Julia Stone

Known for her delicate and haunting vocals, Australia’s Julia Stone has garnered acclaim for her blend of intimate acoustic balladry and artful indie pop. She first came to the public’s attention with her brother as one half of the acclaimed Australian folk duo Angus & Julia Stone, recording four Top Five ARIA-charting albums and taking home the ARIA Album of the Year for 2010′s Down the Way. Along with her continued work with her brother, Stone has also distinguished herself as a solo artist, releasing evocative albums like 2012′s Top 20 Aria-charting By the Horns and 2021′s Sixty Summers, which featured production and songwriting collaborations with St. Vincent.
Born in 1984, Stone spent her formative years in the city of Newport (just north of Sydney), where her father taught music and her parents performed as a folk duo. Encouraged to play music from a young age, Stone started out on the trumpet and often played in a family band with her brother Angus on trombone and her sister Catherine on saxophone. She eventually gravitated toward singing and playing guitar. By the time Stone had finished high school, she and her brother were writing and performing their own songs together. Working as Angus & Julia Stone, the duo released a pair of critically acclaimed albums, 2007′s A Book Like This and 2010′s Down the Way. The latter was a breakthrough success, debuting at number one in Australia and eventually earning them five ARIA Music Awards including Album of the Year.
Around the same time, Stone embarked on a solo career with the release of her 2010 debut album, The Memory Machine. Produced with Kieran Kelly and Brad Albetta, the record found her further expanding the dark and dreamy sound she had developed with her brother. Two years later, she returned with her sophomore full-length, the Thomas Bartlett and Patrick Dillett-produced By the Horns, which peaked at number 11 in Australia.
In 2014, Stone reunited with her brother for their third album, the Rick Rubin-produced Angus & Julia Stone. It marked their second consecutive appearance on the Billboard Americana/Folk Albums chart and again hit number one in Australia. The duo’s fourth album, Snow, arrived in 2017, debuting at number two in Australia and picking up ARIA Award nominations for Best Blues and Roots Album and Best Independent Release.
In 2020, Stone curated the covers album Songs for Australia with proceeds going to aid in the relief of the 2019 and 2020 Australian bushfires. For the album, she contributed a rendition of Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning.” The following year, she released her third solo album, Sixty Summers, which featured production and songwriting collaborations with St. Vincent and Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman. Included on the album was the song “We All Have” featuring the National’s Matt Berninger. ~ Matt Collar