FREYA JOSEPHINE HOLLICK Hollick describes her sound as ‘cosmic country’. Despite the futuristic-sounding title, cosmic country has deep roots in country that’s more California than Nashville, more outlaw than “countrypolitan”.
Words by Matt Parnell While the genre draws from country, it seems to be more defined by how it intersects with other genres, such as soul, rock, and blues. As that relates to this record, it gives Hollick space to operate outside of not only genre but the perception of genre. “I feel it is my duty here to send out a vibration, to invite people in to be a part of a community, to do away with the ‘country music is for rednecks’ narrative and try to initiate change in the only way I know how,” she says.
“I felt as though I was existing in a new dimension,” she describes, “one where people’s intentions were so obvious, where my path was so obvious. I felt connected to an eternal hum, like my power cord had been plugged into a new socket, and I needed to let all the dead weight fall off.” Country music’s history in Australia is inextricably coloured by its American roots and associations, but with her latest record The Real World, Hollick strives to create newer, more homegrown comparisons. That’s the root of her attraction to cosmic country: it has a different history to the Nashville country that people think of when they hear the genre. Music like hers has the opportunity to dismantle these stereotypes. Her attractions to country music were more to do with its history in storytelling than any particular sound, inspired by its strength of song and poetry as well as artists like Townes Van Zant and Alan Toussaint. This is particularly evident in Hollick’s latest record The Real World. Hollick began recording the album at the Rancho de la Luna in the Mojave desert. “I ended up there in the Mojave desert,
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like the universe had called me there, to be there with those people,” she says. “It wasn’t a place I chose, the place chose me, the wonderful people I worked with chose the band, chose the studio, chose the place, and I showed up. The experience of recording in spaces used by Iggy Pop, Kurt Vile, PJ Harvey among others, as well as with artists like Greg Leisz, gave the album its size as well as its scope. Recording in the desert gives you somewhere to revel in the emptiness of, well, the desert, leading to something that feels less confined because it is less confined. She talks about amps being kept outside the studio proper due to lack of room, being afforded the opportunity to record differently given the locale. It’s hard to say how much bearing it has on the final sound, but it’s clear it had an impact on the outlook. “I felt as though I was existing in a new dimension,” she describes, “one where people’s intentions were so obvious, where my path was so obvious. I felt connected to an eternal hum, like my power cord had been plugged into a new socket, and I needed to let all the dead weight fall off.” The record’s centrepiece is its title track, the album’s fifth track of nine but also third single of five – perfectly in the middle of both. It’s a song that uses poetry to lament, longer and slower than the tracks around it, a palpable sense of loss. In the album context, after Vivienne, June, Dolly & Jolene, it’s almost jarring and a clear sign that the album’s going in a different direction. The key link is in its genre similarity, a testament to the multifaceted cosmic country as she delivers it. Something that comes up a lot is the idea that, in addition to everything else contained within the record, it’s also music for aliens. Partly tied into the mythos of country music and the desert, partly due to the cosmic half of ‘cosmic country’, partly due to the idea of the awakening. “That desert is a powerful place, with a powerful history that stretches so far back before the capitalist machine put its devastation there,” she concludes. “The death place of Gram Parsons and a good place to go looking for aliens, I felt so at home, I can’t even explain it.” Hollick will be bringing her cosmic country to Ninchfest on the Mornington Peninsula’s St Andrew’s Beach, from February 10 and 11.
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