Baulk at the Möön | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW
- Jun 6
- 10 min read
Updated: Jun 7
Some artists spend their careers trying to smooth out the rough edges. Baulk at the Möön seems determined to do the opposite.
Led by songwriter and perpetual observer Stuart Baulk the Adelaide project finds beauty in creative failure, emotional clutter, ageing badly, laughing at yourself, and somehow carrying on anyway. Across garage rock chaos, reflective storytelling, theatrical detours and moments of genuine vulnerability, Baulk at the Möön documents the strange territory between ambition and acceptance, sincerity and absurdity.
With The Glorious Rebirth of a Half-assed Musician, Baulk embraces the mess rather than escaping it, creating songs that feel deeply human, occasionally heartbreaking, often hilarious, and refreshingly unconcerned with perfection. We caught up with him to discuss creative survival, middle-aged insanity, accidental art, Australian humour, and why the best songs often come from ideas that don't neatly belong anywhere. This is a paid collab with Baulk at the Möön.
TRACK REVIEW - Silver Whiskers
Such an impulsive opening on the acoustic guitar, immediately pulling you into the song before a beautiful duet takes over. There's a warmth to this track that feels effortless.
I love the bass tone throughout, but it's the chorus that really grabs me. The drum production is my favourite part, splitting the chorus into two distinct movements that constantly push and pull against each other, creating a real sense of momentum and release.
There's a lot of feeling in this track. The lyrics, the melodies, the performances – everything feels authentic. Nothing sounds forced or overthought. The guitar tone is absolutely hot too, sitting perfectly in the mix without ever overpowering the emotion of the song. Every element has room to breathe, allowing the heart of the track to shine through.
Baulk at the Möön has a knack for finding beauty in chaos, and this song is a perfect example of that balance.
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The album title The Glorious Rebirth of a Half-assed Musician sounds both brutally self-aware and strangely triumphant. Do you think humour is sometimes the only honest way to survive getting older creatively?
I think humour becomes a survival mechanism once you realise creative life rarely unfolds the way you imagined. There’s a myth that artists either “make it” early or disappear quietly into normal adulthood. Most people actually just keep stumbling forward somewhere in between. The title was my way of acknowledging that reality honestly.
At a certain point you either laugh at your own contradictions or become unbearably bitter. I’m still ambitious creatively, but I’m also old enough to recognise the absurdity of trying to balance music, work, family, bills and existential panic while still carrying around the dramatic fantasy that creativity somehow excuses you from ordinary adult life. Humour lets you tell the truth without drowning in self-importance.
Baulk at the Möön feels like a band completely comfortable sitting between emotional sincerity and total collapse. Was that tension intentional from the start, or just an accurate reflection of adult life?
Both. The songs and the band were built around the idea of tapping into the chaos of adult life, rather than trying to control, fake or polish it.
Most of the songs come from moments where things are simultaneously funny, sad, embarrassing and strangely meaningful all at once. That tension feels more interesting to me than choosing one emotional lane and staying there. Real life doesn’t work like that. One minute you’re dealing with genuine grief or anxiety and the next you’re ranting at a recorded message about how you can’t see your password while you type it, or trying to stop a child putting wheels back on your new pedalboard.
‘Morning Herald’ is probably a good example of that tension because the lyrics were actually written by my partner, Antonia Kloss when she was only seventeen, yet they already carried this surprisingly sharp and mature commentary about work, routine and the emotional emptiness of the rat race.
A lot of bands chase cohesion. Your music seems more interested in documenting chaos honestly, whether that’s noisy garage rock, reflective storytelling or observational absurdity. Do you see inconsistency as freedom rather than weakness?
For me, the common thread isn’t genre consistency so much as perspective. Some of my favourite artists feel alive precisely because they’re unpredictable and slightly messy. I’m very much into the idea that vulnerability makes you stronger. Also, creativity comes from several places, and one of them is absolutely accidental. You can only really take credit for being open to the accidents.
Even when the songs jump stylistically, they’re usually circling the same ideas: ageing, failure, humour, nostalgia, awkwardness, creativity, frustration, absurdity. Human beings are inconsistent. A record that documents that honestly can sometimes feel more cohesive emotionally than one that’s sonically perfect.
That unpredictability also extends to the people around the project. Different collaborators naturally pull songs into different emotional and musical spaces, and I embrace that rather than resist it.
A lot of that freedom probably comes from working in a home studio environment as well. I’m constantly moving between different songwriting modes depending on the idea, whether that’s noisy garage rock, more reflective storytelling, strange theatrical cabaret elements, or heavily layered studio experimentation. I like treating songs individually rather than forcing them all into a rigid stylistic framework.
