INTERVIEW: Tiali on her latest single 'Icicles': " I was singing through my tears, but it was the most cathartic process. I hold this one pretty close to my heart.”
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Australian alt-rock singer Tiali creates music that projects a multitude of emotions. It is raw, honest, heartbreaking, moody, reflective uplifting and soul embracing. With a soundscape rooted in rock, her music doesn’t remain welded to the genre and features element of soul, jazz, folk, punk, grunge and indie.
Her first single ‘Stoned Vacation’, a mellow, slightly psychedelic guitar pop song with a lighter, sweeter chorus, was released in 2020 followed by ‘Jigsaw’, a harder, punk-rock track in September this year.
In December she dropped her third single ‘Icicles’. Written by Tiali with Maxim Avigdor and produced by Oscar Dawson (Holy Holy), it perfectly mixes the pared back with the explosive. A melancholic indie track with Tiali’s voice switching between delicate to raw passion, it begins with a soft, calm guitar vibe before a slow build erupts into a powerful rock track, gently tapering out at the end. Lyrically it looks at being in a relationship when both parties want completely different life paths and the pain this creates for both sides.
“You’re contemplating your future,” Tiali says. “You know the world is waiting for you to explore it. You’re in love. He’s classic, he envisions the picket fence. You’re unconventional, you envision anything but. You reflect on this contrast, voice your uncertainty, and go to your old room at your parents’ house to contemplate. He’s shattered. So are you. But the stone-cold wall he’s put up between you is what makes it unbearable. So much so, that it feels as if your internal organs are being penetrated by a million tiny shards of ice - that feeling, is what ‘Icicles’ is about.”
Speaking about how the song developed Tiali says: “I didn’t think too much about the sonic elements of this song, it came out incredibly organically. A very cathartic process - just myself and my guitar. The one intention I had was that it would be melancholic and reflective. Naturally though, it graduated to a big releasing climax, which in retrospect, I should’ve seen coming.”
Tiali is an incredibly beguiling artist with music that tells her truth but in such a way that allows you to connect it with your own experiences. An ethereal and magical listen as well as earthy and organic, her music is something to fully immerse in and enjoy every second of and her future output will be something to look forward to. We recently sat down with her to chat more about the creation of ‘Icicles’ and her career to date.
Hi Tiali, lovely to meet you today. Let's talk about ‘Icicles’, your second release of the year and its complex swirl of vocal power and underwater guitars and ode to you musical inspiration Jeff Buckley.
It actually wasn't super thought out, you know. I felt I had a lot of emotions flowing around and I just started off with a melancholy energy and it just gradually opened up to this big burst of wailing. It was a really natural process and it just went where it needed to. Jeff Buckley is one of my all-time favourites, but I didn't necessarily have him in the forefront of my mind when I started writing the song, but that's just naturally where that came from, you know. He's a big part of my subconscious, musically and especially vocally. So it just kind of went where it wanted to.
It's a really beautiful song and I always love it when someone has such a sort of cacophonous sound, but it was quite an easy process - it was clearly the song that needed to be written.
Yeah, 100%. I feel like you nailed you that. It really was, you know. There are some songs that are more thought out and you have a bit of a vision of what you want to create, or you're trying to go for a certain vibe, but this one I literally sat there and I was kind of crying and singing these words. It sounds sad, but I was singing through my tears, but it was the most cathartic process, you know, and some of those moments are when these kinds of songs can come out. I hold this one pretty close to my heart. It just kind of poured out, so, it was a bit of a healing process as well.
That sounds amazing. I mean this as the biggest compliment, you are writing music for teenagers. When you're a teenager, it's the best time and the worst of times… the best time because you have a lot of time in the day to just really process the wave of emotions, and you need guitars for that. You need guitars and lyrics, and you are writing teenage bedroom music and it is incredible.
I love that. I honestly hadn't thought of it like that previously, you know, but it makes sense. You do have a lot of time to reflect when you're a teenager and you feel a lot. Everything feels like it's the end of the world, you know. So it totally makes sense you saying that. It's funny to hear the different perspectives on these things.
It's such a beautiful moment and I always speak about it with such praise to be able to tap into that idle time that's just full of emotion that for years, iit’s getting better, people disregarded because like, ‘you'll get over it, you’ll move on’, but it doesn't take the weight of it any lighter. This is the reason we play records like yours and why Jeff Buckley and Mazzy Star and Liz Phair have lasted for so long, because we needed those songs to process it. So it's really beautiful to have yours in the mix.
