Written In Blood

Following a period of tremendous personal loss documented in a touching Women Of Letters account on the passing of her parents, Jen Cloher has kicked off the next chapter of her career. With a new band and a fresh songwriting approach the Melburnian unveiled Mount Beauty last month, the first single from her forthcoming third record Blood Memory, which moves away from the country-folk style that gained her an ARIA nomination in 2006.

“I've had a few Patti Smith comparisons and a few PJ Harvey comparisons and I think it's really not so much the song or even the way that we've approached the sound… [but] all of those women have a sort of attitude and they're not trying to be pretty or perfect, and I love that,” says Cloher of the response to Mount Beauty so far. “I got tired of hearing people go: 'And we were just listening to the beautiful Jen Cloher,' you know. I got tired of being beautiful and nice, so I really wanted to go for something that was imperfect and you can hear it in the vocal take – I don't hit some of the notes perfectly, my pronunciation isn't perfect, my voice sort of crackles over a few of the words in there and that was a rehearsal take so we hadn't even started recording proper. The engineer just pushed record and that was the first take that we ever did of that song in the studio… When you hear it I say at the beginning, 'Oh, don't worry, we're not recording,' and then you can hear our drummer swearing – when you listen really closely she fucks up a drum fill and swears… It's a bit shambolic and cool.”

Cloher has moved away from the acoustic styling of her first two records in favour of exploring electric guitar this time around as a way of broadening her songwriting outcomes. “The whole album I sort of decided to write on electric, mainly to have a different experience because you can kind of get into almost like sense memory stuff… Keith Richards talks about how we go to the same chords or the same ways of playing things; we get this sense memory and I've found that by playing electric I just had a different experience and I kind of tricked myself out of going and doing the same thing,” she admits. 

Making her way around the nation to showcase the new single this month, Cloher has gained the feisty rock prowess of Courtney Barnett who both opens the shows and is now a member of her new backing band. “Our music is very different which is great – I don't think you come along and go, 'Oh, that's too weird, it doesn't work' – but it's really great being around someone whose approach is very different,” Cloher says of Barnett. “And I think in a lot of ways I get very influenced by people in my band if they've got a certain style; the last guitarist that we had in [previous backing band] The Endless Sea was a fellow called Michael Hubbard, who now plays in Eagle & The Worm… Because he was such a great country guitarist I was like, 'I've got to write country songs for this player!' So in a way [with] Courtney, there's probably more of that pop-rock influence that's come into my own work just from playing with her. But she's fantastic – I think that big things are on the horizon for her and I'm really excited to see triple j embrace a songwriter whose got a bit of attitude, and a bit of grunt. You don't go: 'That was the beautiful Courtney Barnett!'” Cloher laughs, of the tag she has worked to move beyond with Mount Beauty. “I hope she's gonna revolutionise rock for the kids.”

Jen Cloher and Courtney Barnett will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 22 November – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 1 December – Republic Bar, Hobart TAS