INTERVIEW: Lisa Mitchell returns with new single 'Zombie': "It's about how messy it is being human, how all our feelings just feel like too much sometimes, yet they can also be full of information."
Image: Jess Brohier
Styling: Jam Baylon
Singer-songwriter Lisa Mitchell recently released new single ‘Zombie', her first new solo music in a year and the first track from her upcoming fourth studio album.
An uplifting, gentle track that is ‘an ode to being alive’ its soundscape has elements of Mitchell’s classic folk roots combined with gorgeous, swaying pop melodies wrapped in warm vocals that draw you inescapably into Mitchell’s world. It is the first taste of her first new album since 2016, which sees Mitchell evolve her sound while staying true the style of her previous three albums. Written during the first stage of the pandemic, the album focuses on Mitchell’s personal growth and connection with her own humanity and of those around us, endeavouring to find out more about the world and being more conscious and present with our choices.
Mitchell first came to attention when she came sixth on the fourth season of Australian Idol in 2006 when she was aged just 16. Her debut album, 2009’s Wonder, a mixture of folk, indie and electronica, shot to number 6 on the Australian album charts and produced the hit single ‘Coin Laundry’. Two more Australian top 10 albums followed along with five ARIA Award nominations. Always producing music that has an ability to connect deeply with the listener, Mitchell is one of those rare musicians who has an instantly recognisable voice and sound, yet still feels like her music is curated uniquely for you. Her new album is guaranteed to be one of the highlights of the year and we recently caught up with her to find out more.
Hi Lisa! It is such a honour to chat to you today, how is life with you right now?
Hello! Thanks for having me! Well, despite the uncertainty of life in a pandemic in Victoria, I am excited because I have released my first song in a long time, ‘Zombie’!
On that note, massive congratulations on the release of said single ‘Zombie’, it is such a great track. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind the song?
Thank you so much. I wrote ‘Zombie’ in the height of a Berlin Summer, we were riding around on bicycles with beers in our bags, looking for our friends in the parks… ‘Zombie’ is about how messy it is being human, how all our feelings just feel like too much sometimes, and yet, they can also be full of information. I study Shiatsu, which is a Japanese form of diagnostic massage based on Chinese Medicine meridian lines. In TCM emotions are highly respected as they are the ‘symptoms’ of underlying physical patterns of disharmony in the body. I think Western culture could learn a lot from listening to and decoding our emotions! As confronting as emotions can be sometimes, I am thankful to have this bodily feedback. I’m glad I’m not a zombie!
What was the creative process like for this track?
I approached this album differently from previous albums. I reached out to two beautiful people and musicians, bassist, Jessie L Warren and drummer, Kishore Ryan and asked if they’d like to be part of my new project. We played under a secret name all through 2019, to get experience playing live together, and arranged my new songs together, incorporating their own parts, written themselves. I wanted to be part of a collective, not just my own brain/creativity. I wanted the limitation of that, and the magic of it: something happens when people play music together, the sum is always greater than it’s parts…
‘Zombie’ is from your upcoming fourth album, and this will be your first album in five years. How have you spent the time away from music?
I am giggling because music is like my shadow, it follows me everywhere, so I can’t really spend time away from it. Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street and find myself furiously typing into my notes in my phone, and then someone walks around me and I realise I’ve been captured by the muse and I am blocking the path! But, yes, I am a very curious person, so I think one of the main things that’s happened since my last album, has been my Saturn Return, which led me back to Melbourne/Naarm ( I was spending a lot of time in London and Paris) and also to uni (I left school in Year 11, so I had to re-do my Year 12 English to get into my course), and into learning about identity and healing and how to be an ally to the earth and it’s peoples ( I studied some incredible Arts subjects like Indigenous Studies and Ethnomusicology). Plus a few harrowing heartbreaks. These explorations have all influenced this album.
Recording this album, thanks to the pandemic, must have been vastly different to when you recorded Warriors, your last album. How was it for you, navigating the changes?
Because of the pandemic, it was just a very long time to wait, really! We had our whole album ready to go before the first ‘long lockdown’ which was most of 2020, here in Victoria. And pretty terrifying to go into recording the album without having been going to rehearsal each week, like we were doing before the pandemic. So, we had to really get as tight as we could as a band in a very short amount of time. It ended up coming together nicely, though!
What can we expect to hear on the new album?
