INTERVIEW: Kate Ceberano releases her 30th album 'My Life Is A Symphony'. "This orchestral album has its merit in the symphonic sense more than just a pop act who's putting up an orchestral album."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Ian Laidlaw
Australian singer-songwriter Kate Ceberano is a bonafide icon. Ever since her very first days as lead singer for Australian pop act I’m Talking, through her hugely successful solo pop career, and segues into jazz and stage musicals she has won the hearts of Australians and become a living legend.
She has just released her new album My Life Is A Symphony, incredibly the 30th album release of her 40 year career, and it sees her reimagining some of her greatest songs through an orchestral treatment by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO).
The album starts with her 1989 single ‘Brave’, the first song she ever wrote, which in many ways has become her signature tune. An uplifting ode to love, in this iteration it takes on a compelling moodiness that builds to a powerful crescendo, with angelic backing vocals. Ceberano’s 1997 top 10 hit ‘Pash’ becomes epic, dramatic and cinematic, while ‘Time to Think’, also originally from the Pash album, is transformed from an eclectic fusion of trip-hop and jazz into a heartbreaking ballad full of sweeping, emotive strings. Its train-of-thought lyrics – “Your dinner’s hot, the cat’s been fed / The milk is off, you might need to go to the store / I know that all sounds boring / I won’t be home tonight / … I’m gonna need some time to think” – feel rawer, more painful, more direct in their new orchestral soundscape. ‘Champion’, originally from 2013’s Kensal Road closes the album and is a highlight. Examining an emotional wall that has built up between a couple – “Why won’t you let me in? / Don’t forget the good you’ve done / I’m still your champion” – the song was closer to gentle country-pop when it was first released. On My Life is a Symphony, after a sedate beginning, it becomes a stirring, invigorating, mighty track that out of all the songs on the album feels closest to a traditional pop song, albeit one created with a symphony orchestra.
My Life is a Symphony confirms that Ceberano continues to challenge herself creatively forty years into her career. It is identifiably Ceberano, but with a unique twist, and proves she has never lost the ability to seek freshness in her music. Her voice is as emotive, crystal clear and jaw droppingly beautiful as ever, and My Life is a Symphony is an album of immense beauty, joy and delight. We recently caught up with Kate to chat all about the creation of the album.
Kate it is such an honour to talk to you again. First of all My Life Is A Symphony. What a beautiful album!
Thank you. Oh, it's been a labour of love. Obviously, there's a tribe that have created it, there is my life, yes, and there are the songs that I wrote and have lived as a blueprint for this record. But without the 40 years of collaboration with other writers, other musicians and other producers {it wouldn’t have happened]. And in this case, an arranger who feels like such a youthful, young man to have produced such rigorous arrangements for a symphony orchestra. And I say rigorous because it puts them to task. It doesn't just have them sort of sit out on a sort of three chord pop song and just draw the bow across the strings. It's a real notated, deeply arranged symphonic album. Because of that, I sort of sit in amongst it like a bobbing cork in an ocean, just feeling blessed to be there. I just let the current sort of take me where they will. It's amazing
I wanted to talk to you about ‘Cherry Blossom Lipstick’. I remember when it came out, being the early 2000s it had that kind of killer trip-hop Portishead, Massive Attack quality to it. Listening to it on My Life Is A Symphony even without that industrial backbeat, you've managed to make it even more so, but with a symphony orchestra.
I was raised on a gut full of early New York style musicals - West Side Story, Sweet Charity - you name it, there is just this litany of imagery from 1960s musicals in my head. So you cut to 'Cherry Blossom Lipstick’, and you get that 60s sort of sound. Can you hear it in there? Michel Legrand, Astrud Gilberto, a lot of the French singers, Jacques Brel, I was that kid that was a little bit displaced and stuck out of time in the middle of Balwyn. And that was the stuff that I was listening to. So, now that I finally got it in an orchestral space, it's back to where it really should have began. I'd wanted to do that Massive Attack, Portishead thing but even as I was doing it I felt a bit disingenuous, I already felt like I was half copying them which is not what the origin of the song was.
In ‘Champion’, which closes the album, you have that very slow build, and then it swells to a euphoric, musical number. What I really love about this album, and this is not to diss any one’s symphony albums, but when we see a symphony album, we're going ‘ I know what this will be’, and that's not what your album is at all.
