INTERVIEW: Introducing Ash Lune and her debut single 'Panic at the Party':
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Jamie Heath
Mumbai born, Brisbane based Ash Lune today releases her debut single ‘Panic at the Party.’ A sublime ballad with soaring strings and gentle piano held together with Lune’s emotive vocals, it is a remarkable debut and marks Lune out as a new talent to keep a very close watch on.
Intimate, raw and personal the song details Lune’s struggles with anxiety and how being in a social environment is both a highly enjoyable experience but also one that can degenerate quickly as anxiety sets in: “Don’t wanna let you down / But I can’t breathe right now / Don’t want you to see me cry / But I can’t win this fight,” she sings.
Growing up surrounded by music, her brother taught her to sing as soon as she could make a noise and she became obsessed by the music from indie artists such as Death Cab For Cutie, Lana Del Ray and Two Door Cinema Club. With a lack of female role models in the indie music scene, Lune wants her music to represent the feminine perspective of indie that wasn’t present in her youth.
With a soundscape that is utterly contemporary yet hacks back to a classic sound from decades past, we can’t wait to hear more from Ash Lune and we recently caught up with her to find out more.
Hi Ash! What an incredible creator you are. Thank you for taking the time to chat to me today. Debut single 'Panic at the Party' is out, how are things with you?
Good, good. I’m just really excited, as any artist would be. Super excited, with jitter!
Beautiful! I describe ‘Panic at the Party’ as goosebumps that go up to the skull. There's something just beautifully nostalgic in the melody and then you've just got these gorgeous, socially reflective lyrics. It's an incredible debut. Can you talk me through the process of its creation?
The song was written in November 2020 and I was going through a very difficult time. I was doing my finals for uni, I was writing my thesis. I was working, I was in the studio, and I also had my placement hours because I completed my Master’s in counselling psychology from UQ [University of Queensland] at the same time that this song was recorded. I was doing so much I was constantly on edge, constantly minutes away from going ‘I can't do this’ and just crying. So the lyrics on the day were just flowing. It was the easiest, song that I had to write, I didn't even have to think about it to be honest.
Beautiful. You were going through such an intense time, and there’s that social anxiety theme in the song. Was it always the idea to sing about something like that in such a beautifully, daydreamy kind of way?
Well, it turned out to be beautiful, [but]I didn't really intend it to be as beautiful as it sounds. I was just drawing from my lived experiences, because I do suffer from social anxiety. I guess it's just difficult for people to understand that social anxiety is just not, ‘Oh, I hate parties so I'm not going to go to parties’. You can love parties, go to parties, and then after the party, you can overthink everything that you said and then be like ‘I should never have gone’. Even while you're there, you just notice people having way more fun than you and you're like ‘oh am I not like cool enough?’ That used to always happen to me at parties, so I always wanted to write about it. It didn't matter if it was going to be beautiful, if it was going to be dark, I just went with it, you know, and it came out this way.
Gorgeous. I guess that's a real testament to as long as you're doing something with integrity, it lands. If you feel it everyone else is going to feel it. The video is also incredibly cinematic. How involved were you with the inspiration, creation, and completion of that?
The visuals came from what I saw when I wrote the song. But it was important for me to see what somebody else saw when they heard the song. I wanted to combine somebody who had never heard the song before, with somebody who had made the song so that there's that light and dark contrast. That was very, very important to me because my life is basically black or white, there's hardly any grey. It was very poetic, in a sense, to have something to show there's different times that this happens. While filming the video, as someone with social anxiety in a team of so many people and then this camera pointing at you. And you're just sitting there like, I really don't want to mess this up, I really don't want to make a fool of myself in front of all these people. And then you get so anxious. So, literally, I was very anxious filming the video. Everything you see is basically ‘Panic at the Party’. It was the most true and honest music video that I feel I've ever done because it's an anxious songs about anxiety, and I was anxious. I didn't want to screw anything up and I didn't want to let anyone down, and that's what the song is about. So that was perfect.
That’s the thing - a silver lining from really shitty situations! Music is obviously the catharsis for you, it's an avenue to process anxieties, hopes, and even your regrets. Has it always done that for you?