There’s something deeply Australian about finding humour inside disappointment, awkwardness and emotional disasters. Do you think your songwriting could exist the same way outside Australia’s cultural lens?
Not entirely. I think my songwriting sits somewhere between English melancholy and Australian self-deprecating humour. There’s definitely a dramatic streak in me that probably comes from my English background, a tendency toward emotional reflection, awkwardness and mild existential collapse. But strangely, I don’t think I fully pulled it all together until moving to Australia at 26.
Australian culture has this instinct to puncture seriousness before it becomes too grand or self-important. People will tell genuinely tragic stories while making everyone laugh at the same time. I think living here taught me how humour can actually make emotional honesty more believable. So, the songwriting probably exists in this strange middle space where emotional sincerity is constantly being interrupted by absurdity, embarrassment or self-awareness. That tension feels very natural to me now, both culturally and creatively.
“Silver Whiskers” feels reflective without becoming sentimental. Was writing about ageing creatively something that felt confronting, liberating, or weirdly funny?
‘Silver Whiskers’ wasn’t written as a song about ageing, it was more observational and instinctive than that. In hindsight though, the song became predictive.
At the time I was really just trying to process a relationship fallout that felt emotionally enormous and difficult to move beyond. Since then, the song has grown in significance for people, and meanwhile I’ve genuinely ended up with silver whiskers and become much more comfortable with getting older.
Your live shows sound like they operate on the edge of either becoming transcendent or completely falling apart. Do you think audiences connect more deeply when music feels slightly dangerous and unpredictable?
Definitely. Perfect performances can sometimes feel emotionally sterile. When there’s actual risk involved, whether musical, emotional or even conversational, audiences sense it immediately.
The band and solo shows express that differently though. With the band, there’s this chaotic energy where things can suddenly become huge, messy, transcendent or unravel at any moment. That unpredictability is part of the fun.
Solo shows are different because there’s more space for storytelling, awkward observations and spontaneous interaction with the audience. I’ve realised over time that there’s some cabaret growing in me that likes to surface between songs. Sometimes I’ll start talking to the crowd with only a vague idea where the conversation is heading and just hope something entertaining emerges before everyone regrets leaving the house.
I think audiences connect to that sense that something real is happening rather than watching a perfectly rehearsed sequence unfold exactly the same way every night.
The live side of the band also keeps evolving in unpredictable ways. We recently brought in Dave Farrugia on drums who somehow jumped into the chaos incredibly quickly, and Jill Dorrian on violin and keys has started lifting the whole thing into an even bigger emotional and cinematic space.
But I also like Tom Smith’s philosophy that everyone is still in the band unless they specifically announce otherwise. At a recent show we suddenly had Matt Harris and Brett O’Donnell from the previous line-up, and Matt Hills the album producer, all joining us for the final song, which felt messy, joyful and completely right.
The upcoming album title The Exquisite Cabaret of Middle-aged Insanity almost sounds like accepting madness instead of resisting it. Do you think getting older has made you more self-aware or just more comfortable with the chaos?
Getting older has mainly made me more self-aware, but part of that has been fully recognising my own neurodivergence and understanding how much of my life and creative process was connected to it all along.
That includes the good, the bad, the ugly and the fabulous parts of it. The overthinking, the chaos, the intensity, the humour, the obsession, the creative energy, the emotional unpredictability. For a long time, I think I was trying to manage or suppress parts of myself to appear more “normal”, coherent or productive. Now I’m leaning into it far more honestly, both creatively and personally. Ironically, accepting the chaos has probably made me the most functional and creatively productive version of myself so far. So ‘The Exquisite Cabaret of Middle-aged Insanity’ absolutely is about exploring and optimising madness. Finally understanding the strange machinery backstage and deciding to let the whole performance exist properly.
I think embracing that has also opened up broader creative territory for me stylistically. I’m becoming more interested in theatricality, storytelling and cabaret influences alongside the louder rock elements.
A lot of DIY projects eventually polish themselves into something safer once attention arrives. Baulk at the Möön still feels proudly imperfect and human. How important is it to preserve those rough edges?
Chaos and unpredictability are essential parts of the creative process for me. Once everything becomes too controlled or overly polished, it can lose the tension that made it interesting in the first place.
A lot of my ideas actually begin in a fairly unfinished or unstable state. I usually have a strong vision emotionally or atmospherically, but the details are flexible. I like leaving space for accidents, detours and other people’s instincts to reshape the material.
I’m less interested in preserving perfection than preserving energy, surprise and humanity. I’d rather a song feel slightly dangerous and alive than perfectly resolved and emotionally flat.
