INTERVIEW: Millie Perks on the love & loss behind the new Ivey EP 'Silver Linings': "The reason for the EP sucks, but the outcome is really beautiful."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Natasha Leisakowska - Esme Dyer
Published: 13 Setpember 2024
Australian four piece indie-pop band Ivey, headed by singer Millie Perks, today release their new EP Silver Linings.
Perks and her bandmates – brothers Lachlan (guitar) and Matthew McGuffie (drums), and bass player Dante Martin – have been playing together since their early teens, putting out EPs and singles, but Silver Linings feels like a coming of age and offers a new strength in their indie-pop-leaning mix. At the EP’s heart is a deep sadness: in 2022, the McGuffies’ father, Adam, died by suicide, and across the six tracks the band work through themes of grief, loss, mental health and friendship.
While the inspiration was a traumatic one, the overwhelming feelings that radiate from the EP are ones of hope, growth and, above all, love. What Ivey have done so brilliantly, and what all good music should do, is create songs that speak of very personal experiences but in such a way that you can mould the songs to your own life and emotions and make them your own.
“Putting together this EP has been both heartbreaking and healing,” the band say. “It is a coin, with two sides: one deals with confusion, suffering, anger, anguish, and sorrow, while the other reflects hope, love, friendship, discovery, support, and healing.”
Ivey recently relocated to London and Silver Linings was created as an “in betweener” – a transitional set of songs that marked the shift from life in Australia to the band’s new UK home. Most of the songs were written in Australia but the recording was completed entirely in London.
The tracklisting of the EP in many ways reflects the journey of Ivey over the past two years, from devastating trauma to a place of hope. It begins with title track ‘Silver Linings’, a guitar-based opener that occasionally drops into electronica. Written in Australia several months after Adam McGuffie’s death, it tells that story in distinct blocks: looking back at the event after some time has passed; moving backwards to the day Adam died; then stepping forward again to his funeral and the conflicting feelings that suicide provokes – shame, guilt, anger. “I’d tell you how I’m feeling now / But you’re no longer breathing / Never said you were running out of options,” Perks sings. ‘Life Goes On’ brilliantly mixes stadium-rock moments with sweet pop vocals, and has a swelling, emotional chorus. Its lyrics look at the aftermath of losing someone and swing between hope and devastation. “You say everything’s alright / But you really mean you’re not well / …’Cause nothing’s fine / When you leave a life behind.”
Second single from the EP, ‘Counting Sheep’, was written in London and is a mellow pop-rock track that details the pain of grief but also the vital support friends can provide. Alongside the occasional sparkle of synth, there’s a backing vocal low down in the mix behind Perks’s voice, at times barely audible, but it brings in an evocative sense of someone who is no longer here but remains with you at all times.
‘Pessimism’ is an upbeat track, though its at times buoyant soundscape offsets a story that isn’t so happy – Matthew McGuffie wrote the bulk of the lyrics, which navigate his mental health struggles and the frustrations of those around him as his behaviour becomes selfish and dissociative. “You’ve got a good heart / But I’m sick of the repetition,” Perks sings.
‘Angel Numbers’ is next, following on with dance beats but in an unconventional way. A song about talking to the dead, it’s an ethereal, acoustic ballad for most of its running time before it breaks out into a swirling electronic final section. The EP ends with ‘Perfect Mess’, a slower electronic-indie track that brings in elements of 1990s trip-hop. With it, the journey of the EP comes full circle – recognising life’s pain but knowing there is always hope and someone to help you through: “Life’s a perfect mess when it’s blessed with you.”
Silver Linings is a beautifully constructed EP that came from a place of unimaginable pain, but it leaves you with an overpowering sense of warmth, hope and love. Listening to it is at times an emotional experience, however the strength of production and Perks’ glorious voice, which has power in its softness and a connective intimacy, will pull you through. We recently spoke with Perks to find about more about the creation of the EP.
Hi, Millie! First of all, let's get a little congratulations on not just such a glorious EP, but with such a beautiful title. I feel like we don't hear about silver linings enough these days.
Thank you! Yes. I mean, the reason for the EP sucks, but the outcome and what we've done with it, I think, is really beautiful and amazing.
I wanted to talk to you about that, because it is both beautiful and confronting on listening. And that's a massive compliment, because you've created such a different sonic space from some really brutal inspiration.
