Hannah Shepherd, AKA Airling, is many things.
An outstanding alt-R&B artist. A fierce hockey player. A hater of penguins and all that they stand for. Someone both intrigued and dubious about cat cafés. In short, she can’t be easily categorised, and as a result, conversation with her is like a restless, living thing, veering from tangent to tangent, dropping insight and observation like breadcrumbs. With a national tour just days away, she talks to us of genesis, expectation, and how it feels to have just wrapped a performance on triple j’s Like A Version.
“I’m feeling good! I’m excited, and nervous,” she laughs. “When I was a teenager going to school, we always used to listen to Like A Version, and it seemed like a different world. It seemed so far away for me then, so it’s a very interesting journey. To be able to play the last song we released as well as the cover is cool, because I’m probably the most proud of ‘Stallin’’. But we played Usher’s ‘U Got It Bad’. It was really fun! I think Usher is one of the best R&B voices, and I was a ’90s baby, so it makes me very nostalgic, singing that song. I hope it will make a lot of other people nostalgic hearing it as well.”
It seems like such a terrifying honour, performing on Like A Version. The quality can be exceptional (and if you haven’t yet heard Airling’s cover, go check it now – it’s OK, we’ll wait), but the standard demanded from fans these days is high. Usher was a good choice, but it turns out it wasn’t Shepherd’s only contender.
“It was a decision between that or doing something more modern. I was interested in doing one of The Weeknd’s songs, or maybe Tame Impala. I actually had a little play around with a John Farnham song, and I really wanted to do ‘Burn For You’, but my manager kind of vetoed that. I was even out one night and a little bit drunk, and I saw his new tour poster and took a selfie with it. I sent it to my manager and said, ‘It’s a sign, it’s a sign!’ But nope. I’m still really happy with the Usher choice though. Can you imagine if he heard it?”
Talk of signs turns out to be a nice, if unintended segue, as we move through the musical mists of time to chart the Brisbane songwriter’s evolution over recent years. Her debut EP, Love Gracefully, appeared last September, and 2015 kicked off with a tour alongside Vance Joy. Airling’s strides in the industry have been impressive so far, yet tracking down the origin of her name proves elusive – right up until the point we simply ask her about it.
“I think I kept that one pretty well hidden. I think about things a lot, and I spent about six months or so trying to come up with a name after I’d started to make music. The music had definitely come along first. But I really love the word ‘air’, and I’m Gemini, which is an air sign as well, so it made sense. But the word just popped into my head, and so I looked it up and the definition – well, there’s two definitions there, but I’m being selective in which one I’m choosing – basically means anything that can fly. That’s an airling. So not all birds are airlings – for instance, poor little penguins aren’t airlings. I liked the visual part of that. Obviously I can’t fly yet, but it’s something I’m working on.”
It seems a little harsh on penguins, who already have to contend with things like leopard seals and frozen landscapes on top of poor access to live music. But Shepherd is the boss – “No penguins!” she insists, laughing. “God, what have I done? All the penguin lovers are going to stop coming to my shows now.”
With the release of ‘Stallin’’, several voices in the music industry have commented on a perceived shift in direction of Airling’s music. While she concedes her sound has changed somewhat, Shepherd suspects this is more a result of her long-term love of artists like Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu than any attempt to redefine herself. Even after a half-hour chat, the enduring impression is that Airling is not an artist trying to fashion something she is not.
“I didn’t plan on things happening like this. But I’ve always been a big R&B listener. I think there are lots of R&B elements in my songs, and I guess it’s something that just happened. It makes me feel really good to hear it there, and really comfortable in what I was doing. It made me feel like I’d finally arrived at a place that really reflected where I was at as a writer and as a listener.
“It’s great, because I realised that this is the kind of music that I’d want to listen to myself. There’s no right or wrong way, and there are so many options, you can go down so many different paths. But there are still pop elements, there are still hip hop elements. We did strip back the electronic instruments a lot – that’s probably been the biggest change. Just wanting to turn up the vocals, drums and bass. It was actually quite scary in the start, but became really empowering.”
Airling’sLove Gracefully is out now through Pieater, and she plays Newtown Social Club,Friday October 9, with Lanks.
