INTERVIEW: Tia Gostelow returns with new single 'Say It To My Face': "I really let go of any barriers that were in place two or three years ago. I went with what felt good to me and what felt right."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: MACAMI
Australian singer-songwriter Tia Gostelow has been releasing music since the beginning of 2016 when she was just 16. She shot to national prominence instantly, with debut single ‘State of Art’ gaining national airplay on Triple J and placing in the top 5 of Triple J Unearthed High. By the end of that year she was performing at massive music festival BIGSOUND, and after winning two awards from six nominations at the 2017 Queensland Music Awards she was clearly one of the top new talents on the Australian music scene.
With her folk-indiepop music racking up streams in the millions, her debut album Thick Skin was released in 2018 and with 2020’s CHRYSALIS Gostelow evolved her sound into heady, disco pop.
After a collaboration with Big Sand on the single ‘You, Me & The Sky’ in September, today Gostelow returns with her first new solo music since 2020 with the single ‘Say It To My Face’. Written in America with Lucas Arens and produced by Christopher Collins (Middle Kids, Skeggs), the song sees Gostelow return to her indiepop roots, with a hint of pure pop as well of punk rock with chanting, shouty backing vocals mixing beautifully with Gostelow’s restrained, subtle voice in the chorus. It is a wry, witty, infectious song
“‘Say It To My Face’ was written on my first trip to America in May this year,” Gostelow says. “I was in Nashville when I wrote this with Lucas Arens. Lucas and I spent the first hour and a half talking, sharing stories and trying to get to know each other to see if we could find some common ground to write about. We ended up falling into the topic of seeing someone you love continuously being hurt by someone else and just wishing that person would go away. I guess this is a song for people who are frustrated that they can see who someone really is at their core, but nobody else seems to be seeing it yet.”
The release of the single coincides with Gostelow announcing a series of acoustic gigs across WA in January 2023, starting in Margaret River and wrapping up in Fremantle.
After two years away from releasing solo music, Gostelow has a trove of music she has created just waiting to be released and she is currently finishing off her third album, due for release in 2023. Based on ‘Say It To My Face’, Gostelow is making some of her most confident, unique and charismatic music to date and her upcoming releases will be something to look forward to. We recently caught up with her to find out more.
Tia, so lovely to talk to you today. How are things in your beautiful world?
They’re good. I’ve finished recording the album, the single’s out, it feels like things are finally happening after a big break so it's really exciting. Coming into the end of the year, I feel really excited for what's to come next year. It just feels really refreshing.
The sound as well, I feel like there's just such a beautiful energy coming out of music at the moment and I assume it has a lot to do with the fact that people were just writing in their homes and dwelling on things for a while, and so now there's like a glitter cannon with everything that comes out.
Yeah, I definitely agree. I think people are just excited to be releasing stuff, and stuff they've probably been sitting on for years. So it's really nice. I’ve got a lot going on, but it's good.
Can we talk about ‘Say It To My Face’, because that's a song I need to stomp a platform shoe to.
I love that! So ‘Say It To My Face’ I wrote when I was in Nashville earlier this year. It was my first trip to the States, I'd been planning on going over since like 2020. I was spending a week in New York, a week in Nashville and a week in LA and I wrote this song with Lucas Arens in Nashville. Going into sessions with people you've never met before, you kind of want to get to know each other first, and we ended up just talking, trying to find some common ground to talk about. And at the time, we were both experiencing something where someone in our lives, there was someone that they were with, like a partner or a friend, that just weren't really good for them and they couldn't really see that yet. It was being frustrated about seeing this person and who they are at the core and just this person that I love, they couldn't see that yet and it was just really hard to watch. Everybody has been through that at some point in their life where they can just see that somebody might not be who they say they are, and you kind of just have to unfortunately let the bad thing happen, for the person you love to realise who they are at their core.
I also love the way you put the song together because, as I said there's a platform shoe stomp, I am getting Nashville, I'm getting 60s rock guitar kind of sounds. But then we have an almost Avril Lavigne inspired chant, it's amazing. What was your process melodically to bring such an old but also fresh energy to it?
There's two parts to that. When I went to the States to write, I really didn't have a clear vision of what I wanted to be writing or how I wanted things to be sounding. This is probably the first time in my life that I was really struggling to find any lyrical content and I wasn't really sure where I wanted to head with this record melodically and sonically. So, I was really open with how I was writing and what it was going to sound like. I pretty much gave whoever I was working with free reins to just ‘let’s do whatever’. I had a Spotify playlist of songs that I was really in love with at the time, and one of them was ‘Beach Boy’ by Benee and the chords kind of came from that a little bit. ‘Say It To My Face’ is very different to what I've usually done in the past. And the 60s, old school sound that came across in the recording process. I recorded it with Chris Collins at the Music Farm in Mullumbimby, northern New South Wales kind of area, and it is just so gorgeous, it's just so old school, so 60s. The way that Chris recorded it is what's shining through in the song. My band and I sat in a room together, in the live room, and I've never recorded this way but that's how we recorded the drums and the guitars and the bass, playing live as a band, which was really cool. That's what really shines through in the master of the song and I'm really glad Chris captured the live band essence of it. I've never really experienced that before in my music, so I'm glad you picked up on that as well.
