On The Line

27 June 2013 | 4:53 pm | Dylan Stewart

"You’re putting yourself out there to fail; and there’s not a single human being who wants to fail, especially publicly."

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For Jen Cloher, a casual chat is just the tonic she needs to steel herself for a weekend of posting vinyl all over the country. “I've had a rough time with vinyl coming in from the Czech Republic, which is where my records get shipped from,” she begins. “I've been waiting two weeks for it, and it turns out (the shipment's) been waiting in customs for ten days! I've got irate Pozible supporters going 'where's our vinyl?' So I'm gonna just sit and address the mail all weekend.”

Something that's a hell of a lot more enjoyable than licking envelopes is the release of Cloher's third and arguably most accomplished record to date, In Blood Memory. It's a little rougher around the edges than her previous releases, and according to Cloher, it feels good to bank the third.

“There's something about a third album that feels kind of solid. You could stop at three albums and not be a one-hit wonder.” While Hanson, Alanis Morissette and Chumbawamba might beg to differ, things are looking up for Cloher. “It's an honest album; it's not trying to be an extraordinarily over-produced masterpiece.”

Nonetheless, it's still a mighty fine record. Crowd-sourced through a Pozible campaign, Cloher says the prospect of laying it all out there was daunting. “I was terrified. It's like publicly announcing a party and seeing if anyone comes along,” she said. “You're putting yourself out there to fail; and there's not a single human being who wants to fail, especially publicly.”

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Giving people some ownership of the album was also a great way to help her reach her funding goal. By offering funders the chance to vote on the album title and artwork, Cloher got to connect with more people. “What I loved was seeing the word spread and people come to it. It ended up being really fun. The other great thing is that when you do finally send it out, you get a lot more feedback”.

Over six days, In Blood Memory was recorded live, and the process was just right. “I was very clear about how I wanted to approach recording this album.

“There's so much technology available, you can just become a total perfectionist and sit at home spending a year creating something. That's great, but I really wanted to avoid that, and I wanted to avoid my tendency to try and perfect everything. I wanted to just ruffle it up a bit. There's a sense that things could all just fall apart.”

Whittling down to seven songs, while unconventional, is a decision that Cloher stands by. Although the release still clocks in at over half an hour in length, “there were other songs, but they just didn't fit; they didn't belong. The seven songs felt like a little family.”

With two up-and-coming female singer-songwriters in Ainslie Wills and Courtney Barnett supporting her respective shows in Melbourne and Sydney, does Cloher see herself as an elder stateswoman, imparting advice to a new generation of women taking to the spotlight?

“I think it's just something that happens. If you're in the music scene you start to meet other practitioners just from being out there. But I learn as much from them as they would from me. They come to the music business with their own bag of tricks.”