Name: Jo Loewenthal
Artist Name: Tora

Tora have been around since 2013, starting humbly in Byron Bay with no shortage of multi-instrumentalists, producers and songwriters to complete the outfit. Their most recent record, ‘Cant’ Buy the Mood’, shows just how dimensional and multi-faceted the band can be when they continue to throw down the gauntlet against themselves beyond the easy. I sat down with Jo Loewenthal, the main vocalist you hear amongst the tracks, to discuss goals, challenges and Europe.

What’s your greatest goal when you’re creating your music?

I think, for me, the greatest goal is to come up with something I haven’t done before- ultimately something I haven’t heard before, that’s kind of the biggest goal. It doesn’t always come across and I don’t always achieve the goal but the idea is to make something that’s fresh and exciting to me and not let myself be, or us, be restricted by the sounds that we are using. It’s kind of like a an expedition of discovery every time we write a new song. We go in with the intention- not necessarily to make something that’s gonna sell records, or something that’s gonna get on the radio- it’s always just about finding something exciting for us that we can keep listening to and that we’re gonna feel comfortable going out on stage and performing.

All the songs on the new album sound so effortless and creamy. Was there any element of this record that was particularly difficult at coming together?

I think, for me, I always find the most difficult part of a record is like, the last month or so. Especially for us, the way that we make the music, like we do it all ourselves from beginning to end and from time to time we do get collaborators to help us out but when it comes to finishing off the record, I find that really difficult because after you’ve heard a song a thousand times, you don’t know if you’re making it better or worse. In those final stages, you can sometimes do more harm than good. So, yeah I always find the last month or so, when we’re mixing and adding the sprinkles, it’s a challenge to not just like, take the songs too far away from what they are and over-produce them or over-finesse them because I do like to leave a certain level of rawness in the songs if possible.

Your music videos are always so purposeful and visually visceral. Why do you put so much importance on your videos?

I think maybe on the new record we made a real point to step up the game on the video side of things. We felt like in the past we’ve done videos we liked, but we never really had assets that we were 100% stoked about. It was kind of like we threw stuff together cuz we needed a video rather than, ok here’s a creative concept, here’s the meaning of the song and working with someone for months building up to the shoot and getting it so that it actually has substance. so I would say this album was the first time we had a record label helping us pay for costs- in the past it’s always been completely self-funded and so that gave us the ability to work with some creatives that we didn’t have access to in the past and Onil (Onil Kotian) from Rever Media, he was such an asset for me because I’m one of those people who will be awake at two in the morning and an idea will come to my head and I’ll just have to write it down and so I just found myself texting all these things that would come into my head and he would help me make them into a reality.

And so they’re all your concepts?

Well I think the band obviously had a bit of input as well but yeah, generally it was, Onil and I- I would tell him what it’s about, and I would tell him what I imagine- like the feeling of the clip to be or what I want to shine light on in the clip- and then he would help me around the practicalities of actually making that happen.

What inspired this ‘Dapper Dan’ aesthetic of your imagery for this release?

Yeah it’s interesting! I think we in the past have always struggled helping people realise that we’re a band because we’ve always had our artworks be art pieces and we’ve never really put ourselves out there too much in the image of Tora. So this time around we wanted to establish that we’re a four-piece band so that people can see- because often they just think it’s a producer or something- so that was part of the reason we got really involved in the images and the imagery this time around. Um, but conceptually I think like, the whole “dapper” thing was actually a bit of an inside joke, like we weren’t actually trying to come across that way- it was kind of like, joking to ourselves about how stupid we look in the photos and stuff! And then people took it seriously and we were like “Oh, ok!” (laughs)

And now you’re just kind of running with it?

Yeah I think so! I think some of the photos were meant to be like a family portrait, like the album cover was supposed to be like a family portrait and that’s why we look a bit awkward and funny. Um, but because the album meaning, the kind of theme around the album, Can’t Buy the Mood, was kind of like about people who get caught up in that world of having money and being so obsessed with the things they own, and so we were kind of like, putting ourselves in the position of someone like that and making ourselves look like we thnk we’re bosses or whatever but actually it’s like, we’re kind of making a joke about the fact that we’re not actually like that at all.

Is that why ‘Deviate’ is the first track of the album?

Yep!

Does your music come off your own life experiences or is it somewhat fictional in its storytelling.?

Yeah it’s a bit of both. A lot of it, for me, like when I’m sitting down to write a song I need to be- to feel like it’s actually worth doing- I need to have something I want to talk about. Otherwise I’ll just make sounds and that’s another process but the actual lyric writing, it’s gotta be something that I feel like I’ve gotta get off my chest. And so a lot of it is personal and feelings and experiences, or even just like our thoughts around political discussions going on or things like, bigger picture things. But there is also some of the songs I do , I like to take an approach of like, a fictional approach because it does allow you to think outside your own bubble and it also means you can say things that you wouldn’t normally want to say because you’re not worried someone’s going to think you’re talking about them or something. Often friends will ask me, ‘Oh, what’s this song about? What’s that song about?’. And if there’s a lyric in a song that’s gonna make someone think badly of me, um, it can damage friendships. Sometimes songs can actually lead to people think you’re talking about them. It’s weird.

Has that happened?

That has happened, yeah. But writing fiction, for me, that’s like a free way to write because then someone can run to you and be like ‘What are you talking about?’ and you’re like ‘Well it’s just a story’.

I hear you’re moving to Europe soon. What do you hope to get out of that experience?

Yeah we’re pretty excited! We’re going to be heading over there in March. I’ve already got an apartment in Amsterdam actually which I’m going to move into in a couple of weeks. But the main reason for us going to Europe, I think, the problem with being in Australia is it’s so far away that any time we have opportunities over in Europe we often have had to turn them down because it’s not feasible to travel all that way for just a couple of shows and so next year we want to just be in market and be able to take all the opportunities that come our way and we’re building a full plan around basically touring the continent for most of next year. And so that’s really exciting. We just want to build it up to the point where we can like, play in any city and have a decent crowd come down and be able to actually like, live off what we’re doing. We are living off music mostly from the recorded side of music, whereas the live side of music, like in a four-piece band, with a crew travelling around, it’s really expensive. So being on the continent will enable us to really take the performances to the next level without being in a situation where we’re bankrupt by the end of it (laughs).

Can’t Buy the Mood is out everywhere.

All images shot by She is Aphrodite.