INTERVIEW: Katie Noonan on Elixir's fourth album ‘A Small Shy Truth’: "We are worried, we are distressed, we are tired...a simple, small, shy truth can save your weary heart."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Zoe Worth

Katie Noonan is a legend of the Australian music scene. First coming to fame in 1998 as the lead singer for pop-indie-rock band George, the scored multiple top 40 singles and in 2002 a number one album with Polyserena.

In 1997, Noonan also established the jazz trio Elixir. Alongside George’s massive success, Elixir also achieved substantial commercial and critical success, with a top 40 Australian album and an ARIA Award in 2011, alongside a further ARIA nomination in 2018, showcasing Noonan’s remarkable artistry and ability to succeed across multiple different genres.

Now featuring Noonan, her partner of 24 years Zac Hurren plus Benjamin Hauptmann, Elixir has recently released their fourth album A Small Shy Truth, their first album in five years. Based on the poetry of Melbourne poet Michael Leunig, his words have been set to music composed by Noonan, Hurren and Hauptmann. Its ten tracks are truly beautiful, and while Elixir are a jazz band at heart, A Small Shy Truth is genreless and can touch your heart no matter your preferred style of music.

First single and opening track ‘Boyhood Poem’ is a moody and almost dramatic track with twinkling underlining beat, strings and in parts is reminiscent of dream pop and experimental pop.

‘The Glimmer’ is a beautiful ballad with wind instruments paired with a soaring, angelic backing chorus, while ‘On A Hill’ brings warm acoustic guitar into the mix. ‘There Is No Other Way’ is an album highlight that transports you to South America with its gentle salsa vibes, with the album ending on ‘Love Song’, a sweeping track with an almost impatient beat with lyrics that strips back to life to the basic of love: “Life is just a little branch we land on as we fall down from the sky…to love with sweet abandon while we live.”

As beautiful as the soundscapes are, the biggest star on the album is undoubtedly Noonan’s voice. There is a stunning quality to her vocals and she can inhabit and own a song like perhaps no other Australian singer. From quiet tenderness to passionate power she has the voice of an angel and to just sit and listen to it is a mesmerising experience.

We recently caught up with Noonan to chat all about the return on Elixir and creation of A Small Shy Truth.

Hi Katie. Congratulations on A Small Shy Truth, the fourth album from Elixir. This is a really, really beautiful album. It is based on the poetry of Michael Leunig and you've also got him doing a little bit of spoken word in there as well. How did this come about?
I first met Michael when I was performing with the Australian Chamber Orchestra about 15 years ago. He came to our Melbourne concert and we went out for supper afterwards. I just immediately felt like I'd met an old friend and a kindred spirit. A little while later, I reached out and said, I'd love you to be our muse for our next Elixir album, because basically, every musician I know has a Michael Leunig cartoon on their wall. I've been cutting them out of the papers since I was a teenager. He has this innate ability to capture the essence of humanity and cover some pretty big, weighty subjects, but in a very pure, almost childlike way, which really matches very well with Elixir, because Elixir has always been about intimate, special, quiet moments, and Michael’s words really suit that same world. He’s a very special soul.

I'm so glad you said that, about the the softness and the simplicity because, as I was listening to ‘The Glimmer’, it is so gentle and so subtle that I actually found myself physically leaning in to catch it all.
Oh that's great. Yeah, you have to wait for the gleam to start. Patience is a virtue. It's all about the glimmer, which are those little moments in time where you might see the sun just peeking through a tree or peeking through a beautiful window in the tree at dawn or at sunset. The little moments where you go, ah, that's right. I live in this amazing place on planet Earth and it's actually beautiful, despite its ugliness and its harsh realities. There are moments of beauty everywhere, no matter how hard it is. Michael’s a septuagenarian, he's a good solid 30 plus years older than me and so he's lived more life. I love working with elders who have something to teach us. Everyone has something to teach you, but particularly elders who've lived more than you. He covers big subjects, but he distils it in a very beautiful, simple way. There's certainly no purple prose, every word is deeply considered.