Music has been very important in my life before I even thought that it was important. I grew up thinking everyone loves music as much as I do, and everyone listens to it just as much as I do, which is like 24 hours a day. I grew up with ADHD and dyslexia, so if there was something that I couldn't say, I would find music that said that, or something that I was feeling I would find music. And that's exactly what everyone does. You want to tell someone you love them, you send them a love song. You put captions from songs on your social media posts and stuff, things that you couldn't say but other people said it and that really resonates with you. Music has always been a time machine. You listen to a song and it will immediately take you back to when you first heard the song or a part of your life when you were listening to that song a lot. And then in your head, you can visualise that moment again, and you can relive it.
And when did you start to make it your own? Who were the influences?
Lana Del Ray, most definiteIy. I love Lana Del Ray, the first day I heard 'Video Games', I knew that it was one of those beautiful love songs that had ever been created. I love the way she writes her melodies, the way she writes the lyrics, she makes it look easy. And the best part is, whatever is happening in the world, people are making rap and pop and they're mixing hip hop and pop, she's just doing her own thing. It's like she's a big time machine, she's living in a different era. She doesn't care about anyone else. She doesn't always get the Grammys that I believe that she deserves, but she still does her own thing. You don't see her changing genre. Being true to who you are as an artist, that’s the stuff of legends.
And what an amazing spirit animal to have, she's incredible. How did your music come from your notebooks, your head, your amazing bird in your throat out into our ears?
Have you ever watched Begin Again with Keira Knightley and Adam Levine? I watched that movie and before that, I couldn't even write a song. And I wrote a song after that. I wrote it while I was watching Mozart In The Jungle next and I thought, ‘oh, it's not a bad song’. I found a producer back in Mumbai and we started making it together and that was my debut single for a low key project back home. It went on the radio in India, and it got caught by so many people who wrote about it and talked about it and told me about it. That's when I knew that maybe this can happen. But it was my manager who really helped me structure my music and helped me understand that it's important to write about how you feel and your experiences and be true to your own art. You can make things up whenever you want, but sometimes you need to use that as an outlet. That was really cool. Learning is the most important thing about being alive. If you're not learning then I don't think you're being alive. You learn from producers, you learn from from interviewers, you learn from TV, you learn from everyone.
It definitely keeps you young. Honestly, just stay curious. Now for you personally, this is a big one, what makes a song?
For me, personally, I'm a big melody person. I love good melodies, and good lyrics. Smart lyrics are really cool to go with. I used to listen to a lot of Eminem growing up so I always loved the idea of having a story being told in a song. Really cool lyrics, metaphors and all those things, very, very poetic. First thing is probably a good melody, I always start with a good melody, snd then we'll see how we feel for the lyrics.
Women have historically been made to feel inferior for their emotional responses. If they're crying, it’s bad, if they're too excited, that’s terrible, just quash down the girl feelings. You write from such a beautifully feminine, exposed place. Was that something that was possibly missing from the music you were listening to when you were growing up?
Probably because I was exposed to a lot of music, but at the end of the day, I was in India. I wasn't in a western country. So maybe I missed out on female artists who were writing like that, because all I did was listen to Iron & Wine, Death Cab for Cutie, Plain White T's, Two Door Cinema Club and all of them were male. They were singing the most beautiful songs I'd ever heard, but they were all singing from a male perspective. We had Avril Lavigne but she was catering to a very pop audience, and I loved her so much. But the whole indie Two Door Cinema Club, Iron & Wine…I hardly know any females who did that. And I can't even think of one right now. So that was not great. I always wanted to be the female version of Death Cab for Cutie.
Absolutely. And it's so true, you're always being told from a guy's perspective on a situation and I love that you're flipping that going, ‘okay, well, this is the same experience, but let's just see it from this angle’, so that's incredible. And lastly, Ash, what is coming up for you? I'm just really excited because I have two EPs finished and they will be released in the next 12 months. They're very, very Death Cab for Cutie-type EPs, and I'm very excited for everyone to listen to them. This is completely new for me all of this, so I'm just really excited.
‘Panic at the Party’ is out now. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Ash Lune you can follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