That’s also why I enjoy collaborating with people who challenge me or push songs somewhere unexpected instead of simply reinforcing my original idea. Some of the best moments happen when somebody introduces an element I never would have chosen myself but suddenly the song becomes more alive because of it.
Some of my favourite moments on the first album came from people unexpectedly reshaping songs in real time. Matt Harris from Clusterpuff added Mellotron and Hammond organ textures that completely changed the atmosphere of certain tracks, and even spontaneously came up with the guitar riff for ‘How Long’ in the studio.
Rosie Roberts from Axe and the Ivory brought something extraordinary to ‘Morning Herald’ and ‘Silver Whiskers.’ Her voice lifted those songs to another emotional level entirely and honestly made me feel like I had to rise to meet the performance.
There were moments during recording where Rosie and lead guitarist Tony Jaeschke genuinely made me burst into tears in the studio because the songs were suddenly bigger and more emotionally real than ever before.
A lot of these recordings also developed through my home studio setup, which became less about chasing technical perfection and more about creating an environment where experimentation and spontaneity were possible.
You’ve described the band as an outlet for songs that “didn’t fit neatly anywhere else.” Do you think the best art often comes from material that initially feels too strange, too personal or too unfashionable to belong anywhere?
Absolutely. A lot of the most interesting creative moments come from material that initially feels awkward, unfashionable or difficult to categorise. Those are usually the ideas that still contain some genuine unpredictability.
I’ve also learned that being too controlling can flatten that energy. During the recording process I became very open to suggestions, experimentation and letting songs evolve beyond my original assumptions. That’s one of the reasons I quickly realised Matt Hills was the right producer for the album. He could hear multiple possible directions inside the same song, depending on its loose style or emotional tone.
So, rather than trying to tightly control every outcome, I gave him a lot of freedom to push things further and add unexpected layers. Some songs became stranger, bigger, more cinematic or more emotionally textured because of that collaboration. At one point I even asked him to perform an unexpected guitar solo… using only his voice. Which somehow made complete sense within the logic of the album – although he noted that it was the weirdest request in 30 years of recording (but he still did it in ONE TAKE).
I think the best art often appears once you stop trying to force everything into neat categories and allow space for surprise, risk and occasional creative madness.
Adam Szkolka from Double Life was another unexpected addition. I literally met him at the local bottle shop before eventually bringing him in to perform vocals on ‘Dealing Drugs’. His deep voice and slightly psychedelic Australian hip-hop energy gave the track a 90s grunge-rap dimension.
And of course, Tom Smith deserves enormous credit for pushing me to actually get things happening rather than endlessly circling ideas. His encouragement and generosity made it possible for me to record new versions of ‘Dealing Drugs’ and ‘Your Ugly Mug’, which will also appear in different forms on his upcoming album The Bent Cop is Back in Town.
Adelaide’s music scene also deserves credit for its openness. People move constantly between projects, genres and collaborations here, and this whole thing really gathered momentum once Matt Harris invited me to play in The Songs of Tom Smith.
If someone discovers Baulk at the Möön for the first time through The Glorious Rebirth of a Half-assed Musician, what do you hope lingers with them afterward, the humour, the sadness, the noise, or the uncomfortable feeling that they might see too much of themselves in it?
The humour and noise matter because they make the songs entertaining and human, but underneath that I think a lot of the material is really about recognising parts of yourself in uncomfortable ways. Ageing, insecurity, nostalgia, failure, absurdity, hope, self-delusion, persistence. All the strange emotional clutter people carry around quietly.
If listeners laugh, feel slightly unsettled, and walk away thinking “that hits closer to home than I expected,” then the songs probably did their job. Like when I work with Antonia’s lyrics - if she doesn’t react emotionally on hearing the finished song, then I probably haven’t fully done the lyrics justice yet. That’s what I am working on now with a new song, ‘Prisoner of Zegna.’
That idea of songs evolving across time also connects heavily to the upcoming ‘Reshoot EP’. Those tracks actually began in 1999-2000 with my old UK band Shoot the Root. I played bass – I couldn’t sing or play guitar yet. Now they’ve been partially rewritten and completely reworked with new vocals, arrangements and perspectives shaped by everything that’s happened since then. One of those songs, ‘Cacatu, (also on ’The Glorious Rebirth…’) even includes vocals from my son Freddy, recorded when he was 5, which feels strangely perfect to me.
These songs now contain fragments of multiple versions of my life at once: the young musician who originally helped create them, the older version reshaping them now, and even my own child accidentally becoming part of the story.
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