Emma Louise and I meet at Berkelouw Books, so by the time she arrives I’ve already blown my entire savings and am resigned to building a new life out of paperbacks.
She is here to promote her second album, Supercry, a record that stands out for the sheer scope of moods on display. Across remorse, friendship, romance and nostalgia, Louise sings a remarkable journey, and while the award-winning performer is the tie that binds them together, each song is very much an independent creature.
“It’s not necessarily on purpose. I just love songwriting,” Louise says, sipping a chai latte that puts my mocha to shame. “I want each song to be its own little thing, and I’ll always be an individual song person. In saying that though, I think I’d always rather release an album than just singles. With Supercry, I had all of these songs from different times, but I tried to find ways to segue them together. Even if just my voice is the connecting thing. Some of the sounds are similar, like we used the same bass sound for a lot of them, the same drum sound. We did most of the recording in three weeks, and it’s like a blur now. It was jumping from each song to the next. I came in with 50 songs, we picked 12 of those and then only ten made it. I want to record those other songs as well someday.”
It’s not that unusual to enter the studio with bucketloads of songs that must slowly be filtered down to an album. What is impressive, however, is the ambition of her output. Louise seems to always be moving towards the next melody, the next lyric. The fact she has already stumbled upon her third potential album is all the evidence of this you need.
“Actually, there’s a song that I’m working on now…” She looks down, frowning. “If I’m spending time with a song and it’s not working, I think it’s just better to let it go. Write down the lyrics, try and get down the mood, keep note of it, but then just let it go. I find that if it’s meant to be it’ll resurface in another song in an even better way. I like to have faith that it knows what it’s doing.
“A few weeks ago, I went to Mexico really randomly for ten days, and I wrote and demoed a whole new album. I didn’t expect that, so that was pretty great. It came from being separated from everything. The songs come from a really untouched-by-anything place. I can’t wait to record it now. But at the same time, it can be so stressful to go away to write and it doesn’t happen. I went to Japan and tried to write, and got nothing really interesting. Just dribs and drabs. It was really stressful, but I learned from that trip that no, you need to think of it as a holiday. Just soak it up, and then let it all out when you’re home.”
Given Supercry has only just been unveiled, it’ll likely be some time before we hear any of these Mexican recordings. When we do, there’s a strong chance the immediacy of their creation will remain. Stitching demos into the mix has become a significant tool for Louise, a way of capturing the unadulterated emotion that first brought a song to life. Supercry’s outstanding final track, ‘I Thought I Was A Ship’, is not only one of her two favourite songs from the record (the other, ‘Grace’, immediately precedes it), but comes as close as you can get to that original spark of creation.
“[I was in] the Old Museum in Brisbane. There were artists working across these different rooms, so you had lots of crossed paths. But I found out some terrible news that really shook my world, and I snuck into the museum’s basement where they have this old piano. I went in with some little mics, and I wrote that song. It was total, pure feeling, and we ended up using that from the demo, because we couldn’t reconstruct it later with the same emotion. With Supercry, a lot of the songs are really close to the demo. We tried sometimes to make it different from the demos, but the demo can capture something special about the time you’re building it. The song is fresh and you can still tap into what you were feeling.”
It adds an immediacy to the album that is hard to find, and makes tracks like the latest single ‘West End Kids’ shine with regret and heartbreak, while ‘I Thought I Was A Ship’ is so evocative it hurts. Hearing raw ideas realised so directly becomes a rather strange and splendid privilege.
“I think ideas can be stressful, too. You have to give them attention, and if you have all of these ideas floating around you almost have to drop everything you’re doing in order to serve them,” she laughs. “I think that they want to be born, and as artists we’re like their mother in a way. Like, giving birth would hurt, but conceiving is great and fun. You can think of an idea like that. Thinking about it, that’s the exciting part, and the creation is uncomfortable or painful. To me, that’s what it feels like to create stuff. You try and build something you believe in, and is true.”
Emma Louise playsMetro TheatreonFriday November 4; andSupercry is out now through Liberation.
