INTERVIEW: Odette returns with new album 'Herald' and announces national tour: "I don't really view songs as an aesthetic and more as something that I need to say"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Giulia McGauran
Australian singer-songwriter Odette (full name Georgia Odette Sallybanks) first came to attention in 2018 with the release of her debut album To A Stranger, a mesmerising collection of intimate, warm alt-pop tracks with elements of electronica, soul and folk. The album peaked at number 13 on the Australian charts, scored over 55 million streams globally and garnered Odette two ARIA Award nominations in 2018, for Best Adult Contemporary Album and Breakthrough Artist. She has since gone on to tour the world, including performances at the SXSW festival and headline concerts across the UK and Europe.
Today Odette returns with her second album Herald. Again drawing on her own life experiences to create an intimate and personal album, she says the music chronicles the last five years of her life. “Transitioning from adolescence into adulthood is really hard,” she admits. “No one gives you the tools, you know?”
Creating an incredibly diverse soundscape, there is a deeper dive into electronic infused pop on some tracks, such as the driving title track and ‘Trial By Fire’ with its almost tribal beats interspersed with floaty jazz stylings. Elsewhere, her collaboration with Hermitude ‘Feverbreak’ is in the half-spoken, half sung tradition of her 2017 single ‘Watch Me Read You’, while ‘Wait For You’ is a beautiful piano ballad sung masterfully by Odette.
Today also sees the release of the music video for the single ‘Herald’. Art directed by Odette, the video was directed by Peter Elisha Hume with cinematography by Jesse Leaman. “I wanted the music video for ‘Herald’ to represent my experience of Borderline Personality Disorder,” Odette says. “It draws in the viewer, grates at them at the same time as it shares impulsivity, and beauty. The performance is dramatic and over the top - it’s a raw look into my experience, both romanticised and turbulent.”
Odette has proven from her very first release that she is a very special artist and on Herald she has solidified that reputation. Unique, embracing, warm and personal, this is music that you immerse yourself in and take into your soul. To celebrate the release of Herald, we recently caught up with Odette to find out more.
Hello Odette, congratulations on the release of Herald. What a technicolour feast of sound candy it is, it is gorgeous. How are you feeling with it now unleashed into the world?
Thank you, I loved how you described that. I feel nervous, excited and ready to move on to the next project already. I'm impatient!
Well, I guess we're getting it for the first time but artists are always like ‘oh, I wrote that song 3 or 4 years ago’.
Right! There's such a cognitive dissonance there but at the same time it's really good to hear them because, honestly, it’s so solidifying how much growth has happened between then and now.
When speaking of your debut album To A Stranger, you said that it was just this chronicle of your 16th to 19th years on this earth, and now we've got Herald your coming of age story. That kind of growth and introspection, there's always this beautiful meditative almost looking back and perspective shift about your music in two very different albums. How do you hear that coming of age between the two album both in your voice and how you're writing?
Honestly the first thing I will say is I can hear so much unadulterated pure, raw emotions, to the point where it becomes unhealthy. I hear that. I feel the toxic elements of myself. This was all recorded before I was diagnosed with my specific disorder, which is BPD, which is a whole mood thing. I can hear that. I can hear the struggle to understand. I can hear the confusion. I can hear the pain. I just really feel bad. It's a bit of like ‘oh my god Georgia, are you okay, girl?’ But, mostly I think I can hear myself wanting more and yearning for more and wanting to try things and experiment with sounds and be bolder and bigger and louder and not just focus on being so ethereal and soft because I'm not. This record definitely shows that.
On your notion of being ethereal and soft. Do you think as a younger artist, that was something you felt you had to mimic from hearing other artists?
Absolutely. Yes, totally, which was going against my very core. I'm quite a masculine person. I love femininity, it's fun. But I see it more as a performance. Everything is a performance. For who I am, I’m not really anything. I just sort of exist in a suit. You know? Now I’m trying to come to terms with that, that I’m just living and really I’ve got to stop trying to beautify something if it's not true, you know?
You have talked about as well getting to these kind of gothic, more savage sounds in the album which I love because it's so eclectic and I must say the track ‘Foghorn’ is the one that has had multiple plays on my home speakers.
Oh my god, thank you. People haven’t brought that up at all. It's my second favourite on the album.
It's hands down my favourite. I mean your lyrics, your poetry with such a beautiful melody. It's so cinematic. I feel like the piano is underwater and then there's these crescendos with those killer strings. It's chills. Can you talk me through that song?
It was one of the first tracks written for the album. Genuinely I think I wrote that song about 3 years ago. i was very sick and I ended up having a break. A lot of really bad stuff happened and that song was sort of… I genuinely felt like that song. It sounds very dramatic but it kind of saved my life a bit. I was feeling really, really dark and down and all the moods were sort of overwhelming me. I couldn't see anything else but that and then this piano was stuck in my head and i started playing it. It stuck in my head for months. It took me a while to write it and then eventually it just came out. I love that song so much. I always imagined that I was writing it from the living room that was kind of balanced on the top of the lake but like really chill. it was kind of like there was a rug on it and a chair, and one of those 70s shady lamp things!
Oh, that's beautiful. What I love as well, we have ‘Feverbreak’, your collab with Hermitude and those distorted echoes are so good. You talk about the helplessness but then in contrast to the lyrics, there are some roller-coaster uplifting melodies. How important is that contrast to you within your music?
