To step into ‘Golden Wolf’ is to tune into a frequency just slightly out of phase with reality. It doesn’t announce itself. It glides in like the breeze through a half-open window, familiar and elusive at once.

This is the fifth chapter in the evolving dreamscape of Dope Lemon, Angus Stone’s long-burning project, and perhaps the most richly textured to date.

Earlier albums had their own gravity. Cosmic joyrides and smoky river drifts. But ‘Golden Wolf’ feels like something else entirely. It lives in the quiet moments, the soft edges of memory where everything blurs. It’s all warm light, distant echoes, rooms without clocks. There’s no destination here, only the feeling of motion, of wandering through heat shimmer and soft shadows.

The songs seem to surface out of nowhere, like something dreamt the night before and only half remembered. ‘Electric Green Lambo’ moves with a kind of velvet confidence. ‘Sugarcat’ flickers in and out of focus. ‘John Belushi’ kicks the doors wide open with wild laughter, like it barely made it through the speakers intact. The grooves are humid, loose, sticky with dusk. Everything feels found, not forced.

And beneath it all, there’s a sense that Stone is letting the myth breathe. Not pulling it apart. Just stepping back and letting it speak for itself. Rather than a set of songs, ‘Golden Wolf’ unfolds like a single, unbroken atmosphere. It’s a shimmer, a mood, a world built from smoke and memory. Somewhere to go when the real world starts pressing in too tight.

“Golden Wolf is about going to the other side… there’s no final destination.”

Hey Angus, with ‘Golden Wolf’ on the way, I have to ask: when you’re in the studio, do you find yourself consciously pushing for a new sound, or does the music just unfold as part of your natural progression?

Angus Stone: I think it’s a natural evolution that unfolds when you’re in the studio, but also in the time between records. Every time you go to make a record, you’re refining your skillsets but also experiencing more things in life—as a human being—and going through your own personal experiences and struggles. So, in that way, every album is a natural progression forward into something new.

The imagery and mood in your music always seem so cinematic, like every song could be a short film. With ‘Golden Wolf,’ how important is the visual side of things for you? Do you see the album as a cohesive visual journey, too?

Definitely. I see each song as its own film, with the protagonist being myself, an entity, or someone I can move through an emotion or world. With music videos, it’s hard to tell that whole story when you only have a few minutes of a song to convey the entire journey, but over the course of the album, there’s definitely a path the listener can go down.

‘Electric Green Lambo’ feels like a celebration of freedom, but there’s also this sense of being lost in the moment. Is that a reflection of where you’re at in your personal life right now—embracing chaos—or is it more of an artistic release?

‘Electric Green Lambo’ is a fun one. It’s heavily inspired by the experience of going into a casino, and all of the sights, sounds, and moods associated with that. It definitely encapsulates a feeling of technicolor chaos, both in the music and the lyrics as well. My whole life definitely isn’t like a trip to the casino, but it’s those crazy moments that contrast with everyday life and feel more memorable and dream-like in a way.

There’s a big contrast between the sun-soaked vibes in some of your songs and the darker, nocturnal grooves that come through in others. When you’re writing, how do you navigate those shifts in mood and tone? Is it instinctual or do you actively try to create that contrast?

When you’re in that creative bubble in the studio, there’s less of a pre-existing idea of “this is what I want to achieve in this song,” and it’s more that the song will tell you what journey it wants to go on. At that point, you’re just merely a passenger, and you let it take you for that ride.

Touring with big names like Post Malone must have been quite an experience. How does it feel to go from intimate settings to huge arenas, and has it changed how you approach performing or writing?

I think, as an artist, you don’t want to be completely changing the way you do things or perform based on the size of the room—it’s all still art and performance at the end of the day. That’s quite an introspective act for me. It’s cool to take music that I’ve recorded in my studio at home, in a certain setting, and see it translate on a stage in front of people, whether that’s a small show or a stadium.

“Sometimes I get stopped in the street—and it brings me back to why I do what I do.”

Is there a particular moment or track that you feel really clicked with listeners and made you realize how big the Dope Lemon world had become?

I think I’m constantly reminded of that really powerful feeling of knowing that your music has connected with someone or has soundtracked a time in their life. Sometimes I get stopped in the street by someone that’s had an experience of the music in their life, and it brings me back to thinking about why it is that I do what I do—and that shared experience that people have with music. Even though we’re strangers in that moment, it’s like we’re living in parallel universes.

What’s currently on your turntable?

Funnily enough, I’ve had ‘Golden Wolf’ on the turntable most recently—being sent the new album in all its glory before it comes out—and that’s always a very surreal but exciting thing: to hold the record in your hands, in the studio you wrote it in.

Lastly, what do you hope people walk away with after hearing Golden Wolf? Is there something you want them to feel or think about after they’ve pressed stop on the record, or is it more about the journey itself?

‘Golden Wolf,’ as a whole, is about going to the other side—what it is that’ll take you there at the end of all of this, moving into the next life, and how you’ll live it. There’s a beauty to be found in that journey and that process of moving through life. There’s no final destination, and I think that’s something that I’ve felt connected to in my own life. I hope people can also find meaning in that.

Klemen Breznikar

Dope Lemon Website / Facebook / Instagram / X / YouTube