Track by track: Sarah Belkner talks us through her new album 'The Apple': "In all this mess, I think we are getting somewhere."
Sydney based Sarah Belkner today releases her new album The Apple. Her first album since 2017, it is an album that explores creativity, the challenges that life throws us and ultimately the gift that life is.
The album was first conceived in 2020 when a serious of life altering events occurred for Belkner, including giving birth to her daughter and two close family members succumbing to cancer, alongside navigating her own personal journey through a global pandemic.
The turmoil in Belkner’s personal life resulted in an album that reflects on everything she been through, but with a focus on exploring the preciousness of life, the joy in simplicity and most of all, hope.
Belkner created the album in the midst of touring and travelling and the songs started as little more than poems composed on planes or in hotel rooms. Later teaming up with her band, Belkner refined and rehearsed the songs to the extent that she was able to step into the studio and record the whole album in just three days.
Unlike much of her previous work, Belkner took a minimalist approach with The Apple. With minimal use of backing vocals and vocal doubling, Belkner’s voice shines in its purest form while the soundscape contains no guitars and was created purely with bass, drum, synthesiser and a saxophone played via the synth. The result is an album of otherworldly beauty. Ethereal, dreamlike, with lush melodies and gentle hooks, the ten songs deviate completely from the type of structure and feeling you expect from pop music, but in the best way possible. There is a sense of intrigue and delight with every song, the refreshing lack of predictability making the album a true listening experience and journey.
There are hints of 1980s synth-new wave on ‘Ghost In My Machine’, while recent single ‘Houdini’ brings in touches of jazz and rock. ‘Pocket Money For Therapy’, with its frustrated, resigned lyrics and vocals has a conversely perky beat with elements of ska. Title track ‘The Apple’ is an album highlight, a beautiful, dreamy synth ballad with gorgeous vocals from Belkner, with lyrics that speak of the power of love ‘Did I find you or did you find me? / Overnight, eternally’. The album ends with an excursion into alt-pop with the distorted, fuzzy beauty of ‘One Wing’.
The Apple is a remarkable album and showcases how mightily talented Belkner is - a singer, songwriter, producer, composer, arranger and musical director just to name a few strings to her bow. She creates beautiful music and The Apple is a highlight in her already impressive career, and you are guaranteed to fall in love with it. Exclusively for Women In Pop, Belkner takes us track by track through The Apple.
SALT
This song has become a real touchstone to coming back to the here and now. I think more and more in songwriting I’m realising I write little anthems for myself and hopefully others. Ones that are to prop you up or just to help make sense of difficult feelings and experiences the more unspoken ways we deal with life. This one seems to always work too. It’s a really positive train of thought which I’m so glad to have captured. Sometimes as writers we use the medium to exorcise the more complicated emotions but ‘SALT’ at it’s heart is designed to sing a simple message that simplicity and calm is always available even in very challenging times. I wrote this well before more recently lots of tricky personal things happened and it’s been such a joy to have it to come back to.
I was on tour actually with Alex Lloyd way back when I wrote the first poem that this song eventually stemmed from. We were in Western Australia somewhere down the coast and whenever I get to anywhere I know is close to the water and know we have an hour or so off I always quickly see if it’s walkable to the beach. I’m a total water junkie.
In this case we had arrived the day before the show so had the whole evening off. Turns out a little very secluded beach was two streets away so I went down there with my book and pen and was blown away to watch the most amazing sunset splash all over the water. I was completely by myself feeling the most wonderful feeling of awe. I can still feel the sense of hope and calm it evoked and I attempted to capture that in the words.
ALMOST ON THE INSIDE
I realise a lot of themes on this album are of perseverance and keeping on moving. Creative and freelance work comes with it a real sense of instability at times and I’m only just starting to get a handle on the fact that if you want to do it that’s really all that matters. Waiting for permission for things will leave you waiting forever. “Peace will come when the tides are even” is a line I really love and to me in a way of saying that waiting for peace to arrive to then be able to live is the wrong way around.
