Olympia is the musical project and stage persona of Olivia Bartley, a Melburnian singer-songwriter who’s been making waves for quite a while now.
The past year has seen her tour with Alpine as well as booking sets at Brisbane’s Bigsound and the fast-approaching Dashville Skyline festival in the Hunter Valley – a celebration of Americana culture and music with an Australian twist. Olympia’s debut album is due to hit the shelves later this year. “We’re almost ready to press the button and print to CDs and USBs,” Bartley says. “I can’t wait. I’m quite keen to move on and build a new body of work.”
Bartley’s brand of alternative pop is sonically and lyrically adventurous. However, there’s a pared-back quality to her work that accentuates each individual element of her careful compositions. An eye-catching live performer, you will likely see Bartley in her trademark ensemble – a glittering bodysuit topped with a slick blonde bob.
“I’ve been looking into a lot of Australian bands from the ’70s and old Countdown footage,” she explains. “They dressed up so much compared to us. Musicians are quite austere these days, so I like to disrupt the norm a little bit.”
Although Bartley has been making music for a long time, the Olympia project is a relatively recent development. It is also the blueprint for a bigger band. “When I started this project, I had a long-term vision involving a nine-piece band; however, touring with multiple people is incredibly difficult,” she says. “I pour a lot of effort into writing my songs – they are quite unusual. I think the songs are strong enough that I can play them on my own or explore them with a band. The aim is we can do special shows with horns or choral elements.”
Though she’s now a promising musical talent, Bartley actually began her professional life as an artist and designer. “I guess I’ve always been a creative person,” she says. “I love to stay home and rip pages out of books and recreate them in plastic folders. I do approach music the way I approach making artwork. My family all play instruments and are such naturally gifted players, so it seemed easy to pick up a guitar.”
Earlier this year, Bartley performed at the National Gallery of Victoria’s winter music series, Unplugged Live, which explored resonances between art and music. She still finds herself most productive when working between disciplines and gathering inspiration from a wide range of sources.
“Often it’s picking up an Art and Australia magazine that will give me an idea for a song or the way artists are always trying to push things forward,” she says. “That’s what I really admire – when artists push ideas forward and bring their audiences with them.”
Over the past few months, Bartley has been collaborating with Burke Reid, a producer attached to some of the most powerful new voices in Australian music such as Courtney Barnett and Jack Ladder. “Burke works so hard, you can’t help but trust him,” she says. “There are not many people that put so much of themselves into your work.”
Looking ahead to her soon-to-be-released record, Bartley says the new suite of songs is more personal than ever. “Many of them are quite strong, even though they seem quite fragile. I took them into the studio with Burke and pulled them apart – it was quite a deconstructive way of working. We had access to all these vintage synthesisers, which I had never used before. It was such a privilege to keep on creating in that recording environment, which is such a pressure-cooker. I was open to seeing how far we could go with these songs.”
Olympia plays at Dashville Skyline, with Bahamas, Shane Nicholson, Holy Holy, Wagons and many more, at Dashville, Hunter Valley, Saturday October 3 – Sunday October 4.
