INTERVIEW: Jade MacRae on self-titled Mondo Freaks debut album: "It's the kind of music that I would hope stays a part of people's lives."

Words: Jett Tattersall
Interview: Shalane Connors

If ever there was an album designed to make you grin with your full gnashers, it’s the long-awaited self-titled debut from Melbourne’s 10-piece (yes, 10-piece) boogie-funk, R&B-pop, New Jack Swing, disco-farewell juggernaut, Mondo Freaks. Emerging from the city’s vibrant and globally recognised soul scene, their sound and vivacious live shows have a habit of turning any available space into a dance floor. The result is pure, unfiltered delight. Think wanderlust street party or the best childhood daydreams of your adult life, surrounded by a stack of VHS rentals and Smash Hits magazines. That sense of time travel is the core of this record. It plays like the accidental soundtrack to a pivotal moment, one you’ll spend years trying to recreate, only to realise it was sitting inside the music all along. It’s nostalgia born from longing, not chasing a trend. Music made simply because this band of mondo minstrels wanted it to exist.

Sharp songs. Tight players. Lush production. Vocals for days. Mondo Freaks began as a concept band with a rotating funk setlist, a reason for founders Luke Hodgson and Graeme Pogson to call in Melbourne’s best. That idea grew into a stellar lineup of exceptional vocalists, each bringing something distinct. Jade MacRae, widely recognised as one of Australia's finest soul voices, leads six tracks with unmistakable power. Francisco Tavares, a permanent gem in Melbourne's funk and soul scene, brings his signature slickness to 'Pumped!'. Aaron Mendoza, a multi-faceted music maker previously of Electric Empire, shines, taking the lead in 'Won’t You Decide'.

The lift that runs through the record has a simple origin. It emerged, like a memory -- a longing, immediately after one of Melbourne’s many lockdowns. They grabbed two weeks at Sing Sing Studios to track, and the room lit up as Hodgson recalled, “A thrill for everyone, to be honest. Playing music live with our mates, in our favourite old school way; everyone in the one room, reacting to each other, capturing the moment, committing to tape.” That sense of relief at finally playing together again became the secret ingredient. What you hear, says Hodgson, is exactly what they felt. The release, the playfulness, the love they managed to bottle.

MacRae’s presence anchors two of the album’s standout moments. 'Turn This Love Around', a high-beam, feel-good burst built for those rare, life-affirming flashes of connection. It's bright, boasts a meaty beat, and is absolutely irresistible. 'Put Your Hand in My Hand' shows the other side of her range. She slows it down and purrs through the sway break as the band eases off the tempo, allowing warmth and an overall late-70s intimacy to take the lead.

That emotional sweep, paired with the band’s impeccable instrumentals and vocal heroes, caught the ear of multi-Grammy winner Michael Brauer (Coldplay, Angélique Kidjo, The Rolling Stones). He dove straight in to mix the album, saying it transported him back to his "happiest days mixing pop R&B".

Ultimately, the power of Mondo Freaks hinges on connection. Reflecting on their long-standing friendships, Hodgson returns to that foundational idea. That mirror-ball soul of the album, a music-box beacon of love and community groove. We recently met up with singer MacRae to chat more about the album’s creation.

Hi, Jade. First up I want to congratulate you on the release of the Mondo Freaks debut album - it is incredible! I believe you are in the US right now?
Yes, I'm in Nashville today. I've been singing with another artist over here for ten years and we tour a lot, we tour about 30 weeks out of the year. It's a great, fantastic gig but it's a lot of travel. The tours usually start in Nashville, and we rehearse here for a few days, and then we drive out from here in the tour buses to the first show.

I want to circle back to the touring stuff, but first of all, we're here celebrating the debut album for Mondo freaks. How does it feel to finally get a full album out there for the band?
Oh, it's amazing. I've been involved with the band for about 12 years now, but for a long time it wasn't an original music project at all. It was sort of a passion project, always covers, and it was basically through covid that we started to write music together. Primarily it was a kind of a therapy for us all, a way to stay in touch with each other, everybody in the band except for pretty much me lives in Melbourne, so things were super shut down there and everybody was really disconnected physically. So it was a really beautiful way for us to stay connected to each other and make something good out of a tough time.

