INTERVIEW: Sloan Peterson on her new EP 'Lost Illusions': "It was a moment of knowing where my authenticity lies, knowing where my boundaries lie."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Tom Wilkinson
Despite being practically a veteran of the Australian music industry, Sloan Peterson experienced a wobble in her confidence last year. “I had a tour in May [last year] and was going through a breakup at that point and had a little bit of a snap,” she says. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I was really suffering from impostor syndrome.” She spent almost two years in the wilderness, realising along the way that despite now being signed to a major record label (Warner Music), what she needed was to make music exactly the way she wanted to - with a strong DIY ethic.
The end result of her period of self doubt is the delicious EP Lost Illusions which was released last week. Inspired by her path to self-discovery, as well as the thread of darkness she was finding ran underneath the tropical beauty of her new home Byron Bay, the music is a blend of earthy indiepop, shiny electronic pop and jazz-inflected ballads.
First single, 2020’s ‘Nightmare’ (over 1 million streams) is as refreshingly left-of-field as ever, with its stuttering beat, ever changing tempo and dark fairytale vibe. Peterson brings a gentle, swirly electronic sound to the Grease classic ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do’, while EP highlight ‘Sick & Selfish’ takes it’s moody, melancholic synth-electro-pop soundscape directly from the 1980s.
Two new tracks bookend the EP. The collection kicks off with ‘Miss Me’, an electro-R&B track with an acoustic guitar, beaty foundation that manages to convey the sensation of a stripped back yet sonically intricate song at the same time. EP closer ‘Miscommunication’ has a similarly pared back feel with guitar and angelic backing vocals as Peterson. in a gorgeous, vulnerable vocal, relates the story of her life.
“I wrote most of this EP at a time when I was struggling to understand my identity and was questioning some of the decisions I was making,” Sloan says. “Music is my therapy, and listening to these songs reminds me to enjoy the present, and appreciate the little things. I hope you enjoy my EP - so much joy, sweat, tears and years went into it!”.
Peterson is an artist that is an expert at shapeshifting and experimenting with her sound and Lost Illusions is an EP of rare beauty. Open, honest, hypnotic and truly genre-defying with music that can suit your every mood, it is arguably Peterson’s career highlight. We recently caught up with her to find out more.
Hi Sloan, how are you? You've got a new EP, you must be wonderful!
I am! I’m doing really, really well. It's been a busy couple of weeks but I'm so over the moon to have this EP out. I've been sitting on it for two years now, so it feels good to be able to have it out.
Before I forget, beautiful cover image by the way.
Thank you so much. It was a still from the video clip of ‘Sick & Selfish’ and it was just a happy accident that we were able to shoot that day and we got all that beautiful imagery. It was just such a lucky coincidence.
It's gorgeous. Lost Illusions, you've been in Byron for a while. Help me though, what are the lost illusions that encapsulated this collection?
I came up with the title of it because I'd seen a movie, it's a French film, called Lost Illusions. It’s a period piece set in the 1920s, this dark-esque bittersweet thing about this character and somebody believes in him. He's written this poetry, and he's just a poor, poor commoner. This regal woman sees so much potential in him and brings him up into power, and he kind of loses his touch, he loses who he was in his authenticity, and it gets all derailed. It's one of those pride than a fall stories in a way. I just felt like it's such a common occurrence, especially when it comes to creativity or any kind of momentum that we can get that sometimes we can allow that to go to our heads, even in relationships, it doesn't have to be power or money or anything like that. Anything in life, you can have these moments of empowerment, and lose yourself so easily, and that can become the unravelling. So to me, it was a moment of knowing where my authenticity lies, knowing where my boundaries lie, and being able to make sure that I don't actually cross these lost illusions and lose to too much of myself.
Now we have ‘Bittersweet’, which has the most beautiful accompanying video, but I'm also loving the way the songs on the EP lyrically as well as melodically play into each other. To ‘Bittersweet’, you've got ‘my nightmare fantasy’, and then of course, in ‘Nightmare’, ‘I’m your nightmare’. It seems you're playing the hero and the villain throughout, which I think is beautiful, because there's so much humanity in the melodrama. Talk to me about ‘Bittersweet’.
’Bittersweet’ was actually the first co-write that I wrote, I'd never written a song with somebody else before. At the start of 2020, I'd written this song with Andy Hopkins, whose musical alias is Hauskey. I had this concept of bittersweet, a light and dark scenario, and also being in a relationship that was going in and out of beautiful moments, but also having this kind of tinge of bittersweet moments. And [‘Bittersweet’] was what we came up with. At the time, I'd been listening to a lot of Lana Del Rey, really cruisey, listening in your car kind of music. [Andy] had this little guitar riff and we just started writing over the top of that. I didn't know where it was gonna go and I wasn't sure if it was even going to be on the EP but it just turned into a really magical moment.
It's a gorgeous song. It's really beautiful. But I must say, as of this week, the highlight for me on the EP is your cover of Stockard Channing’s ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do’. It's so good. I love this cover because you go in for that beautiful musical intro, but then it becomes a black and white horror film.
Yes! 100%
Has this always been a favourite song of yours to sing?
It was interesting, I grew up in a very Christian family and I did musicals my whole life and dance and was very into performing arts. My parents were really strict about movies that I'd watch unless it was a musical. It was really questionable though, because they were allowing us to watch movies like Chicago, which is literally women behind bars for killing their husbands, but because they're doing it in song and dance, my mum was like, ‘yeah, why not?’ Grease was another one, which I just watched on repeat. My mum loved Olivia Newton John, but I would always sing this Rizzo song, which is all about the worst things you could do. And she's like, ‘how about you sing one of those pretty ones by Olivia Newton John?’ and I was like ‘um, no.’ So I knew young there was always a little bit of dark in me!
What I love as well is you have these horror films strings that accompany your music, which I think is beautiful. Coming from a very religious background - that you seem to have sidestepped! - where does that horror melodrama come from when you're creating music?
Do you know as you're saying this, like I'm actually very light, very energetic, there's a lot of lightness in me. But saying that, I think the reason I have this little darkness is actually more so because I grew up Christian. I think there's a part of me that I feel a darkness or I feel a lot of guilt or shame that comes from growing up in a Christian family that maybe actually isn't to other people. If other people are experiencing what I'm going through, or what I'm feeling, it wouldn't be considered a darkness to them. But having the other side, and not conforming to religion, I feel like I'm always taking this wrong turn in the decisions I’m making. So maybe different circumstances or outcomes are just a little bit more dramatised in my head, because it's just not what my mum would have chosen for me to do, or that decision my parents would respect me more for. Maybe that's where it comes from, I just have a little bit more of a guilty conscience of even minor things than most people.
It's very hard to wash that off, because as much as your brain goes somewhere else, what you learn as a child just hangs. I love the way that you've turned it into musical melodrama, which is so beautiful. Lost Illusions is out now, what else is coming up for you this year?
So I've got a show coming up in Byron on November the 11th, which is really exciting. My band that I get to play with are actually the people I recorded with before I signed with Warner, so it's almost like a little family band again of my players that I had before I wrote all these songs. So it's going to be a reunion. And then hopefully, we start the process of an album, which I haven't really gotten stuck into because in my head I needed to release these songs in order to let the past behind me, and then start writing new memories and my new story in a way. So that's in the works, an album, but I just haven't even thought about it!
Lost Illusions is out now via Warner Music Australia. You can download and stream here.
To keep up with all things Sloan Peterson you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