Thank you. I always have these thoughts of, ‘oh, I will always write about my own experiences’, blah blah blah. There's so many bigger things in the world but at the same time, you still feel what you feel, and if someone ever says that to me, well that doesn't invalidate your experience and how you feel. It's good to get it off your chest, and it can be nice to listen to something like that and know that someone's feeling the way you are, and have something to relate to.
100%. And also if everyone was just writing from a place of thinking that they needed to have a social conscience song or to say a message, then it's forced and it doesn't work. In your voice, I'm hearing Courtney Love and Liz Phair in the way you sing and your vocals but who were those queens of music that inspired you to create the music you're in making today?
It's funny you say Courtney Love. I didn't listen to her really growing up, but I listened to a lot of Nirvana so they're definitely related in ways obviously. My dad listened to a lot of 90s grunge, so I was honing in on that throughout my upbringing. These days, I look to people like PJ Harvey, Radiohead is a big one for the reason that he does a lot of the builds and the wailing and then also the soft kind of ambience. I always go back to Radiohead as an influence because I do feel a lot of inspiration from that kind of variety. Mazzy Star as well, god the list could go on!
It's beautiful because I can totally hear it and there’s nothing like hearing your heroes in your voice. You said that you always write it from perspective and from your own experiences. Have you always turned to song writing to process everything around you?
That's a good question. It's definitely a big part of it but it also depends how I'm feeling and where I'm at in my creative flow at that time. I have waves where I'm feeling creative, or where I neglect it a little bit, but I stop putting pressure on myself during those moments and just allow it to come back naturally. During the times when that's not what I'm gravitating towards during those moments, I'll often go for a drive. I live in a pretty chill area, so I find just going for a bit of a drive around the back streets and stopping off at the beach and looking at the mirror and taking a breath, or going into nature is always a big one for me as well. Just somewhere to sit and reflect and just breathe. Journalling as well. I’m trying to get into that a bit more, but when I do journalling it turns into song writing anyway! I was really trying to get into it and I was like, ‘I'm just gonna write a little bit each day, even if I don't feel like it, I'll just write what I did that day.’ And I ended up writing two or three pages of stuff and all these things came out of my subconscious that I didn't know I was feeling and it's such an amazing reflecting way to, to heal.
‘Icicles’ follows the gritty guitar lines, and very punchy, ‘Jigsaw’, which is just pure rock. Both singles are named after, depending how you happen to fall on them, quite sharp objects. Was that intentional?
No, and I love that you pick up on that! You got me there. It's funny, because ‘Jigsaw’ is definitely that sharp, fast energy and if you were going to put anger in a shape, it would be a sharp shape or an angular shape to me. But ‘Icicles’ is at a different end of the spectrum in the way that it's a deeper kind of mourning process almost, if you will, for me. The feeling that I was experiencing was literally, like the lyrics say, feeling like you're being stabbed by icicles.
You're quite a musical boss. You said you were exposed to some great music growing up, but when did you start making your own?
I would say about 13. I’ve sang for as long as I can remember. was singing songs for my family, flipping through old CD covers at five years old, sitting on my nan's bench with my dad. I’ve always remembered that, finding lyrics we'd sing together and stuff. But actually writing, I wrote my first song at like 13, played a bit of guitar throughout my childhood and then when I got to about 16, I started really getting more into the writing process. It's funny, there used to be a lot more chill, acoustic stuff. I come from a beach area, so, that was the kind of flowy vibe that I was feeling. But as I've gotten older, I've gone back to that even earlier stage of my life with the grunge influences, and that's where some of the heavier guitars and whatnot come from because I just love it and I feel like it just reflects that emotion. If you’re feeling heavy emotional angst or whatever it is, I feel like a heavy guitar just reiterates that feeling.
100%. It's hard to get heavy with a flute or a recorder.
Yeah. I do love flute though.
Well there you go. There's a challenge for your next single - get someone to play the angry flute on there!
Oh my God, mission accepted! I’m going to give that a go. Angry flute, maybe I need to learn. Love it.
Tiali, we're enjoying these teenage bedroom tunes. We've got jaggedy objects, you're just pushing yourself back and forth into your inspirations and what you're creating. What is coming up for you next year?
We've got another single coming, I'm really excited for it. It ties in with the rest, but it's something different again. So I'm really excited to share it. And we are in the midst of getting the EP ready as well. I can't wait to get it out. I've had these songs ready for a while, they're recorded, it's just about pumping them out and getting all the surrounding aspects right before we share it with the world.
‘Icicles’ is out now via Arcadia Records/Sony Music Entertainment Australia. You can download and stream here.
To keep up with all things Tiali you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