That's amazing. So you're all writing in isolation and sending off demos to each other, collaborating from a distance?
Yeah, exactly so. I'm sure you've heard that story a lot over the last few years, many, many albums were made like that during that time. Because for all of us worldwide, touring or live performance was off the table. So songwriting and recording, which we're thankfully able to do remotely these days, was a way for us all to stay creative and stay connected to our professional and artistic identities. Luke and Graham, who were the founders of the band, started sending me instrumental ideas, and that's how it started. It was just bits and pieces, and then before we knew it, we had quite an extensive body of work together. So it's really exciting to have it out there.

And then you were able to get together and flesh it all out in real time?
Eventually! I don't think I actually got with the guys until 2022, it was quite a long time, because I was stuck in the US. The rest of the band were able to get together a little bit throughout 2021 as there would be these periods where the city would open up and they'd be able to go to the studio, but it would be literally a day by day thing and then all of a sudden, it's another lockdown, we have to cancel that session. So it was just very slow going to begin with, but it’s really amazing that we were able to pull it all together in the end, especially with so many people in the group. It's kind of crazy, making it all happen.

Yes, you're a 10 piece band, how does that work in terms of contribution and songwriting? You've obviously been writing songs yourself for numerous projects for a very long time, but how does that work in such a big outfit?
So not everyone in the band was a songwriter on this album, a lot of people did contribute, but I don't think there's any songs where there's ten writers. Most of the songs are probably like two to four people per track, but there's some really talented songwriters in the group. Most of us work as side people for other artists, that's what all of us do full time, so it was really fun to combine our skills and really do something that was just purely a passion project. It is logistically really tricky though if we ever try to play a gig, especially, because I'm living over here now. It's a little bit complicated, but we're trying our best to get opportunities in when we can.

I read your Instagram bio and that gave me a headache! Artist, producer, backing vocalist, session vocalist, string and vocal arranger…you do it all, you're super prolific. You've also released your own fourth album under your own name last year. How do you fit that all in? How do you juggle so many projects at the same time?
Honestly, I've actually just reached a point of acknowledgement with myself that I need to do a little bit less. I'm nearly 46 and I really enjoy a life of high stimulation, I've always been like that. I like to do a lot of things, and have a lot of things on the go. In some weird way, I thrive on that. But I've spread myself a little bit thin.

The last eight years have been really exciting, I've managed to do lot of fun things, but part of that is also our current industry. You have to diversify, we have to be able to wear a few hats. I’m just talking from my experience, but that's how it's played out for me, it's really helped me to be doing different things and be happy doing that. But not everybody is wired that way, some people just prefer to stay in one lane, and I totally understand that.

I was really lucky to have a very thorough musical education when I was young, and that's afforded me these other skills to do things like arranging, I know how to work in the studio really well so I can work as a producer. It's one of those things where you just sort of step into the roles that present themselves to you. For me right now, that's primarily as a backing singer, and as a songwriter. I am still performing my own solo music from time to time, but as I said I'm travelling at least 30 weeks out of the year. So as you can imagine, that doesn't leave a whole lot of other time to do other stuff.

I read somewhere that you touched upon the idea of music today being a little bit like fast fashion, people tend to stick with something for a season and then throw it out and move on to a new band. We don't work in the same way as back in the day, where you get a loyal fan base who are obsessed with you and stick with you over time. Have you got a bit of that with Mondo Freaks developing now, because it's been such a slow burn over such a long time?
You know, I will say for sure in Melbourne there is incredible support from the ground up. And that’s because up until the release of these songs that we've put out over the last few months, that was the sole existence of Mondo Freaks: a local band in Melbourne. So it's really nice to be in a project that has that grassroots foundation, because that's kind of rare these days. Like you were saying, we're so inundated with options, and we live in a climate where we're so overstimulated with things to choose from all the time that it's easy just to sort of move from one thing to the other. The tendency these days is people only listen to a little bit of a song, and then they're on to the next thing - it's just the culture, it's just the way things have evolved and the way things are right now.