You said that you hadn’t done this kind of thing with your music before, but your music, as it should, is just changing all the time. Thick Skin to CHRYSALIS was such a shift, and even recently, ‘You, Me & The Sky’ just gets you ready for the beach party, and now we have this jangly guitar. You are constantly experimenting, and that is often quite hard for young artists, because you may not always have the confidence to be able to do that. Do you feel like you have to push yourself to do that, or do you just chase your curiosities whenever you want to?
For this single and this record I really just let go of any barriers that were in place probably two or three years ago. For example, CHRYSALIS, I really wanted to get away from the guitar, indie folk pop thing, because I'd grown up around country music, and people were constantly referring to my voice as ‘country’. There is nothing wrong with country music, I absolutely love it. I grew up on it. But I just really wanted to do something different and that's why CHRYSALIS was so pop and synthy. I feel like I really needed to experiment doing that. And now going into this album, I just did what really felt good to me and what I really loved and that's guitars. That's acoustic guitars, that’s the live band sound. I don't really think I thought too much about what people [would like], or what's going to get me on playlists. This time, I just went with what felt really good to me and what felt right and this whole record, and this single, I think really shows that. I'm a bit nervous about it coming out because it's been so long, but I hope it'll be well received and I hope people can just really sing along to it and see what I'm trying to do.
You said you were raised on country music, who were those women in the country music scene that you used to emulate? Who were your heroes?
Kasey Chambers, of course. Melody Pool is someone that has really influenced my song writing and my love of music in general. I remember seeing her when I was maybe 12 years old, just her and her guitar on this massive stage in Tamworth, and just literally captivating the whole room. You could hear a pin drop in there. I remember watching her singing her song ‘Henry’ and i was like, ‘That's what I want to do, that's how I want to sound, that's how I want people to react when I sing and play’. So, she's definitely a huge influence for me. And then over the years I ended up listening to a lot more folky stuff. First Aid Kit were a huge inspiration, the harmonies and everything like that. That's definitely come back into these new songs that I'm doing. I've fallen back into the old way that I used to write and sing, which is really exciting.
You’ve been going independent since Unearthed High in 2016. The world of music is not always the kindest place, particularly in Australia, to young female soloists. How have you found your voice and what was the best piece of advice you were given navigating this?
It's been hard being independent, especially being so young. It was really overwhelming when I was in Unearthed High, I was still 16. We had all the labels and everything emailing us, my mum co-manages me and she pretty much taught herself everything because she wanted to help me as much as she could. So it was just me and mum when all these labels and stuff started coming to us and wanting to do deals, but I've really enjoyed being in control of my career and I love being independent. There's pros and cons to everything. Sometimes I'm like maybe I should sign with a bigger label to have those relationships and have a bigger team to be able to help, but when I look back on it, I feel like I've got it really good at the moment. I'm able to do what I want creatively, I'm able to be in control of a lot of things that I might not be otherwise. I'm really enjoying that at the moment. Maybe one day in the future, there'll be a label deal or something in the works, but at the moment, I'm really liking it just being the small team of me, my mum, my booking agents, all of these other people that work with me. The biggest piece of advice that I always go back to is just follow your gut instincts every time. Every time something doesn't feel right, I just don't do it. My intuition and my mum's is weirdly in sync, and if something doesn't feel good, then we don't do it. It's really important to be able to say no to things, you don't have to say yes to every single thing that comes through, and that goes back into doing what feels right.
Absolutely. And it takes most of us a lifetime to learn that.
Yeah, it’s taken me a long time to do that as well. Everything can be so overwhelming and exciting when things are kicking off and you just want to do everything, but sometimes no can be a good answer as well.
We've got ‘Say It To My Face’ out now, a new album is on the way. What else is coming up for you?
I've got a little tour planned in WA in January. That will just be three acoustic shows in Margaret River, Bunbury and Freo, which is really exciting. I haven't been to WA in years and it's really exciting to do a tour where it's just like me and my guitarist. I haven't done that before. It might be a good opportunity to play some really new songs that I've been writing over the past two years. And just singles, just new music coming out, which is also very exciting. And then the album next year.
‘Say It To My Face’ is out now via Lovely Records. You can buy and download here.
To keep up with all things Tia Gostelow you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
TIA GOSTELOW TOUR DATES
Tickets on sale now
20 January – The River, Margaret River, WA
21 January – Secret Venue, Bunbury, WA
22 January – Mojo’s Bar, Fremantle, WA