Do think that perhaps this is needed so much now? The world goes through stages and things are getting exceptionally out of control from our perception, and we're losing sight of the kindness and the good things. But there are people also on this earth that have lived through things like this before, it's just not been in our memory. So to be able to have inspiration and poetry and art as the basis for this album, is that sense of ease
Yes. Look my father, he's almost 90, so he was young, but he did live through the Depression, and then the Second World War, the Vietnam War and the threat of the Cold War. So the world is a strange place, equally ugly as it is beautiful. The beauty does outweigh the ugliness, I hope, but at the moment it's hard to see that balance because it's been an incredibly fraught time domestically, with our First Nations family and friends and then, of course, all the horrific war crimes happening in the Middle East. Plus the recovery from COVID, which was a very strange, destabilising, worrying time to be alive. We are in a time of great flux, and it's not easy being an empathetic human, who sort of gives a shit, you know? And Michael is certainly someone who really does have deep empathy and cares about the world and observes the world keenly. It feels like the forces of good and bad are very much at war with each other at the moment, it's a tough time to remember the simple joyful things in life and artists like Michael Leunig definitely do that, they bring us back to that distilled, quiet moment of childlike wonder looking at the glimmer of a leaf fluttering in the wind, or the beauty of a dog, or a cup of tea, or a beautiful flower. Reminding us to get back to that childlike joy that we all do have within us somewhere.

That’s gorgeous. This isn't the first time you've created an album around a body of work, your beautiful 2019 album The Glad Tomorrow was based on the writing of Oodgeroo Noonuccal. There must be, I'm sure, an internal anxiety about putting your stamp onto someone else's art to create new art?
Yeah, I guess I just really do it from a place of respect and love. Michael thankfully, trusts me and sometimes one of the poems would be too short, so I would ask him to extrapolate or expand upon the concept for another verse or something. Often his poems accompany an artwork, so they're not just text. And then sometimes they are just text but they're quite long, so he's very open to me picking the bits that work as lyrics and omitting some lines. It’s wonderful to have that freedom and very generous, you know, freedom. That's why on the digital version I think it's fascinating to hear the man himself speak the poems, because you hear all the wisdom and life in that voice, which is a beautiful thing to hear. And then to hear it in simple spoken word, and then to hear where we took it, I think people find that interesting to hear how it's evolved from the word on the page.

Can you talk to me a little bit about title track ‘A Small Shy Truth’?
We wrote the song and it felt like those words were, you know, we are worried, we are distressed, we are tired, we are at the moment all fucking tired and distressed by the world! And then suddenly a small shy truth arrives and it is clear, simple, steady and born. And it's like, that's all that matters, the simplicity of looking at a child or whatever it may be - holding your lover's hand or walking on the beach. A simple, small, shy truth can save your weary heart. So it felt like a good title for that song, firstly, because that was two poems that I put together, they just seem to go together well and it felt like a good synopsis of the whole album as well.

It's very definitely a lay on the floor and listen to the whole thing in one go album. I’m sure there is a better way to describe that though!
Oh that’s awesome. I wish albums were consumed that way. I grew up with vinyl and it was an involved listening process. Or a tape, you put together your favourite mix tape. It was an involved listening process, it needed more work, you had to get up and turn the record over halfway through, and you would just lie and listen, and dance or whatever it was. Music was much more involved, whereas now because it's just so easy, and it's basically almost free with digital streaming, it has taken away the magic of involved listening. So that's great. I love that idea.

It really is and it just bleeds together so beautifully. You have all done such an amazing job of capturing. I mean, years of poems, and artworks that have just been a part of being Australian.
Yeah, well, he has been writing for The Age for over 50 years, so it is a part of our psyche. My dad's a journalist, so we'd get all the papers, my home was obsessed with two things, music and journalism, basically, and writing. So I was very aware of who Leuning was from a young age and loved his whimsical, beautiful artwork, but I also loved how sometimes it was not easy to look at, because he does talk, particularly with his artwork about things that are hard, that are real. And in this age of just rage, and outrage, it's very difficult to have an opinion on anything without people pulling you to shreds. He observes the world and shares it, and that's the role of a cartoonist, it's not necessarily their thinking, they're just reflecting the world. I refuse to bow down to cancel culture and and I really firmly, 100% believe in the freedom of speech that we have here in this country. The minute that you don't talk about something or you don't work with someone because of X, Y, Z, then you're already editing yourself and you're not supporting the absolute freedom of speech that we have here.

