Yes I’m cheating by recycling material I had published on another website. You’ll get over it.
One of Australia’s great songwriters, Jen Cloher is back from a long hiatus with a new album and a bunch of shows. FasterLouder caught up with her to chat about the new record, the reasons behind her long absence, and why there’s plenty of room for both Josh Pyke and Tim Rogers in today’s music scene.
Jen Cloher and the Endless Sea released their debut album Deadwood Falls in 2006, which was repeatedly named as one of the year’s most impressive debuts and scored an ARIA nomination. Extensive touring followed, supporting the likes of Missy Higgins, Ben Lee and Jose Gonzales among others and they were invited to play at the One Earth Concert welcoming the Dalai Lama. Then everything went quiet.
With the release of Hidden Hands, we learn the truth behind it was that Jen moved to New Zealand for a year when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The busy life of a successful touring artist stopped. “I was all of a sudden faced with myself and a guitar and a blank page without any lyrics on it. And I just thought oh good lord, here I am, I’ve written one album and I’m going to have to write another one. And I don’t know if I’ve got it in me, I’ll just have to find out.”
The quiet life away from friends, shows and city life resulted in a moving and candid collection of songs about Jen’s time in isolation and being powerless as she watched her mother slowly slip further into dementia. “What I was going through at the time was intense. I’m their only child and I’m there to look after them. There’s a lot of change going on in my life – I’m away from what I know, away from my band and my musical comrades. There’s a great deal of isolation and I thought this is what I need to write about. To not do so would be silly. I would have been making up some rubbish that I didn’t really feel that I was attached to in any way.”
Many people would find the thought of such public candour uncomfortable, and I ask if it’s difficult to bare your soul to the public knowing that it’s open to interpretation. People might not take things exactly as you meant them. “Yes and no,” she replies. “I feel very clear about what I wrote and why, and that’s all that matters. I guess the only reason I record songs and put them out there is because I love playing live and it means that you’re given an audience to come and see you play.”
Aside from the obvious financial benefits, this is also why Hidden Hands was recorded live. “When you play live as a band there’s an energy behind the band that you might not necessarily achieve if you lay down one part on top of another. So the song takes on its own life. Also I think because you’re going ‘oh well this is it!’ This is what’s going down so we better do our best!”
The songs of Hidden Hands are incredibly intimate and personal. The album has been likened to reading someone’s diary and in many respects that’s exactly what it is. In the opening track Mother’s Desk (“So I sat at my mother’s desk/Where her first class mind/ was laid to rest”) Jen tells of struggling with her mother’s illness and her own writer’s block. The final track, Watch Me Disappear, is a heartbreaking letter to her mother that Triple J’s Dom Allesio said “destroys my soul every time I listen to it”.
This strong connection to the music is what has been picked up on by reviewers and listeners around the country. Jen’s proud of the strong response, and also that the same people have realised that Jen Cloher and the Endless Sea are a group, not a singer with back-up band. ” The Age called the band magnificent and the Rolling Stone said we were robust. I’m really happy that people have picked up on that even though the songs are of a very personal nature, we are ultimately a band.”
Does this mean that they’re no longer getting put in that – œfemale singer-songwriter’ box that Jen has spoken about before?
“Yes, my lifetime gripe,” she laughs. “Absolutely. I think I’ve always wanted to be in a band and play in a band. I feel that this country is still yet to celebrate a songwriter who happens to be a woman in the same way that Nick Cave or Paul Kelly or Tim Rogers is celebrated. My hope – and I do think it is starting to happen – is that women will just be seen as songwriters as opposed to – œfemale singer-songwriters’, which a lot of people see as a genre.
“You know, what Bertie Blackman is doing as opposed to what Mia Dyson is doing, as opposed to what New Buffalo or Holly Throsby is doing. It’s completely different. The only thing they have in common is that they are all musicians and they all happen to be female.”
Far from banging the feminist drum, Jen just sees it as something we need to grow out of, and it’s up to the media to stop being lazy and take people on their own merit regardless of gender. And for festivals to show acts because they are great acts, not because there’s too many girls on the bill already.
“You don’t go to Rolling Stone and they’ve reviewed Josh Pyke and then have a lengthy discussion about how hard it’s going to be for him because we’ve already got Tim Rogers and we’ve already got Whitley and Ben Lee, and so there can’t be any room for Josh Pyke as well. You just don’t see it.”
It’s a discussion that was well and truly heating up after this year’s Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time, in which almost no female artists were voted into the list. “I think it was really disappointing naturally, but I actually think it was a good thing. I think the most important thing was that it made all of us think about – and tell me if you didn’t have this conversation – the female artists, musicians, songwriters that have shaped your life. And we all ran around going, – œWhat about bloody PJ Harvey or Patti Smith? How the hell did Janis Joplin not get on there?’ It was great there were all of these impassioned conversations going on.”
Jen Cloher and the Endless Sea are touring nationally now, having launched the album in Sydney and Melbourne earlier in the year. “We’re going to pretty much every capital city except Darwin and Canberra. So we’ll be doing our first ever headline shows in Tassie and WA. It’ll be really good. You get to meet the people that are buying and listening to your music, and you also get the opportunity to get better.”
With touring the reason for making an album, rather than the other way around, you can be sure the shows will be good. Playing live is the passion of Jen Cloher and the Endless Sea, and it’s a relief to see their return to Australian stages. Not that there was any danger of them going away for good.
“Leonard Cohen likened being a songwriter to being – œmarried to a mystery’. And I think he nailed it. You know, artists are doing this thing and they’re not sure where it’s coming from or how they’re coming up with the ideas, but you have to do it. It’s like a calling.”
Happy Monday everyone.