You're up for grabs, really, when you try on something like this. Because let's face it, you're putting yourself into a community. I'm an individual who's travelled all this life pretty much as a solo artist, whether I liked it or not. I was a part of I'm Talking as an early kid, but for the bulk of my life, I'm a solo artist. Now you go and transplant that experience into an 80-plus piece orchestra and you have individuals who have been working, dedicatedly over many, many hours, many, many nights, they've actually become so skilled that they make Tchaikovsky or Beethoven seem pretty easy, you know? My trial was to not feel unworthy and I feel I want to bounce out of the situation when I'm on stage. As it is, I'm going to have to sit down because I have to let the orchestra just rip and what am I going to do? Just stand there like a pimple on a bum? Like, no! You're right, this orchestral album has its merit in the symphonic sense even more than just a pop act who's putting up an orchestral album. I do think there's a difference.
Absolutely. Also, this is Kate Ceberano! But in having the orchestra play pop musical jazz, whatever thing you're leaning into, they, are elevated in what they're doing as well, which I think sometimes gets missed out.
Oh look, I agree with you. We were very, very lucky, in my opinion to have Ben Northey conducting. Ben is a really modern man, but he's a romantic. He loves all sorts of music, he has a really broad palate, but his romance is really trusted by the orchestra. So when he invites the orchestra to throw their shoulder in with romance and provide that kind of blood and guts to a song, they just follow. They went in that space. Every orchestra will always sound different under a different conductor, and that tech, I can't quite get my head around the magic of that. But it's an alchemy that Ben Northey has, and it's just irresistible. I watched him taking the orchestra through the charts, and I've watched them too, which was really nice and flattering to [producer and arranger] Roscoe James Irwin, as the players themselves would kind of nod to one another, like, actually, this is not shit! We're in this, and we love this.
If we look back over your career, even when you were with I'm Talking, the audience couldn't look away. You always were very ahead of your time, and you always looked towards European pop dance instead of Australian rock, which I think was huge. A lot of female artists are standing on the groundwork that you did, Because the Australian music industry was, and still is, just dudes and guitars. That's all that was allowed. Australian artists, especially the few women that I stand in amongst the mosh with, and I feel like I'm like The Last of the Mohicans at the moment, were essentially rock singers. So that's Chrissy Amphlett, Renee Geyer was a big ballsy soul singer. So when I go on stage, and I revisit and I pay tribute to these women, a part of me becomes very rock to do it. And so it's easy to say, 'oh, yeah, Kate, let's just getting you doing all of the covers of all of the rock singers'. I actually I like to do it, but I don't want that to be my swansong. That's not me. I am more European. I love Charlotte Gainsbourg, I love Goldfrapp, I love St. Vincent. So I hate it when people come to me and they serve me up a list of Australian pub rock. Don't get me wrong, I do love it, I wrote a whole album with Steve Kilbey that was just an ode to Australian pub rock. But with so few women, it leaves me with so few tracks to play with. I just feel in my heart I want to go back into that dance space where I can be adventurous.
From trying to find a pub rock song sung by a woman to just getting that airplay in Australia, there's very little room made for female singers. How do you feel the the industry in Australia has shifted with regards to women, whether they're making rock, pop, jazz, since your very early days in music?
I do think there's a danger when the world swings too severely from one direction to entirely another. I feel there's room for everyone, because art is a transcending act, whether you're a visual artist, you're a musical artist, or you're or a business professional. You want to be on the field being rated for your work, your products, your vision, your songs. Sometimes I get this feeling people swing so radically to be seen to be the one that is supporting the underdog, that's a really Australian thing, right? And the underdog has been women, and there have been a great discrepancy, yes, that needs to be restored in terms of their payment and their position in society. But when it comes to art, I think the art itself should be the only thing which [is considered]. There's this terrible feeling sometimes you're in competition with each other. Sometimes that can be a gender thing, sometimes that can be just like a cool school thing. It can also be a genre thing. I mean, they called Madison Cunningham a folk artist [at the Grammy Awards]. I don't agree with that at all, she should have been in a category that was rock, but they softened her category. By doing that, they inadvertently softened her edge. And I'm like, fuck that, you know? People, just get out of the way! In the 60s, they let the artists speak for themselves, and the management and record labels were simply there because they were fans and they loved music. They just wanted to bolster up and support the artists vision. At the moment, I think we've got a lot of players putting a lot of hands to the wheel. And the car is out of fucking control. We just don't know where it's going!
Also today there is the problem of having so much information, so much going on, as human beings, our brain just can't handle it all.
I think of so many things all at the same time. I have to be very cautious I don't drive myself insane! Because the atmosphere at the moment is electric, you really can do anything you put your mind to, so long as you've got hours in the day to commit to doing it. And now there aren't enough hours in the day I don't know about you, but for my dreams, I'm running! I'm sitting here right now actually, in the chaos of my creativity. The floor on my room is littered with a painting I’m working on.. Honestly it looks like a mad person at work!
Stay tuned for more Women In Pop and Kate Ceberano coming soon.
My Life Is A Symphony is out now via ABC Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Kate Ceberano you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