Back in the day, when I was young - because I'm so old! - you were waiting for a long time for things to come out. You might hear the song that you like on the radio, maybe, but you certainly couldn't get everything on demand like we do now. It's just such a different way of consuming music, and people do tend to churn through it. In order to maintain mental wellbeing, I try not to get too caught up in that, because you can go down some pretty dark holes if you get too caught up in that whole cycle of the way people are being right now. With Mondo Freaks, we are very lucky to have a committed local audience in Melbourne, and it's the kind of music that I would hope stays a part of people's lives. The songs were written in a really difficult and tumultuous time for the whole world, and a lot of it is really optimistic music, but it was born out of a struggle. I think a lot of that comes through, and for me, that always tends to be the music that stays with me.

Yes, it is such a positive, optimistic album, and you wrote it in the darkest times!
I think sometimes you write the music that you need to hear, and that sounds so corny, but it's true. Sometimes for us to feel better, we just want to hear something super dark and miserable, but the power of uplifting music is undeniable. So for us, that's the spirit of this music.

You come from a musical family, and I'm guessing most of your early influences were thrust upon you by your parents. But is there anyone in particular that you were drawn to, or anyone surprising that the family was like ‘that's that didn't come from us’!
We always had great music in the house, and my parents would be listening to a lot of jazz and music associated with jazz. But getting back to what I was saying about the radio, when I was young, the American Top 40 would be on the radio on Sunday nights and I remember being like eight, maybe nine years old, and I would tape that show every week. It was all late 80s, early 90s, R&B music that you wouldn't really hear on Australian radio. So I really discovered a lot of music at that time that would really shape my future. For whatever reason, I was already drawn to it, even at a really, really young age. My parents were really hopeful for me to become a legitimate classical musician because they've lived their whole lives working in popular music themselves, and they understood the rigours of what that might look like as a chosen career. They were always trying to steer me down another path, which I wasn't opposed to, but I sort of just started singing, and then this is the way things worked out.

You're mostly working in the US these days as a vocalist. I’m interested to know how you find it different to the Australian landscape of touring and recording music?
I think the most obvious difference is just the volume of industry here. Just how many people are touring, making records, it's such a big country with so many people that there's just more opportunities. I've been really, really lucky, I still pinch myself, and I don't really know what I'm doing here because ut's really hard to sustain a career doing anything in music, and I've just been really lucky I've been given some great opportunities.

The main thing here is there's just more going on. I do feel that culturally, and don't get me wrong, it's not that Australians don't enjoy music, they certainly do, but over here, I do feel that music is slightly more important than it is at home. It's more a part of the fabric of people’s lives. What I mean by that is they're more inclined to pay money for it. I don't mean to sound callous at all, but as a working person in the industry, in a time where people can get all the music they want without paying a single dollar, that becomes really important. You need people to be happy to spend money on a concert or buy your album instead of downloading it for free. So I do notice that here music is just a more significant part of the culture. A lot of the music originated here. So there's a pride as well and ownership of jazz, R&B, soul music, all came from here. So in that relationship, there's a value for the population at large that they hold the music in.

And you’ve got some shows coming up, 12 December you have your album launch party at Howler in Brunswick. What can we expect?
I don't mean to toot our own horn too much, but I personally feel like the live show elevates the music even higher than the record. We have made a few live clips which are out there on YouTube now that people can see, so they give an idea. It just seems to be a level up on energy and vibe, and we have so much fun on stage. Everybody has so much respect for each other, there's five singers in the band, so to be able to sing in a band with five unbelievable singers is just ridiculous. We just have so much fun. Obviously, the music is meant for dancing, so people really go hard on the dance floor, which is exactly what they should do. It's sweaty, it's awesome, I can't wait! I’m super excited.

Can we expect a tour from Mondo Freaks after that?
We would love to. Next year we're looking to try to put some more dates in the calendar. It's really tricky because Jason, one of the other singers, he lives part time in Mauritius. He's got this crazy career singing sega, which is the traditional music of Mauritius, he's super famous over there doing that. So it's really hard to get everyone in one place at one time, and I'm the worst offender with that, because I live overseas and I'm really busy. But we're trying to find ways to be all together in the same place at the one time. And it'd be amazing to do a full tour in Australia.

Mondo Freaks is out now via Every Star Records. You can buy, download and stream here.
Follow Mondo Freaks on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Mondo Freaks album launch party will be held at Howler, Brunswick on 12 December. Tickets on sale now.