Great Scott, he's gone nuts

Samuel Flynn Scott says he is ready to listen to the birds and the trees.

Samuel Flynn Scott is nuts about music. Get him talking and he'll dissect the genius of an Elvis Presley tune he's "obsessed" with, fawn over the drums on a Duke Ellington track, and proclaim that although his lyrics don't always make sense he's not a "strange, pretentious character who hides his true thoughts. I'm a straight-up guy."

He's also just nuts. That's him in the artwork of his new solo album, The Hunt Brings Us Life, with tree branches for antlers, a pinecone behind his ear and a startled expression.

Doesn't he worry people will get the wrong idea when they realise that apart from playing guitar, mandolin, mellotron, bass and Casiotone, he also plays nylon, bottle, bells - and nuts?

"I hope they do," he says. "They're called cooler nuts, I think. They're strung together on a stick and make a click-clack sound."

Tonight Scott takes a sidestep from the Phoenix Foundation and performs at the Dogs Bollix with his band the Bunnies on Ponies, a country collective with drummer Craig Terris of Cassette, bassist Tom Callwood from Little Bushmen and guitarist Dave Long of the Muttonbirds.

Recently they played support for American indie-folk singer Jolie Holland. "It was like being back in that position that Phoenix isn't normally, where you're supporting someone much bigger than you and waiting around for hours for soundcheck and the sound guy is telling you not to touch anything on stage. All those pressures: 'Get out ... Don't hang around ... Stop drinking that beer'."

After two successful albums with Phoenix, Scott found his songwriting going "off kilter" in a rustic direction. The Hunt ... is a ghostly, melancholy, cheeky country album flecked with banjo, lap-steel guitar and surreal imagery: "My chopped liver is in love with me."

In the past he has credited his dad - cartoonist and satirist Tom Scott - for his adventurous musical tastes. This time, he says, they come from his adult life, the folk and improvised music he found himself drawn to. "I used musicians on the album like Riki Gooch, Toby Laing and Tom Callwood, who are very good improvisers.

"I got them to play without too much instruction. You end up with music that still has a structure and a form but there's this underlying element of freeness and weirdness."

It wasn't too weird for Wellington's Loop Recordings - usually normally an outlet for electronic music - which offered them the deal to make the album. "Mikee [Tucker, from Loop] said, 'I'll completely stay out of it because I don't understand this music, but I like it'.

"So I've had the benefit of having a record label that's really keen on helping me out but haven't pushed me in any direction."

After the solo tour, Scott will be back on the road with Phoenix, with whom he's writing the film soundtrack for Taika Waititi's offbeat comedy Eagle vs Shark.

He has also been busy writing soundtracks for the children's show The Killian Curse and for Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, which his dad produced.

Yep, Scott is so nuts about music that the music just might be turning him nuts. "I have so much music in my head right now that I think I need silence. I think I'll learn more listening to the birds and the trees."

* Samuel Flynn Scott, Tonight at the Dogs Bollix with the Bunnies on Ponies
* Album: The Hunt Brings Us Life (out now)