WAIT FOR GOD
I seem to write a lot about waiting. Waiting for approval and the green light to do things. I think I spent a lot of time doing that. I don’t do it so much anymore but I still have to really fabricate momentum at times. I think I was kind of hoping someone would just say “Hey, here you go, here’s the way through all of this to get to your dreams” But we all know that just doesn’t generally happen. I mean if we look closely there are lots of tiny green lights. Small wins are everything, for me they are really all there is now. Waiting for big things to happen has been replaced by trying to find the general momentum especially when doors seem to close in your face. Actually keeping on going can be really tough at times but that’s all there is to it I guess. Brush off and get going again.
“Mise en garde” means warning or caution in French. Weirdly it just popped into my head and I’d forgotten what it meant from my high school French days and started singing this line “Living a mise en garde won’t you wake up before you want to bleed your worries out” in the chorus and then found out the meaning afterwards which fitted perfectly.
To me it means living in fear or living your life with full on caution all the time doesn’t get you anywhere because you will just stop doing things.
‘Feel the fear and try to do it anyway’ has definitely been my motto at the moment. Especially since having a child, there is a lot of having to get on with it in the small windows of time you have. I write this as my daughter naps and have had this one hour to try and get as much done as humanly possible ha ha. Art imitating life.
GHOST IN MY MACHINE
I’ve had the utter privilege of playing with Missy Higgins for the past few years and it’s just the most unique beautiful little touring family. There are six mums in that touring group which is unheard of and it’s the most incredible thing to be a part of. We generally always have at least one little person along with us, I had Juno with me for all shows for the first two years and it was such a special thing to get to do. The other thing I love about this band is our very frank tour van conversations. One such time someone asked “Do you ever dream about your exes?” I can’t even remember the conversation after that but I got thinking about dreams that come especially about past people or things you don’t want to dream about and how it’s like a haunting. ‘Ghost In My Machine’ was born from this. That lingering of a dream that you are slightly shocked by that can last well into the day. Someone got under your skin years ago and you haven’t even thought about them then there they are.
I’m really happy with the slightly eerie minimalist feel we got on this track, it’s ghostly in sound to match the themes. I was also very pleased to get the word ‘trespassing’ in there. I’m always on the hunt for a phrase or a word I haven’t heard in a song before.
HOUDINI
Another perseverance track but directly aimed at creatives. If we replaced ‘Houdini’ with ‘Muse’ then the whole thing starts to make sense. Keeping creatively motivated when you are releasing music into an absolute tidal wave of content can be overwhelming. Luckily I never think about releasing the work while I’m actually making it which I’m grateful for. Process and following instinct is such a beautiful place to be in and I’m a very happy person when I’m working on my music. It’s a real skill not to be put off by trying to then justify it by streams or popularity. The machine of music has become so loud and present it sometimes drowns out the very reason we all got into it in the first place; The actual making of music. “I see the end of the kingdom and it’s more than beautiful” is a line loosely about the dismantling of the patriarchy. In all this mess I think we are getting somewhere.
This song went through the most revisions of any of the songs. It was my white whale if you will of this album. There’s always one. The irony that this could have been the song to give up on when that is exactly what it is about is not lost on me. I wrote a few different choruses for it and am very proud of the lyrics so glad it got over the line in the end. It also really captures the band sound I had in my head before we started recording. I wanted quite a vibrant, colourful and hopeful feel but not too in your face.
I THINK THAT IT’S ME
“Forever it’s taken to plant this seed and I’m so scared the tree will come out with no leaves”
This song is a very vulnerable lyric for me. It really was me just expressing some of the more difficult feelings I have about myself and the confusion self doubt can bring with it. I wanted to make it very beautiful though. It’s a cliche but there is a beauty in trying to work this all out, in the commitment to growth and change. We do change. We have to otherwise we just get stuck within ourselves.
I also love an unconventional song. This track in its structure isn’t just a verse, chorus, verse chorus but 3 different verses and then an ending. It’s just a 3 verse poem disguised as a singer-songwriter ballad. You really get to hear some of my sax player Matt Keegan’s great work here too, that woozy sound and chords come straight from him. He has his horns running through pedals and effects and creates the most beautiful strange atmospheres. For this album what you hear is literally bass, drums and then a part from Matt and one or two at the most synth parts from myself. Looking back on it I can see I was hunting for space all the time. How little can we use to express the same thing you might use every bell and whistle for. I still wanted it to have a grandness though. A tight big band album feel. Bold and minimal. The same thing applies to my life, I’m trying to find more space yet more vibrancy which I think is a common thing to do as you get older. Resisting feeling crammed all the time and enjoying things as you go. Smell the roses as you’re growing them.