You can listen to it and put your own spin on it, it's not, 'oh, this is about this one specific thing'. The whole EP can be about the loss of a relationship or a loss of anything. It doesn't have to be this terrible, dark thing that happened. Not that it's a good thing, but having that is a really nice way to sum up everything that happened. I feel very lucky that we have this way of dealing with it. Otherwise, I don't know what us four would have done, how we would have done anything. It's nice to put it into a creative space.
Do you mind talking me through what happened and how it inspired this EP?
Lachie and Matt are brothers in the band, and they they've been in a band with their neighbour, Dante, since they were eight years old. And then I came in at 12, and because I was underage, we needed a guardian to take us to all the shows. So Lachie and Matt's dad Adam was that person. He was our show dad and our roadie for 10 years, and also a second father to Dante and myself. And two years ago, he committed suicide, which was terrible. Obviously Matt and Lachie lost their dad, but we lost our second father and the person that comes on tour with us, he was such a big part of why this band has worked. He's just such a big part of the band and he always will be. And I think this is a really nice way to permanently put him in Ivey.
That's absolutely beautiful and such a gorgeous way to make him a part of the band. As you said, you've been together since childhood, and it blows my mind how incredibly kick ass you were from such a young age. Recording and putting out music is so much more accessible now, people can record and put it out so easily now. How has that changed since Ivey first formed?
We're still definitely trying our hardest to just get our music out there. It’s good that there's so much more accessibility, there's so much amazing music now you can just access really, really quickly. But it makes it a little bit harder [to be heard], as you're like, ‘this one's really good. Please listen!’ We started out as just a fun little garage band, and then we recorded our first EP and we could only afford, like, a day or two in the studio, so we recorded the entire six track EP in two days. It's not very good! It was a surf rock, reggae vibe, which I'm not great at singing, so the whole thing wasn't very good. After, when we started working with different producers, we found our sound, and I think we have been continuously finding our sound, but this EP, especially, it feels solid. We found our sound. It's taken us a little while, but now we can hone it and really make it perfect.
Talk to me a little bit how you guys work together.
We all write in a session together, generally. Lachie, sometimes will just play guitar and write by himself, and I might come in and help with the melody, and Matt is the producer. It’s not set in stone, but it's how we've been writing in the past, and especially for this EP. Lachie's, the lyrical master, I will come up with something, and then he will explain it more, because I'm not very good with my words. I can say it like a simpleton and then he goes, Let me decipher what her crazy brain is trying and put it into English’ which is nice, otherwise I probably wouldn't be able to get my words out! The last EP was the first EP where I wrote lyrics at all, which has been good, but I was still finding my voice. It's been nice to really open up and get my feelings out and sing lyrics that I'm like, ‘I actually know what this song means!’ It makes it so much nicer to sing.
Silver Linings, like I said to you, it’s this really beautiful moment, and then you are hit in the gut with where a lot of it came from. How did you balance this sadness and this grief, but then also hope within the EP?
Two of the boys were dealing with, the loss of their dad and me and Dante were dealing with loss, but we were also just trying to be there for the boys, for this horrible thing that happened. So you've got the aspect of terrible grief, and then the aspect of ‘we're here for you, can we do anything?’ You've got that balance of both sides, the side of someone that's going through this terrible depression, and then the other side of the friend that's trying to help them. So that's where the nice balance comes from.
You all recently moved to London, have you started to hear a shift in the way you write music because of your location now?
Not necessarily how we write music, but there's a lot more influences coming at us, all the time. We recorded this EP in London, so it’s got some outside perspective on this it, which I think you can hear compared to our last EP. We also did a bunch of writing sessions with different producers over here, we wrote ‘Counting Sheep’ with someone over here. So I think you can kind of hear that we use, like The xx as a big influence for this EP, and the 1975 is always a go to for us. Also being away from all of our family and all of our friends and everything in Australia made our feelings bigger, but then also gave us the space in the room to just write whatever comes out, because who cares? It gives us that freedom to say and feel whatever we want. Not that it was ever an issue in Australia, but the distance makes it a little bit easier, I guess. I don't know why, but it does.
Millie, thank you very much for your time today congratulations to you and the rest of your clan for Silver Linings, because it's really, really lovely.
I will thank you so much. I'm glad you like it. We just need more people to listen to it, because it's beautiful!
Silver Linings is out now via Island Records. You can buy and stream here.
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