Lots of aliveness! It is not perfect, which is a decision I had to make because I wanted to capture the wild magic of Jessie, Kishore and I playing live together. Tom Iansek (Big Scary, Maple Glider ) produced the album so be ready for some lush and perfectly flawed energy!
As you mentioned before, you enrolled in an Indigenous Studies course and have spent time exploring your (and most of our) experience of being a settler on stolen indigenous land, and I understand this ‘unravelling’ of our selves is one of the themes of the album. What is the most important revelation you have found throughout your studies and ‘unravelling’ that you think we should all pay attention to?
I wrote a song on my new album called, ‘Supporting Your Unravelling,’ which was loosely based on me, as a white person living on stolen land, coming to grips with my identity ( still learning!! No expert!) and my inherited Western worldview after doing some history and identity studies at uni. I feel so grateful to have spent time learning about some of the history of the Frontier Wars, and the modern history of ‘Australia’ through the eyes of Indigenous lecturers and historians. Historians like Gary Foley really help to give perspective. From an ecological perspective, it deepened my respect for Traditional ecological knowledge, and I really began to feel how Climate Justice and Indigenous Justice are one and the same. For the Wurundjeri people, for example, (and this is way more complex than I will ever understand) there is no separation between land and people. I could also see how much our Western ways of thinking are really problematic, for example, by thinking we are separate from nature. I can feel how powerful it is for the individual to consider how they think, or more importantly, why we think the way we do. In the West, by thinking we are separate from nature, and choosing to suppress our traditional land-based ways of being (that was and is in every single one of us and our lineages) we thought there would be ‘no consequence,’ and greed has clouded our judgements and we are seeing this right up in positions of power. For example, with our government allowing Origin Energy to frack in the Northern Territory (fracking is a method of blowing up the earth, deep in the ground to tap gas, and it has been shown in Canada to poison the water sources in the area, and in this case, most of the people who could be effected are First Nations communities.) ( Water is Life, by Seed Mob https://vimeo.com/261023308 ) Because our ways of thinking are systemic, they are harder to ‘notice.’ So, again, this is where the work of realising what the Western worldview that we have inherited is based on, helps us to unravel ourselves from our conditioning… And then we are free to act towards what we truly believe in.
Studying these subjects made me enquire more into my own connection to land. As a white person, I can appreciate Country, and look after Country, but I will never understand what Country means to a Wurundjeri person. I seek that connection back into my own ancestry. I am lucky to have Scottish heritage on my Dad’s side that I draw a lot of strength from through traditional music and the landscape, and I am learning Scottish Gaelic which feels incredibly connecting and yummy in my brain to learn. These are all lifelong learnings and unlearnings, that I am glad to be in the discomfort and comfort of!!!
Check out historian, Gary Foley’s, ‘Koori History’ website. (http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/indexb.html) Another amazing resource is the media website, Indigenous X. (https://indigenousx.com.au/)
You first came to prominence on Australian Idol in 2006. Do you think music talent shows like Idol still have a place in music in 2021?
My partners’ niece has been really inspired to write her own songs lately because The Voice has been on, and it reminded me of how inspiring it is for young people, and everyone really. I feel like it makes people dust off their guitars, you know? So I think that’s a very very good thing. As for the contestants, I think it can be hard if things don’t instantly go where you want them to after the show, but everyone is so unique and like everyone in life, we each have our own perfectly imperfect path.
The music industry has traditionally been a difficult space for women to exist in, mainly due to the fact it has been run by white, straight, older men for decades. What are your thoughts on gender equality and sexism in music, and how has it changed since your career first started?
Even if we have pockets of our lives where women are totally heard and respected, we still live within a structure made by the patriarchy and it still effects women and female-identifying. Some people think that it isn’t an issue ‘anymore’, but the bones of the house inform the house. It is another part of our Western worldview, that men have traditionally been in power. The rising of call-out culture has really helped wake everyone up to how bad the statistics are, with the metoo movement. It was devastating to read so many stories where women and female-identifying had been taken advantage of in our industry.
What else is coming up for Lisa Mitchell for the rest of 2021?
I am settling into this new phase of releasing music, reconnecting with my audience and meeting new people, playing shows soon (fingers crossed) and feeling a whole lot of joy about spending more time doing what I love.
’Zombie’ is out now. You can download and stream here.
To keep up with all things Lisa Mitchell, you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
TOUR DATES
December 2nd - Factory Theatre, Sydney, NSW
December 9th - Corner Hotel, Melbourne, VIC
Tickets on sale now
