Mayday

It's been quite some time since the 'Girl Power' moniker reigned supreme. Think The Spice Girls circa '95. There have, of course, been those pseudo-feminists – carefully crafted record label sweethearts who proclaim to be 'all about the music'. You know the ones. Thank God then for Abbe May. But tread carefully lest you should mention the dreaded 'rock chick' term around the raven-haired artist.

“That is just the most offensive term,” says May, who's rocked up an hour early to our interview pleading to use the toilet. In tights, cut-off denim shorts and a near see-through floral blouse, May is Queen of the effortlessly chic brigade and as friendly and warm as the best friend you wish you had. Despite her heavy, darkly-addictive, passion-laden pop sound, May is open and breathtakingly easygoing. Her latest release, Kiss My Apocalypse, was born out of a cocktail of heartache and happiness – both ingredients May insists were essential to the album. “I started writing after a break-up. The writing started out quite angry and upset and there was this bitter thing that kept coming out [in the lyrics] that I felt I needed to spit out. Then, halfway through the album my first niece was born and it just changed me quite a bit and I kind of realised how silly it was to get so wrapped up in my own emotion.”

May's face lights up as she talks about her niece, Sophia, to whom she has dedicated Kiss My Apocalypse, despite her reservations with her brother's decision to let the youngster listen to it. “My brother plays her songs like Karmageddon and then sends me videos of her dancing to it. Like, I don't want her to be tainted by it!” laughs May. “She can listen to it when she's… mature enough.” Understandably so, with the album boasting such titles as Tantric Romantic, Fuck/Love and Sex Tourette's. At mention of her song titles, May laughs. “I have a tendency to write down song titles before I actually write down the songs. I'm also a big fan of puns and humorous couplings of words and things like that. Like, Kiss My Apocalypse was one of those song titles that I wrote down before I began the writing process for the album. I just thought it was kind of funny to tell people to 'kiss my arse', but I love the added intensity that an apocalypse brings to it.”

The follow-up to 2011's Design Desire, Kiss My Apocalypse relies less on May's raucous guitar riffs, instead tumbling down the rabbit hole of what she calls “weirdo pop”. “This album, Sam [Ford, May's writing/musical counterpart] and I would work really intensely for a few weeks and then I'd say I needed time off because I was so emotionally drained,” sighs May. “But Sam was the same, you know, he would say, 'I'm going surfing, see you in two weeks.' It was just so all-consuming.” May adds that despite the emotional turbulence that came with the creative output, the wheels are already in motion for the next record. “Get this. We released the album on May 10 and on May 11, Sam sends me over a new beat to start working on again. I was like, 'Oh no, I am too hungover for this!' But that's the way we work. We're always working. Like, for me, I'm always writing heaps of stuff, you know. I've heaps of notebooks of just song ideas, just song names and so many of them are just not relevant at all. I tend to write and write and then put them away. But the thing is, the ideas are still in your head and they often come back in some other way.”