On the title track to Enola Fall's 2015's album, Heliotropic, frontman Joe Nuttall, wistfully sings that "I'll follow the sun".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Moving away from his latter-day hometown of Hobart to chase his musical dreams in Los Angeles, Nuttall is finding new listeners, collaborators and fans on the opposite side of the globe.
"Until recently with bands like Luca Brasi breaking out, it was pretty impossible to maintain a career from Tasmania," Nuttall said of the decision behind the move.
Since forming in 2003, the band has seen a revolving door of musicians helping bring Nuttall's songs to both record and stage.
Essentially operating as a solo project for Nuttall, Enola Fall are about to release their first album in four years, Bloodhound, on April 19.
"There is a thing now with music where it's very easy to get lost in the shuffle," said Nuttall.
"People go 'let's put this album out,' and it's like throwing a rock into a pond."
"You don't get anything from it."
Delayed by almost two years as the band switched record labels from MGM to The Orchard, Bloodhound, is an intricate work of indie pop.
Staccato guitar lines, moody synthesisers, and tumbling piano lines are all held together by Nuttall's vocal delivery:
At times soaring, such as his impassioned delivery on opening track Vestigial Tail, or the slow growl that drives title track Bloodhound, Nuttall's unique voice manages to captivate listeners.
It's a trait that is not lost on Nuttall since his move to the United States. "There are lots of great bands and artists over here and they're all competing for the little bit of attention that anybody has," he said.
The sheer metrics of potential listeners has been a factor in their move overseas.
"In Australia, on Triple J you might be heard by four million people," Nuttall said.
"In a city the size of LA, with a population of 20 million, you're always going to find a group of people who like you and like what you do."
"You can always reach your audience."
For Tasmanian fans keen to hear the new material, they will be happy to know Nuttall's music has progressed rather than been reinvented by the move abroad.
"It's almost exactly the same act that everyone saw over a decade ago in Hobart, but for some reason now playing the Whisky A Go Go and Viper Room in LA," laughed Nuttall.
As well as promoting the new Enola Fall album, Nuttall has been working on a new minimalist project NTTLS, pronounced Nettles, and scoring a pair of independent films.
"Compared to Hobart, LA is a terrifying city full of people, but there are hundreds of thousands of people who move there to become movie stars and everyone is trying to fake it until they make it," he said.
"At the same time, it means you have hundreds of these very energised creative people looking to collaborate."
More from our arts coverage: