Interview: Emmy The Great, Part 1

December 15, 2010 at 09:36 (Interviews)
Tags: emmy the great, folk music, pledge music, sparkadia

Image Courtesy of Emmy the Great

When Emmy the Great announced that her fans could pledge money towards the recording of her new album in return for gifts of appreciation (including a chance to interview the singer-songwriter), Timber and Steel jumped at the chance. Emmy recently wrapped up recording so took some time out to follow through on her promise and talk to our very own Evan Hughes. In the first part of the interview Emmy tells Evan about the inspirations behind the new album, her songwriting process and her connection to Australian music.

Evan Hughes: Thank you so much for taking the time out to chat to me
Emmy The Great: No no, that’s fine. Thank you so much for pledging. It’s really cool.
EH: So welcome to Timber and Steel. To give you some background we basically focus on folk and acoustic music. In Australia the kind of acoustic-folk music that we enjoy wasn’t getting much attention from the press.
ETG: They don’t get much attention in Australia?
EH: So there’s quite a big alternative folk scene here but it doesn’t get as much press as electronic or rock music
ETG: There’s a real hard rock culture in Australia isn’t there? Do you know of a band called Sparkadia?
EH: Definitely, yeah.
ETG: He’s my friend! I’m going to sing on his album!
EH: That’s awesome!
ETG: My best friend is Australian and he lives in a big house full of Aussies with Alex from Sparkadia. So I know so many Australian things and I can almost pick up the accent. I’m constantly hanging out with Aussies, I feel really at home talking to you.
EH: Nice! So I guess we’ll start with some general questions about your music, just to get some background. You’re obviously at the end of the process of making your new album. I’m just wondering what’s the inspiration for your music?
ETG: I tried really hard to have an imaginary language or vocabulary for this album. Although the stuff I was writing about was kind of feelings, like stuff that was really happening to me, I tried to put it in the context of imagined situations and other characters that are sort of living my life, if you know what I mean. I’m giving them certain situations that I empathise with but essentially they’re made up.
EH: So it’s like a reflection of yourself?
ETG: It’s kind of like if someone was writing a bunch of stories that was always casting the same people in them if that makes sense? Like if you always made movies with the same cast?
EH: Yeah
ETG: And also it’s like talking about your experiences but not necessarily in the right order or exactly how it happened. Like fictionalising your experience.
EH: So you’re taking real life as a starting point and then seeing where the narrative takes you from there?
ETG: It’s sort of like trying to create a world and then as you create the world you find the things that have happened to you recently pour out anyway. This whole album was about creating worlds like the ones that I was in, but it just so happens that everything I was going through came out. I went through a bit of a funny period in the middle of writing it because my fiancé at the time converted to Christianity, became a missionary and left the country. So I had this really weird period where I was supposed to be getting married but I was actually reading lots about theology because I didn’t understand what had happened. And I sort of became fascinated with the lives of the Saints because they’re the basis for a lot tales that have entered into the consciousness but you wouldn’t necessarily recognise them as the Saints lives. Like Cinderella might have been based on a Saint. And I started to think about how we all have personal protector Saints, we all have cultural markers that kind of act like people used to have patron Saints. So I started to assign songs to my own little canons of Saints, kind of people like a group of characters from books, or novelists who’ve died or things that I like that made me feel a bit safe at a time when I wasn’t feeling very safe. One of the characters in a song is Sylvia Plath but it’s her ghost. And another one is singing to Juliet from Romeo and Juliet.
EH: So the characters in your songs that are interacting with these literary “Saints”. Will we see similar characters from your older songs? Are you continuing on any of the stories of your other songs or are you bringing in brand new characters?
ETG: I think my old songs were often different versions of me. But with this one it’s like I’m singing to people but not necessarily from me. Like there’s a song to Cassandra, the woman who predicted the fall of Troy but no one listened to her, but it’s not from me. Very few of these songs feel like they are about different versions of me. A lot of them feel like people I might empathise with who have elements of me. It’s more to other people than about me, this album. It’s weird because it’s more personal than the last one. It’s really complicated.
EH: Are you still taking a very narrative form with your song writing? Are you finding that you’re telling a full story with the songs or are you getting a little bit more obtuse?
ETG: It’s really narrative. It’s very much a story. It’s not like there’s an overarching story, it’s lot of little stories that might be on the same globe, in different parts of it. So if there was an alternative Earth which was peopled by characters from myths and stories I guess it would be that. You know that Disney ride It’s a Small World? (laughs) It’s kind of a bit like that.
EH: That’s probably the strangest metaphor I’ve heard for an album. But yeah I think I get it. Is there a title for the album yet or are you still working it out?
ETG: I’ve got a few titles in mind. They all sort of circle around the same thing but I haven’t worked out which one is the best one yet. I’ll probably know by Christmas I think.

Watch this space for part two where Emmy talks about working with producer Gareth Jones, her influences and the importance of her collaborators.