Vital. It's so vital because music to me is the only way I can communicate properly not just with words, you know? With textures and to make sure there’s that element of hope. That spark of joy. It's so important for me. That feeling is literally why I write, so I can get all that kind of stuff and the crud out of the way and then that element will lift. It will come to me in either in strings or in an orchestral moment, or it could be a harmony or even a sample. I don't know the word for it. It's ‘the thing’.
Of course I’m guessing music's played a massive part of your whole life. Has it always been the thing that you’ve wanted to do - create, to churn it out for other people and yourself?
Yes, absolutely. Literally I’m so annoyed at primary school. I was like eight and I would go and play my super depressing songs for everyone in assembly. i just never had any shame. I feel like when i was created, it was like I was missing embarrassment. I don't get embarrassed very easily so i just kind throw myself into a deep end.
It means you're incredibly talented with your poetry. Your classroom at least got some good stuff compared to the rest of us!
My teachers were worried and impressed at the same time. They were like ‘This is good, but is she okay?’ The answer was ‘thank you and no’.
Speaking of another song that pulls you down and then pushes you right up, you've got your lead single ‘Dwell’. I'm like this is a solo girl anthem. There's a definitive mirror thing or you know when you drive alone at night and the acoustics of the guitar just make anyone sound good. It's that song.
Yes, honestly thank you because I love listening to that song in the car. Any songs in the car really… but it's definitely the track for me that sort of sums up exactly how it was to be at that time.
The album is peppered with that mix of moments past. We've got tracks like ‘Wait for You’, which sounds almost like off the cuff kind of a thought train with a clarinet. It's beautiful and there is so much integrity and memory to your performance. How, important is that genre fluidity to your music and where does that stem from?
I don't know where it stems from but again I just think I am an existent suit. I don't really have a style. I can see sometimes where things blend together and have a sort of cohesiveness. But mostly, I'm just winging it and I feel each song deserves to stand on its own right. Each one is important to me. I don't really view them as an aesthetic and more as something that I needed to say, you know?
For me, as a listener water features heavily in the album not just in the lyrics, but even in the soundscapes. your sound is almost elemental. Is this something you set out to do?
I set out to make sure that there were a lot of nature motifs because if I'm going through these intense subjects and topics I need to have something that's grounded and the one thing that's grounding for me is nature and water and bugs and birds. All of that just makes me feel free and none of that stuff has anything to do with me. it's something that I can appreciate that stands on its own. It's important to have a contrast when you're talking about really intense things. It's almost like a check in - ‘hey, are you doing good because this is heavy and how are you going with it?’ It was sort of on purpose but it was more of an instinctive thing, especially when things got too heavy. I needed something to kind of break it up. It’s kind of like when you're eating a really heavy meal and you need some lemon afterwards.
When we last spoke to you, you said that you were equally impassioned and enraged around the gender imbalance within the industry and festival line-ups. I just wanted to talk to you a little bit more on that. The kind of frustration but also the passion behind it. i think you said pop feminism in its current state is simultaneously giving me a reason to live and grinding my gears.
Yeah it is. Everyone has all these opinions that they don't really have, they just think it's cool and then they just don’t do anything, they go on an interview and say something. Honestly, I distance myself from all of these sorts of conversations because I find that I get so angry about it. I don't believe that the future is going to have these kinds of conversations and I hope that it doesn't, but currently I think conversations aren't productive. It’s pitting women against each other. it's just not getting to the point. I don't know if you can tell but I’m quite impatient and I need to get to the point. if it doesn't get to the point then i get very annoyed and angry. There are certain situations I’ve been in where people will agree with each other and then shake each other's hands and be like ‘wow… we just changed the world with our conversation’ and they didn't do anything. That's what pop feminism is to me. It's just a bunch of people who are so privileged, who don't know what it is to actually suffer real economic discrimination, talk about suffering. it doesn't make sense to me.
I think Elvis Presley had it right when he said a little less conversation a little more action.
Literally. Instead of posting like 300 articles on it that people probably won't read because as soon as they see the word feminism they clock out, like come on. We've got to figure out new techniques. Let’s figure out new ways of getting people's attention. Like I don’t know, just doing it! Put more woman in the studio. put more women on line ups. These days it's also more important to not just involve more women, but to involve everybody. Get everybody in, we all need to fucking learn. Make sure there are non-binary people. Make sure there are trans people. Just invite everyone. Let's just have a big old party. We're all going to die. People need to chill out!
We're all going to die. Give everyone a job. That is the takeaway. We're welcoming the new year because the last one was almost a complete write off, and we have your album, we have songs. What are you looking forward to and what is on the horizon for you?
Oh, good question. I'm looking forward to touring. I'm looking forward to people listening to my album. I'm looking forward to my dog's birthday. I've planned a sweet potato cake for him so that will be cool. I haven't been on the road for a long time now, probably just over a year. It really isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things but too long for me. I just want to have experiences and stop being in my living room everyday being afraid of people who cough. That's kind of the goal!
Herald by Odette is out now via EMI Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Odette, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Odette is performing across Australia in May and June. Tickets on sale now.
6 May - Altar Bar, Hobart
7 May - 170 Russell, Melbourne
8 May - Volta, Ballarat
9 May - Northcote Social Club, Melbourne [U18]
14 May - Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide
21 May - The Triffid, Brisbane
22 May - The Northern, Byron Bay
23 May - HOTA, Gold Coast
4 June - Factory Theatre, Sydney
5 June - The Cambridge, Newcastle
11 June - UniBar, Wollongong
12 June - Fiction, Canberra
18 June - Rosemount, Perth
