Get to know the two-piece band, Sundown On Eden, and their newest single, Let You Off Easy

Written by Cassie Bereszkowski

Sundown On Eden release their sophomore single, Let You Off Easy, coming off a six month hiatus from their last single, Everything Breaks a Mending Heart.

The two-piece band, consisting of Jasmine Filer and Nathan Held, led me into their foreign world as musicians for a night, and in turn, an exhibition of craftsmanship and collaboration was on full display.

Discussion flowed easily between the duo and I, seated slung back on couches, as the pair walked me through their writing process for their newest track. Feeding off one another, their band dynamic shined through and taught me just as much about their collaboration as what they verbally expressed.

On songwriting, Nathan, a classically trained pianist, explained how he and Jasmine ping-pong ideas back and forth.

“I was up until the early hours, as I normally am, and wrote the pre-chorus and the bones of 70% of the chorus and I sent it to Jasmine at 3 am.”.

Jasmine followed, “We build a story and improvise over and over until we find melodies that work.”.

The pair pull inspiration from the world around them, with Nathan diving into an anecdote on a particular camping trip.

“We were on a camping trip with a couple of friends, and one of our friends had tried to go fishing. He accidentally cast the rod and it hooked around and into his back. And as that happened, I came up with the last line of the verse, and then I showed Jas, and she's like, ‘Great. It's done now. It's perfect.’”.

These winding storytelling roads that the two musicians lead me down signify their nature as bandmates but also as songwriters.

Jasmine and Nathan uniquely describe their combination of individual music tastes with something they coined “The Spectrum”, saying “We never want to do the same song. My influence is more jazz soul” with Nathan chiming in “I like songs that have more piano parts in them.”.

“We try to fuse genres to make something more unique. We put our songs on The Spectrum, with the middle being us completely agreeing”. Nathan orchestrated a figurative pendulum of opposing musical sounds, his hands illustrating how their songs swing across, from jazz to piano ballads to pop.

Describing their fusion of these genres, it’s a double-edged sword, where the end goal isn’t for every song to land in the middle of the spectrum, but to harness and reel in more musical influences, and as a result, sometimes “someone is going to be like, ‘this might not be my favourite thing in the world, but I can learn to be okay with it in the song.”

Compromising is key within Sundown on Eden’s band dynamics, particularly pertaining to the production on Let You Off Easy, “there was a Britney Spears song that I liked the guitar in, or this Tate McRae song where the syncopation was great. But using those sounds didn’t sound like us.”.

Jumping from topic to topic, their musical backgrounds came into question, with Jasmine explaining hers first. “I think that music has been part of my life forever. When I was young, I just always loved singing. I picked up drums and trumpet - I think my neighbours hated me. And then covid hit and I taught myself piano, I practiced all the time, and I fell in love with it. So I really think that year was such a turning point where I realised it was what I wanted to do.”

The pair, who went to school together since they were three years old, explained how they had always done music together, a natural feeling that songwriting was just the next step in their synced musical journeys.

Similar to the cliche first-pancake metaphor, Nathan continued, “You always do a test one with the batter, and it’s probably going to be burnt, it’s probably going to be gross, but you need to do it in order to get more after.”. This perfectly encapsulates the writing process of the band, with Jasmine saying that their earliest song “probably won’t get released”, but nonetheless the song had to have been written to uncover how each person perceives and reacts to the other’s thoughts and musical directions.

Nathan divulged into his musical upbringing when he “started playing piano at four or five years old. I originally aspired to be a classically trained pianist that performed at an international level. I mean, that's like even harder than it would be to do pop music at that level. Even classical music is more selective in terms of what you can do with it. In class, when the teacher would say it's time to go listen to music, I would turn on a Beethoven symphony. I really wasn't invested in listening to modern music for a long time. Then in year seven, I had it thrust upon me that I would have to listen to pop music to be part of the music class, and I slowly crept out of my classical bubble and started doing other things, like learning how to read chord charts. I started getting really into pop music. And then maybe at the end of 2023 after listening to a lot of diaristic songwriters, I was like, ‘You know what? I'm going to give it a crack at songwriting.’”.

Their banter progressed with an anecdote of Jasmine’s unhinged vocal injury. Vocal inflammation, to be exact, which I was humorously informed are “unideal”.

“I was a bit dramatic about it… For the month of April and the first few weeks of May, there was no writing. Like nothing else matters. I just want to be able to sing.” Upon upcoming gigs, Jasmine resorted to steaming her vocal cords. “Steaming is a thing that vocalists do, where you inhale steam to soothe your vocal cords.”

Nathan added, “She got a bowl of almost boiling water, and she was breathing that in. She did it for maybe 10 days, twice a day. And this was 90-degree water, like, really, really hot. And then Jasmine was like, ‘it's not getting better’. Then she read up on it, and she was like, ‘Oh my God, you're not meant to go over 40 degrees.’”.

“I've been cooking them, like, quite literally, and I've been damaging it more.” Jasmine bluntly abridged.

Digressing, the role of a musician is audacious, and Jasmine notes that it’s “confronting to put yourself out there. I've learned to just detach myself from it and just stop caring.”. Public perception is crippling, and it deters many musicians from reaching out to a broader audience. But with Sundown On Eden, it’s just another stepping stone to bridge their art to greater horizons.

She continued, “How can you get far in life? Whereas you just learn to post whatever. Who cares?”

On a grander scale, “Things are brewing”, dropped Jasmine, a sneak peek into their future plans of performances, both within Australia and internationally.

Within the Melbourne music scene, although turbulent and unpredictable, both express that “It's such a nice community”, adding that building a network of fellow musicians is integral to creating a prolific environment.

As we concluded a rollercoaster of an evening, Jasmine surmised, “at the end of the day, we just want to be making a living off doing what we love. If I can live my life and not have to have another job that isn't music, I'll be happy.”.

Stream Sundown On Eden’s latest single Let You Off Easy on all streaming platforms now.