How have you navigated that? Previously you've come up against some heated debates, because of course, on social media, you get the most beautiful things, but you also get some of the worst, and quite a lot of the worst comes from people with nothing better to do them to pick a scab.
Yeah, I remember. So I'm apparently xennial, which is the generation born between 1977 and 1983, the first generation who came to the internet as adults. I never wanted to be involved at all, but we did really embrace it with my band george, we were the first band to have an interactive chat room, cutting edge stuff in the late 1990s with our incredibly slow dial up internet. And it is a beautiful thing, like a dear friend of ours just lost her battle with cancer and there's been a GoFundMe page for her son, and they've raised over $100,000. So those things I love. But then I say to my boys, imagine everything you write on the internet, you need to be able to say it to my face with pride. I think people forget that once it's on the internet, it's there forever. You can't undo the damage that you've done to someone. I’ve always tried to remind myself to just try to be kind, but also, I won't be silenced. I have strong opinions on things. The worst time was the Commonwealth Games [Noonan was musical director for opening and closing ceremonies of the 2018 Commonwealth Games], that was just bonkers. Because putting sport and music together really is like oil and water. so there were people who just were saying crazy stuff and that was very hurtful and upsetting and very stressful. Particularly because I'd signed an NDA, so I legally wasn’t allowed to respond to anything even though people were writing outrageous stuff that was just quite insane, actually. I think social media has become a cesspit of dire mental health for some of us. We've all gone through bad spirals of mental health, particularly in the last few years, and once you get stuck in that toxic, reactive wasteland, it's pretty horrible. I quit Twitter last year because there was a group of people asking all these artists to boycott the Sydney Festival, because the Israeli embassy had made a donation to a choreographer coming out for the festival and that was very difficult. It was tricky and very, very upsetting. But you've just got to rise above it, and remember that kindness will prevail.

Yes, just sometimes it's hard because unfortunately, pain is quicker.
Yeah, and most of them are faceless bots, who just hide behind a picture of a dog or something. That's what's upsetting, these faceless people have so much power to hurt you. I just try to have compassion because anyone that writes stuff that hateful, has to have something going on, there's something in their life that is making them that way. So I try to send them compassion rather than anger and realise that those comments are only a reflection of themselves. I just try to kill them with kindness.

It does, it throws them off their guard. On that, I've got to say, the album closes with ‘Love Song’, and you all create this stunning soundscape that has an almost Disney Princess feel to it in the greatest possible way.
Oh wow! That's beautiful The lyrics are not very Disney at all, ‘while we live, and then we die’ is the the last lyric! This whole album started as mostly sketches from my husband Zach sitting at the piano. We've been in this band for 24 years, so it's my longest running band. It's an important part of our relationship. He had some really beautiful sketches that these songs sort of jumped out from. I love the world we made with that tune. It feels like a real little world that we made.

You have, you've created an absolute world. Katie, you are talking this album out on the road, tell me about your tour across the country?
We're really looking forward to sharing this body of work. As you touched on before, we are in a time of turmoil and I think it's the words of Michael’s and beautiful, pretty intimate notes that will give our hearts some succour hopefully to get through these times, and to remind us that we are actually unbelievably lucky where we live, in the joys and freedoms that we have here and the magic of being able to gather and make music together again. To commune again, and to share in the human experience. We launched at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival and then the rest of our concerts are in all sorts of different venues, some intimate, some bigger, but it's very much about that intimate, gentle sound world. We're touring with an incredible band called The Charm of Finches, who are sister duo and they are absolutely heavenly. I discovered them when I programmed them at the National Folk Festival last year, they're brilliant. All the shows will be with them except Adelaide, which is with We Are Laurel who are a gorgeous female trio. It's going to be a really special couple of hours to just disappear from the world, turn your phone off and be in the moment of gentle music making and storytelling.

A Small Shy Truth is out now via KIN Music/ABC Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Katie Noonan you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

A Small Shy Truth National Tour Dates
Tickets on sale here
30 November - Pleasuredome, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane, Turrbul Jagera Country, QLD
1 December - Street Theatre, Canberra, Ngunnawal Country, ACT
2 December - The Regent, Richmond, Darug Country, NSW
3 December - Factory Theatre, Sydney, Gadigal Country, NSW
8 December - Trinity Sessions, Church of the Trinity, Goodwood Road, Adelaide, Kaurna Country,  SA
9 & 10 December - Lyrics Underground, Perth, Noongar Country, WA