The Australian musician also known as Angus Stone talks his new album, Golden Wolf, writing with his sister Julia, and why the death of big festivals in Australia might be a good thing after all.
Angus Stone has been talking all day. Since 8:00am, he’s been cycling through back-to-back Zoom interviews, answering the same questions, rephrasing the same thoughts. By the time I speak to him, it’s 2:00pm in the afternoon. Most people would be fried. Wrecked. Running on polite autopilot and a Diet Coke.
But not Stone.
He’s calm. Present. Still pulling apart ideas in real time. “It’s good,” he says, smiling. “You start figuring out what it’s all about. Why you did it in the first place. These interviews turn into this weird therapy. You drop in deeper and deeper—into the purpose. It gets kind of existential. Psychedelic, even.”
It’s a bold claim, sure. But coming from Stone, it doesn’t sound pretentious—it just sounds true. His voice is soft and measured, like someone halfway through a yoga nidra. He has a soothing kind of voice. One that you could easily hear reading you a bedtime story on Calm.
When I spoke to Stone, he was a few weeks out from releasing his fifth Dope Lemon release, Golden Wolf. The album, which releases today (May 2), focusses on the motif of a golden wolf. A metaphor, in Stone’s mind for mortality. Thematically, this is what the record seems to focus on, the next life. Mind you, it’s hardly like Stone should already be thinking about these things. He is, after all, only 39.
The album sounds like the kind of record you’d play on a long drive with the windows down—but listen closely, and there’s something more. Golden Wolf is about mortality. About crossing over. Not in a morbid way—more like someone floating above their own life, looking back with curiosity instead of fear.
“It’s what happens when we come to the end of what’s here for us,” he tells me. “What draws you into the next life. What you leave behind.”
The golden wolf came to him in a vision. “I’d close my eyes and see it. A golden wolf. This spirit animal that takes you across. That’s where the album came from. I wanted to explore that world. And put it in a poetic format.”
If it sounds vague, it isn’t to him. For Stone, writing isn’t about chasing ideas. It’s about trusting instincts. Letting the songs find him.
“They guide you,” he says. “The songs take you to the place. You follow them, and they tell you the story. You don’t push it. It just… appears.”
That might sound mystical. Like a wizard talking about how to conjure a spell from their bare hands. But in the case of Stone such mysticism has been earned. He’s been writing songs for the better part of twenty years now. Most people know him from Angus & Julia Stone, the brother-sister duo that became a kind of indie-folk shorthand in the late 2000s. I mean, I’m pretty sure eighty percent of my noughties childhood was me sat in the backseat of my Mum’s car listening to Down the Way. Dope Lemon, though, is something else entirely. It’s looser. More cinematic. Weirder. But in the best way possible.
“With Julia, it’s a dance. You’ve got to make space for each other,” he explains. “She has this beautiful way of seeing the world, and it’s always refreshing. But Dope Lemon—that’s just me. I get to disappear into whatever world I want. Different styles, different sounds. No rules.”
And that world is fully realised. Dope Lemon records don’t just sound like albums—they feel like portals. A blend of Tarantino dust, Wes Anderson symmetry, and surf-psych haze. He namechecks both directors when I ask what inspires him visually.
“I’ll be strumming and suddenly I’m in this scene. I can see it. I’m the character. There’s a setting. A colour palette. And then I follow that thread, and it becomes a song.”
This isn’t just some vibe-heavy branding exercise. The Dope Lemon universe is real to people. At one of his shows in 2019, I watched a guy buy water for a stranger who looked like they might faint. No drama. Just kindness. You don’t forget stuff like that. Stone notices it too.
“It’s that community,” he says. “Every day I get sent Dope Lemon art. Tattoos. Messages about what the music’s meant to someone. You meet a stranger who’s followed your whole journey, and they talk to you like they’ve known you forever. They tell you about losing someone. Or falling in love. Or going through hell. And the music was there for it.”
Those moments, he says, are when it all clicks. “That’s when it makes sense. That’s the connection.”
This July, he’s taking Golden Wolf on the road with a national tour. Fremantle, Melbourne, Barwon Heads, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane—plus New Zealand dates. But touring now isn’t what it used to be. Costs have gone up. Festival infrastructure is shaky. Splendour in the Grass is cancelled. So is Groovin the Moo and a plethora of others.
I ask what he makes of it, especially as someone who has played a key role in the Australian music scene for nearly two decades now.
He pauses after hearing the question. He’s careful. Not out of caution, but intention. He knows it’s a big topic.
“As hard-hitting as it is when your favourite festival goes down… when the big trees fall, it lets more sunlight in for the smaller plants. It gives space for new things to grow. Maybe people will start exploring beyond the big stages. That could be good.”
Stone isn’t just saying this for the sake of it either. This is genuinely how Stone sees the world. It’s the way he always has. He doesn’t ride trends. Doesn’t chase hits. He’s not here to play ‘the game’. He’s building his own world, one strange, dreamy album at a time.
Because while the industry panics, Angus Stone continues to do what he’s always done—quietly rewriting the rules in his own universe. And this time, he’s bringing a golden wolf with him too.
Dope Lemon’s new album Golden Wolf was released today. It can be listened to here. You can purchase tickets to his upcoming Australian and New Zealand tour here.
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