SELF-CENTRED QUEENS, ACCORDING TO
Clare Bowditch
So whereabouts are you today? I’m in Melbourne. You sound far away… Sorry – I’m on a speakerphone. So I can record you and hold everything against you… No worries. (Laughs) What have you got planned for the rest of today, after your interviews? I’m actually logging songs; I’ve been given twenty days…when I say “given”, I’ve swapped with my fellah. I’ve got twenty days in the studio, going through a box of about a hundred half-finished, unfinished songs, and I’m working out which ones are good and which ones are crap! (Laughs) You were saying about your partner? My producer and partner Marty Brown. He’s also the drummer in my band; we have a little girl. And we take it in turns to do our intensive work. So he’s just spent two months recording with Art of Fighting, and I’ve kind of been Asha’s mum, and now I’ve got my own month to be working on this project.
If there’s one thing harder than putting out a debut, it’s following it up. Regardless of its genre, a sophomore album can, more often than not, fail to live up to its predecessor, and in the process put all the artist’s hard work in jeopardy. Some, however, break the trend. Nirvana did it with “Nevermind”. The Deftones did it with “Around The Fur”. Aussies Clare Bowditch & The Feeding Set managed to pull it off too with a little album called “What Was Left”. Dave Williams caught up with Bowditch to talk about being a “Little Self-Centred Queen”.
So you’re doing that for the rest of today – what have you been up to generally in the last month? Last month I’ve been…I came back from a tour of Europe, which was fantastic. Then I did a support tour with a guy called James Blunt, all around Australia. That was good fun. He always chooses unusual support acts; you never have similar music to his music, so I came back from Europe a little bit early to do that. And in between that, just hanging out at home, having a little bit of downtime before we go off on this next tour. When you went to Europe, did you come back inspired? What kind of feeling did you have when you came back? Was it renewed, or were you sort of worked over? I came back absolutely inspired. What I did in Europe that month was…I actually played a very different style of show. I used electric guitar, loop
pedals…I barely talked. It was a much darker style of set. And I really had a lot of fun with it. So you can get set in your ways when you play as much as we play, so to go to Europe and make a fool of myself in front of people who would not remember me was quite liberating. (Laughs) It’s that whole thing about being a stranger in a strange town – you can kind of reinvent yourself wherever you go… Yeah. That’s right. And I took full advantage of it and had a lot of fun. But Europe’s familiar – my mother’s Dutch, and so I’ve spent a little time over there throughout my life. But we loved it so much that we can’t wait to get back; I think we’re going to go back in September. And you’re going to the States in the near future as well. Yeah. We’re hoping to go over there and pick up on a few possible opportunities that have presented themselves over the last few months. Like what? I can’t really go into it! [Disappointed sigh] Aw…!
at a certain part of their life, at a certain stage of the night, after a certain number of drinks, will have a “Little Self-Centred Queen” moment. It’s meant to be a bit of a playful song. What was your last self-centred queen moment that you can remember? Oh, god. I’m living with a toddler at the moment, and I get to observe quite a few of them. And they’re stunning things to observe. I can’t really think of a time when I’ve had a “me-me-me” fit. I’ve had them, no doubt about it. I remember one time when I was seventeen; I was at a party, and I was in a corner of a room, and I saw my ex-boyfriend. He was with a new girl, and I started crying, and all my friends gathered around! I think it’s about that kind of a moment. “It’s-all-about-me” moment… It’s just one of those “all-about-me” moments. You see them a lot on shows like “Big Brother”. If you’re into reality TV, you’ll always find them. I’ve read it described as a “creepier pop song”. What do you think that means? And creepier than
…people … who would not remember me… e… We’re hoping to get a really good release over there, and good management…have a good shot at broadening our possibilities over there. That’s vague, isn’t it? Your second album, “What Was Left”; it sort of fucked a trend, in that most second albums are pretty disappointing, and yours was the opposite. You seemed to get more acclaim from your second than your first. What do you think it was about that album that made people take notice? That’s an interesting question. It’s hard for me to know. What I can say about the album is that we really dedicated ourselves to the process of making it; it was a very honest album. We tried to be inventive with the way we recorded the album.
what? Sheesh! Who said that? It’s in one of your PR releases… (Laughs) That’s my manager! He probably means that it’s a creeper; it’s not an obvious hit. I guess none of our songs are obviously pop, but they definitely have pop elements in them. The release “I Thought You Were God” – is that what is prompting your upcoming tour of Tassie? No, not really. We’re just doing…we’re touring Australia just because we thought that it was about time. We haven’t done our own headlining shows for about nine months. But there’s no particular reason for it.
We had a real range of songs on there, in terms of styles. Our first release, it was a very small independent release, and I still feel that we didn’t get any attention at all with it. We loved the album, but when you’re an Australian musician with absolutely no money, it’s always incredible when you get any attention at all.
That’s unusual, I would have thought – coming down just for the one. Because we’re playing everywhere from Adelaide to Darwin to Ballarat to Perth on this show, I guess we can’t hang around. Maybe that’s the reason.
Did you write “Little Self-Centred Queen” about anyone in particular? (Laughs) I had a girl in mind as I wrote it. And I think it’s really an everywoman kind of song. Every woman,
By Dave Williams Illustration by Dean Swanton
Claire Bowditch plays Hobart’s Republic Bar & Café on the 24th of June.
THURSDAY 29TH JUNE UNI BAR – HOBART
LAYING TRACKS TOUR
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Wrest Point Conservatorium Big Band, Conservatorium Concert Choir, Wind Ensemble, Musical Theatre,
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