INTERVIEW: Greta Stanley talks new single 'Close Call' and upcoming fourth album: "I write with the intention of being honest, and with the intention of connecting to people"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Saskia Hilton
Cairns based singer songwriter Greta Stanley creates stunning, immersive music that tackles difficult subject matters including anxiety, depression and toxic relationships. With a soundscape that has moved from indie-pop-rock to now include electronica, synth, pop and trip-hop, her songs are experiences that you slide into and just get better and better the more time you sit with them and reflect on their message.
Stanley recently released the single ‘Close Call’, full of stop-start beats with an almost languorous feel that is cinematic in its scope. Veering between light and dark, the lyric explores the realisation that the relationship you are in - platonic or romantic - has become detrimental to your mental health. “You only want my answers / Just to feed your own persona / I’d rather be a little left of sanity then soaked in ego,” she sings.
‘Close Call’ is from her upcoming fourth as yet unnamed album, her first since 2017’s Full Grown. With Stanley’s exceptional growth and maturation as an artist in the intervening years, it promises to be a highlight of her career. We recently caught up with Greta to chat more about the creation of ‘Close Call’ and her new music.
Hello Greta, how wonderful is your music? Obviously, we've just got the most recent release, 'Close Call' which I can only describe as a wonderful moment in time. It's one of those songs that you need to take five to process it in its completeness. You need to sit down for that song, it is my hard and fast favourite if I'm allowed to have one. Can you talk us through this glorious creature from origins to production?
Thank you so much. I wrote that song a long time ago, the majority of the lyrics. I don't think I even adjusted any. I wrote it to a guitar and didn't really know what I was going to do with it. It was always a bit of a slow song, I knew I wanted to record it eventually, but I felt it didn't fit into the last few bodies of work that I did. I took it in the studio with Tristan Barton who produced it and just brought the song to life a lot more and it took a totally different direction. It was one of the hardest songs to get going and we almost like ‘maybe we shouldn't do this song’. But then Tristan came up with these really pretty sounds at the start and it kind of went from there. We didn't really know what genre it, it feels like a bit of a breath in the album, comparatively to all the other songs, it's a bit slower and I find it mediative.
At the time that I wrote it, I'd been living in Melbourne and I didn't really know many people. I met a group of people but I felt like a bit of an outsider. If I wasn't across the things that they were across, they would make little digs and put me down. There was just a lot of a lot of ego and a lot of people that I felt thought they were above anyone that didn't think like them or know the things that they knew. It got to my headspace a little bit and I had to take a step back and reassure myself that that wasn't the reality - I am entitled my own opinions and I don't have to know all these things that other people know to be good enough. They just weren't very nice people. And the room that I lived in, the windows were broken and the sun would crack through in the morning and that’s where that line comes from ‘draw those blinds I need an honest light’.
What a beautifully constructed song about some pretty shitty people!
Yeah, definitely. Melbourne was great and I loved it and I made so many beautiful friends there but when I first there that I didn't have the nicest people around me. I eventually left Melbourne, my mental health got really bad and I had to come home, but I feel grateful for the experience. The song was born out of one of the shittiest times.
It's so good. You talked about the meditative state, ‘Close Call’ is a moment where you need to stop and listen. It's almost like those thoughts you get just as you're about to fall asleep when everything's just processing. And that gorgeous hip hop beat coming in is just perfect
Yeah, I really liked the hip-hop beat. It wasn't something that I would have really gone in and picked for myself. That was actually Tristian's doing and it kind of made it easier to get to a starting point, then the song flowed from there. It is what you say that, like when you going to sleep, and it is a bit stop start-y. You relax, and then these thoughts pop up to the front and then you're processing it and then they pop back up. That's what it feels like for me, it's like a train of thought.
That's perfect. Your music from the beginning has always been praised for its lyrical and melodic storytelling. You have these personal moments that you then craft into these audible golden nuggets for your listeners to consume and make it their own. What makes a song for you both as an artist and as a listener?
That's probably the same on both ends. When I listen to music, even from a young age, I love those honest, storytelling songs. I was a big, big fan of Missy Higgins and I listened to a lot of Macy Gray when I was young and Anastacia. I've always loved P!nk since I was a little girl. When I was young, I dealt with anxiety without knowing it was anxiety. Because I was so young, I had no idea what that was. But I always related to these songs where they were just expressing these feelings and being honest about it, even the way that the music worked within it just made me feel reassured or less alone. Then when I began writing, I write with the intention of being honest, and with the intention of connecting to people that might be feeling the same. That's what I like to write about because that's what works for me. And that's always the kind of music that I've loved listening to so.
