Reverb Magazine - Issue 60 by Reverb Magazine

seeker lover keeper

“ I think we had a really pure, simple aim in wanting to spend time together and record honest music…”

Keeping it simple Three of Australia’s most enchanting songstresses — Sarah Blasko, Sally Seltmann and Holly Throsby — came together to make an album that celebrates the simple joy of making music with friends. The result is Seeker Lover Keeper, their name they have given their collaboration and debut album, MATT PETHERBRIDGE spoke with Sarah Blasko, delving deep into the creative and emotional core of Seeker Lover Keeper. What have you found refreshing about being a part of Seeker Lover Keeper? It’s been a really wonderful chance to spend time with two people that I really love and respect as musicians and have a shared life experience, you know? The three of us really wanted to work on a project that was really fun, really relaxed. It’s something that I’ve craved… getting back to basics and having a simple, naive approach to new music. When you’ve put out a few albums, you gain a confidence in your approach to your own music, but I seek new challenges. I want to shake everything up. Put simply, you wrote songs for each other to sing on this record. What did you enjoy most about watching your songs transform through collaboration? That feeling when a song goes in a direction you couldn’t have reached yourself. There are always the songs you think are really strong, either melodically or chord-wise. And then there are dark horses: songs that start off just okay, but when you add an element like a rhythm section or someone else begins playing it on a different instrument, it transforms them beyond your imagination. When Jim (White, drums) and Shazhad

(Ismaily, guitar/bass) began recording my song, ‘Theme 1’, it went down a completely different path. Holly would agree with this, especially with her song, ‘Going to Sleep’. She wrote this very simple song on piano and then Sally, who is an amazing pianist, started playing and it just became this great big gospel song. Holly was really in awe of that.

a supergroup or even harping on about the fact that we are women. Our motivations are so much simpler than that and I think we had a really pure, simple aim in wanting to spend time together and record honest music… which sounds like a complete hippy answer (laughs). But it’s really true. I think that’s the best way to listen to the album.

Are there certain characteristics that you attribute to your songs, when writing for an album, that separate them from being album-worthy or not? I focus on trying to work out a collection of songs that really complement each other. ‘Bring Me Back’ was special because I’d written that song a long time ago and I never quite knew what to do with it. When I played it to Sarah and Holly, they immediately responded to it and added some harmonies that brought the song to life. A lot of people say to me in this day and age it doesn’t matter, it goes digital and nobody listens to albums anymore. But I really believe in albums and I like that way of presenting my music. It’s like reading a book, you get a sense that the author has really fixated on the idea and decided to capture it. To me, albums are a distilled version of what someone experienced and I love that feeling of capturing a moment.

If you were putting together a male version of Seeker Lover Keeper, who would you select, and why? I don’t know (laughs). I was quite excited when I heard that Monsters of Folk record, because I really love M. Ward and Bright Eyes and Jim James from My Morning Jacket. I was excited by that collaboration. But three guys? I don’t know. I think it’d be great to see a diverse group. I’d probably pick three people that came from really different backgrounds, like Kanye West, Nick Cave and (laughs)… Glenn Richards (Augie March). Poor Glenn, he’ll be so embarrassed now!

Like that Bon Iver album For Emma, Forever Ago, it just resonated so much with people because it captured this feeling of him living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Now that is a really beautiful thing. I love that sentiment of an album representing a distilled legacy of a moment in time. From your experience in New York recording Seeker Lover Keeper, is there a particular feeling you wanted listeners to get from the album? We didn’t have any grand aims. The three of us wanted to remind each other of the simplicity and the beauty of what we do. We wanted to reignite this love of music within each of us. I hate people trivialising this as

Seeker Lover Keeper perform at Lizotte’s Lambton on Thursday July 14; Civic Memorial Hall, Mullumbimby on Friday July 15; Memorial Hall, Bellingen, on Saturday July 16. Seeker Lover Keeper is out now through Dew Process/Universal.