It took a text from Powderfinger guitarist Darren Middleton in 2011 to convince Pete Murray that 2003’s Feeler was an album worth listening to, despite the fact that it had gone six times platinum in Australia. “I really struggled to hear the quality of the album,” the singer-songwriter tells Apple Music. “In eight years I’d never listened to it from start to finish. Then I got that text from Darren saying, ‘Just listened to Feeler, what a great album,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Is it?’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’ve got to listen to this album and see what the big deal is.’ I got to the end and was like, ‘Wow, this is a really great album!’” Part of Murray’s initial frustration with the LP, which was inspired in part by Neil Young and the way his records veer from beautiful, melancholy moments to all-out rock, was that he didn’t feel it captured the more dynamic elements of his live show. That was exacerbated when the mellow “So Beautiful” became a hit. “People pigeonhole you straight away,” he says. “A few times during radio interviews people would go, ‘Mate, have you ever fallen asleep when you’re playing your songs?’” By the time Murray recorded Feeler–his major-label debut, and the follow-up to 2001’s independently released The Game (from which five tracks were re-recorded for Feeler)–the singer was already in his thirties. A promising career as a track star (he ran in the Commonwealth Games trials) and a rugby player (he had a chance to make the Australian team for the Hong Kong Sevens) led to him studying natural medicine, with music only really becoming a focus after he injured his knee playing rugby. Here, Murray walks us through Feeler, the album he came to love. Feeler “‘Feeler’ was a really unique name. It doesn’t really have a meaning. The song had this great feel to it, and I remember I said in the studio, ‘This is a real feeler, this one.’ I went, ‘That’s not even really a word…actually that’s a really cool word!’ So I named the track that. The song really represented what I do. A nice little groove, acoustic feel for the first half, and the outro is this electric, big, epic anthem.” Bail Me Out “It’s the only song I’ve ever done the lyrics first and the music later. I was in Canada backpacking after I’d injured my knee and taken 12 months off studying. I was a couple of weeks away from coming home and I had no idea what I was going to do. I was pretty lost. Lyrically it’s all about bailing me out of this rut, ’cause I really didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing. And so the lyrics were written then, and when I came home I was like, ‘I’ve got to write some music to this song.’” So Beautiful “I finished a gig one time in Brisbane and I was meeting a friend in another pub. I don’t have a lot of time for people who are pretentious and obnoxious, and this group of really arrogant, pretentious people came into the bar. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t stand being around you guys,’ so I left, I went home. I was a bit fired up, and I got home at probably two o’clock in the morning and sat down and wrote verse one, verse two and the chorus. Everyone thinks it’s about a girl, but it’s not–it’s just basically anti obnoxious people. It’s kind of a ‘fuck you’ song. But it’s done in a way that’s beautiful, and it confused a lot of people for a long time. A lot of people were playing that song at their wedding.” Lines “This is another song that was recorded for The Game and [re-recorded for] Feeler. There was a frequency we picked up in this little bullet microphone I was singing into when we recorded The Game, it must have been from a taxi driver, and this guy comes out of nowhere and goes, ‘We’ve all been in the game too long to know that’s not correct.’ So that’s how The Game got its name.” Freedom “‘Freedom’ was one of the early songs I’d written. Probably even the second or third. It reminds me of when I was first playing, I had some really good mates who would come and see me and they’d belt out ‘freedom!’ And sometimes they’d walk around me wherever we were and out of the blue go, ‘Freedom!’ So it’s a song that definitely reminds me of my mates and the early days and just how funny they would be. And it breaks up the album into two halves, with that song just bringing it down, especially after ‘Lines’.” Please “I set out on purpose to write the most simple song I could, two chords, but to try and make it as interesting as possible. It’s probably one of my favourite songs to sing. It’s written about someone catching a bus somewhere and not knowing if they were going to return again. That desperation of the person being left behind—don’t do this, talk to me. So I wanted it to be a very powerful lyrical song.” Fall Your Way “Col McIntyre played the flute on that. I was thinking, ‘This is not going to work.’ But Col blew me away. The flute was so perfect for this song. I was just stunned. This and ‘Feeler’ are my two favourite songs off the album. Especially live.” My Time “That was the second song I ever wrote. I remember doing a few covers gigs early on thinking, ‘This is great.’ After about three months I went, ‘This sucks. The only way for me to get out of this is if I write my own songs.’ This was the song I ended up doing. And the line in there, ‘Wasting my time, watching my life slip away,’ that was me thinking, I don’t know if this is ever going to work. Am I just wasting my time doing this? ’Cause it might never see the light of day. Also there are elements in the lyrics about my dad, who passed away at the age of 47 and I was 18. So it’s written about him as well. It’s a combination of me learning the art of writing, being frustrated, and missing my dad in those early years.” Tonic “‘Tonic’ was the first time I started to learn a pentatonic scale. It was just me experimenting, and I went, ‘I might see if I can write a song from this.’ I think I wrote the thing in about five minutes. I just wanted it to be a positive song, because there were some moments on the album that were a little bit melancholy and a bit dark. And I think that was from losing my dad early, and also the frustration of what was I going to do in my twenties. So ‘Tonic’ was just a fresh, positive song.” No More “I wanted to write a song from the female’s point of view–these are the words they would say to let their abuser know exactly what they think of him. To be honest I didn’t want that song on the album. Everyone loved it, including the record label, the band. I said, ‘That can’t go on, it’s way too heavy. This is a song that should be separate from this album.’ Still to this day I don’t think I’m comfortable having it on there. But I’m very proud of those lyrics. I would love for women to give it to their abuser and go, ‘This is exactly what I think of you and how cowardly you are.’” Ten Ft Tall “I’m from Chinchilla, a small town, and I heard a story from my cousin out there about a friend of mine whose wife had died of cancer. When she was a little girl she used to say to her father, ‘Dad, when I die I’m going to come back as a butterfly.’ When she passed away there was a group of friends about a week after the funeral at the local pub, it was late at night, and this butterfly flew in and around all of them, and everyone stopped ’cause they all knew this story. And it landed on [her husband’s] shoulder and he said, ‘I’ve got to go.’ As he walked away the butterfly stayed on his shoulder. The really interesting thing about that is it’s actually impossible for butterflies to fly at night. There was another story where her dad couldn’t get out of bed, he was so shattered he’d lost his daughter, and this butterfly flew into his room and landed on him, and that’s when he went, ‘Okay, it’s time to move on and get going.’ Hearing those stories was really powerful, so I wrote that song.”