POCKET MONEY FOR THERAPY
So it turns out every musician has what I now like to call a ‘quitting fantasy’. It’s really fun to ask people theirs. Mine is as this song points out “Move to the beach and make coffee for tourists”.
There’s a hilarious freedom in saying it out loud. I think anyone can relate. It’s the sea change you will probably never act on (I mean some people do!), but when things are tough oh man you really start plotting it out in your head. These thoughts for me are always quickly followed by ‘Wherever you go there you are’ a friendly reminder to keep working on yourself first.
Some funny quitting fantasies I’ve heard include “A cricket pitch greens keeper”, “A librarian in Wagga Wagga” and “divorced” ha ha.
“I’m saving up to get free, a little pocket money for therapy” is one of my favourite lines I wrote for the album. It’s just a good quip at how ridiculous everything really is. We work and worry ourselves to a point of therapy but need to work to pay for it. I find that funny. I actually love therapy so that make this even more hilarious. I’m not sure if anyone else shares my sense of humour here but we will find out when the record comes out ha ha.
THE APPLE
These words came out in a big flurry after same sex marriage was passed here is Australia. It just felt so wrong to be voting about this but such a relief it got over the line. Then the same with our recent Voice to Parliament referendum, what an awful mess. I’m a very naive empathetic equality band wagon jumper. It seems so obvious to me and yet we are constantly seeing these views that literally hurt and impact people’s lives in a way that their quality of life and self worth is lessened.
“Oh yeah we’ve got a way to go to freedom from the rodeo” understandably the old guard doesn’t want change because things have been good for the old guard.
Why can’t we just let people live their lives and help to back that up. We over complicate everything by thinking it will have an impact somehow when all it will do is help those it is actually about.
A lot of these lyrics are about finding that equality by leaning into those you love. Coming back to your family and your people around you. Leave the world behind for a bit and remember to keep building your life. Cherish those you’ve found that you deeply love and who deeply love you back.
PHOENIX DAY
This song is a bit about waking up feeling like the world is completely on top of you but somehow finding your way through the day and rising by the end of it.
It’s a long story but since writing this song I’ve been diagnosed with PMDD (pre menstrual dysphoric disorder) which is a severe pre menstrual disorder that comes with it good big old bad depression amongst other lovely things. It’s scary for me but important to talk about this as there are a lot of women who don’t realise that PMS shouldn’t be debilitating. If it is or if you are generally depressed please find a good GP and go chat. I just thought that was what you had to deal with, it isn’t.
I spent a large portion of my life especially 10 days out from my period working out how to drag myself up every day and out to get going and white knuckling until the pressure and awful feelings would be finally alleviated by the onset of menstruation. It’s been one of the most exciting things of my whole life to be on top of it and writing this now makes me want to say the classic thing but it really can change. Please seek help if you are struggling, there are many, many things to try and it can get better.
ONE WING
I wrote this song as a kind of second instalment to my song ‘Cellophane’ which I wrote about my grandad from an imagined perspective of my grandma. That’s what this song was too, when he passed away these words tumbled out so fast when I was on an aeroplane at some point and then I sat at the piano and set it to music. I wanted it to be through composed, as in no chorus or repeated structure of any sort. Like life it just goes on through. We often don’t get second chances. “One wing with the eagle, one on the ground” is a dementia reference. In-between states. It’s a strange thing to witness when someone is dying they go into this too. Still here in the land of the living but also not here while they slowly go. We sadly witnessed this first hand with the deaths of my father in law and my sister in law (my brothers wife) recently both to cancer. It’s been a heavy time and this song is for everyone who has lost someone close and been through this. We’ve had our fair share recently and this song has become very important as an expression of grief. Again I wanted it to be beautiful though. It’s not angry but accepting in it’s aesthetic. The love for people most certainly carries on even after they are gone.
The Apple is out now. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Sarah Belkner you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
The Apple album launch will be held at The Great Club, Marrickville on November 3. Tickets available here.
