand feeling like he hasn't quite had everything that's coming to him," he said laughing, "so maybe he resembles me in that way," SJD says.
Several of SJD's musician friends have contributed to the album including Kiwi greats Tami Neilson and Don McGlashan.
Neilson "knocked it out of the park" on the first track My Exploding Head, while McGlashan did most of the "spooky backing vocals" on the album, he says.
Other artists to contribute include James Milne (Lawrence Arabia), Anika Moa, Julia Deans, Deryk, EJ Barnes, Sandy Mill, Peau Halapua and Chris O'Connor of The Phoenix Foundation.
SJD says it was important to have other artists as part of the project.
"They all have their own specific timbres and they have their own specific kind of stories, that sort of does lend yet another meta-narrative to the whole album as well from where you normally hear and associate those voices."
He says the other artists were helping him out and it helped the album to be more outward-looking.
"Quite often the backing vocals will function as something of a Greek chorus to the lead vocal and it just makes sense that it's other voices."
Different timbres and life experiences in those voices could bring a song to life, he says.
The second side of the album started as a Beatles-style Abbey Road medley, but did not end up that way.
"I failed in an interesting way and it turned into a sort of ... five-song medley that's probably rather more morose than The Beatles."
SJD says he respected songs that could uplift the listener and them feel a bit better about their lives.
"If it starts a little bit in the darkness, if it starts a little bit in the negative, acknowledging that life is a bittersweet experience and can take you through that and lead you out the other side a little bit.
"I mean that to me in general is where I wanted to be with the album."
Although the album is very eclectic, "it still wants to be a pop album whilst making sense of the world it inhabits", he says.
The Otago University fellowship is "a wonderful thing" that allows him to create music and get paid a salary and he feels extremely grateful to the university.
"I think they'd like it very much if I make some good music while I'm down here."
Dunedin is a wonderful place to create and the people were great, he says.
"Altogether it's a very inspiring experience."
SJD is looking at perhaps touring in April, by which time he hopes people will be familiar with the songs on Sweetheart.