You are an exceptional songwriter, the melodies are there and you've got this amazing voice, but it really is where you place your words. How did your music get from your notebooks to the stage?
I've always liked to sing since I was a little girl, but I was terrible for a long time. My parents had some family friends step in when I was probably 12 to give me guitar lessons, and I had a family friend show me some singing stuff. That was helpful, and encouraged me to keep doing it. My dad always played guitar, not that good, but he definitely got me interested in it and he could see that I liked it. I think it was my 13th birthday, he got me my first guitar and I just started doing it from there. At 14 or 15 I started posting covers on Facebook, just from my bedroom, really crappy recording set-up. People seem to like it, my friends at school and stuff. I did music at school and I knew I liked it, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I left school, I didn't really have any direction. I decided to join TAFE course in Cairns until I figured out what I wanted to do. I met so many amazing people there that were really instrumental in helping me get to where I am. We did live performances every week through TAFE, and I just had a great bunch of people and teacher's around me to help me get the confidence to stand up on a stage. I started busking around Cairns and I was approached to come and play pub gigs. I've been doing it for about nine years now. Definitely each year there's far more growth and as hard as it can get, especially in the last few years, I can't really imagine not doing it.
You’ve mentioned 'Close Call' is on your upcoming fourth album. How are you feeling about it after 2017’s Full Grown and the Sun In My Eyes EP? Do you feel you’ve grown in confidence?
It’s still daunting, you're still so in your head about it. It gets a little bit easier, but it's still that thing when you stand in a studio and you listen to yourself all day. It's hard not to be critical, or just be sick of yourself by the end of it. What helps is I've had great producers for the whole album that have been really supportive and amazing to work with and brought so much to the songs and to the album as a whole. I did two songs that are already out, 'Soak Into This' and 'New Feeling' with a German based producer Tobias Kuhn. And then the rest of the songs I did with two Far North Queensland producers. Mark Meyers, who has a studio up in the Tablelands, has worked on every body of work I've done so far, and most of the album I actually recorded with Tristan Barton, who produced and co-wrote 'Close Call'. Tristan is typically a composer for film and ads and he did a bit of work on my last EP Sun In My Eyes, but he doesn't generally record artists, albums or singles or anything like that so I feel super lucky that he made the exception for me to do most of the album. I love those beautiful cinematic sounds and he's just got a real knack for bringing things to life and making them so special. I’m so super grateful. Far North Queensland is all over this album, so that's great!
There's nothing like far north Queensland all over everything. How important to you? Of course, there's was that big move in your life from Melbourne back to Far North Queensland where you just felt so much better. Can you hear it in your songs?
With writing and stuff, I'm obviously inspired by my surroundings, even when reflecting on things in the past. I love to to make metaphors that tie in with the weather and the change of seasons, I've got a lot of summer references throughout like all of my body of work and I guess that comes down to just living in Cairns where we do have these sweltering hot summers and a big wet season, you feel such a change when it comes into winter. When I write these songs, they're all about home, especially with this album. It is a collection of love songs, not just romantically, but friendships and family. It comes through in some of the lyrics, very obviously, but also in the sounds and the feeling of the song, I’m thinking of waterfalls, and the heat and stuff like that. I grew up in Mena Creek, which is about two hours south of Cairns, it’s a tiny little country town, and I feel like I'm as interested in music and writing and songwriting as I am now, because I had so much free time as a kid. We had dial up internet for a long time, no phone reception, and we were half an hour from town so we always have to do a bunch of chores before [we were allowed to] go into town! You just has so much free time out there, so I was bored. I had the guitar and really enjoyed writing and singing.
Greta, lastly before I have to leave you what's coming up for you?
Well, apart from the album which is planned for release in February of next year, we'll release a single before that, date to be confirmed. Another song and then the album, and then fingers crossed if everything is looking good border wise, we'll probably do a smaller tour earlier in the year and then aim for a big one mid-year surrounding the album. That's the plan. Hopefully some film clips and stuff in between that releasing the album and then touring, that's the goal. Touring is a bit hard to think about, but it's all looking pretty promising at the moment, so fingers crossed.
‘Close Call’ is out now via Double Drummer. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Greta Stanley, you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
