Trick Or Treat?

4 July 2013 | 12:34 pm | Steve Bell

"When I started out I used to only write humorous songs, and I think it was just a defence mechanism at first because I was worried that I wasn’t a good writer or worried that people would get bored, so I was constantly cracking jokes to keep people entertained."

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"It's been the best part of a decade now since young Sydney musician Laura Imbruglia started playing her trade on the touring circuit as a budding songwriter, but the passing of time has gradually ushered in a myriad of changes in her world. She now calls Melbourne home, has established a crack band of musicians in that city, and for the first time they've all contributed to one of her albums, her brand-spanking third effort What A Treat.

It's an assured, albeit occasionally melancholy, group of songs which were accumulated over the course of three years, and while there's no overarching theme to the collection per se, they definitely feel like they belong together. According to Imbruglia this is by necessity rather than design; partly due to her not churning out songs at a rate of knots, plus because she's a fan of bands who embrace a wilfully eclectic streak.

“I usually let the songs dictate [the feel of the album] because I'm not very prolific, and I struggle enough to just get enough songs to fill an album,” she reflects. “So if I was to dictate a theme or a particular sound that I wanted then I'd never get anything done, because I'd be constantly trying to re-write the songs or write songs that are more suited. I just use the excuse that I'm a Ween fan if ever anything goes astray – if an album's not cohesive musically I can just say, 'Well I like Ween and Ween do that, and Ween rule!'. That's my excuse for everything.”

It's an excuse that could apply equally as well to Imbruglia's career as a whole, because her sound has changed dramatically over the journey, especially if you hold What A Treat up next to her relatively shiny 2006 self-titled debut.

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“It's just growing up, and as you get older getting a better feel for the right kind of people to work with – both in your band and as a producer,” she explains of the gradual shift. “The first album is really hi-fi, and there was a lot of work from both my manager and the producer saying, 'Make sure it's radio-friendly! You're gonna fucking get flogged on triple j blah blah blah' – that's just not a consideration for me anymore. That changes the sound a fair bit when you stop caring about stuff like that. And I didn't really get into country music until after the first album, and then when you start listening to lots of old country music and bluegrass and stuff I guess you appreciate warmth in recordings more than you might have before.”

While she's musically accomplished, there's no doubt that the core strength of Imbruglia's writing is derived from her deft lyricism, and she explains that sometimes this gift is excised more easily than at others.

“I don't know that it comes easy, some of the songs – and you can probably tell the difference between them – just write themselves; Awoooh!, Why'd You Have To Kiss Me So Hard?, and The Intervention, those songs were ones that just fell together, and I didn't have to work very hard. But then they're not super-clever or anything, I just try to get my point across and make the lyrics fit in with the feel of the song, whereas there are other ones that I agonise over for months and months – some of them are very syllable dependent, like Limerence for instance, and that ate into several hours of my commuting time on the way to work. But it pays off – it's really rewarding when you find that missing word you've been desperate for.

“[I enjoy songwriting] to a point. Sometimes it's not that rewarding because you just can't get to the end of it – if you work on a song for too long, you stop seeing what's good about it. I nearly gave up on Harsh Dylan Songs because I was working on it for months and months and could only get the verse lyrics, and was just singing really crap lines in the chorus. It took me listening to Dylan and realising that I could hide some insults within the chorus by referencing Bob Dylan songs – making it a whole song of insults in one line – and that would work just fine.”

Imbruglia's default mode of lyricism involves utilising her wonderfully wry sense of humour, even sometimes in the bleakest of surrounds, and the ensuing levity characterises the tracts without rendering other emotions redundant, not always the easiest of feats.

“I think that's just the way I roll in life and as a writer,” she smiles. “When I started out I used to only write humorous songs, and I think it was just a defence mechanism at first because I was worried that I wasn't a good writer or worried that people would get bored, so I was constantly cracking jokes to keep people entertained. Now it's my way of giving people relief from the relentlessly depressing nature of the songs' subject matter – it's for my own benefit as well as the audience's, because it can be a total bummer sitting through a whole set of my songs, especially if you're already depressed or you're trying to have a fun night out. It's just me saying, 'Find something funny in this situation, because there must be something amusing about this'. I love The Magnetic Fields and Morrissey and writers like that, who manage to inject a bit of humour into grim subject matter.”

Speaking of grim, Imbruglia's early career found her constantly being scrutinised in the context of her ridiculously famous sister, a ludicrous situation given that they were coming from entirely different musical places. Thankfully Laura's longevity has eroded these inane comparisons, even if her sister's shadow still occasionally looms large.

“Yeah, it's finally backing off a little bit which is good,” the singer admits. “I don't really cop much flack from people. I still regularly get people accidentally calling me Natalie when they're talking to me, but I guess it's just in their brain and you can't really help that. I'm not really fussed anymore, I don't think that people are still accusing me of nepotism or anything – I've been around enough and done enough things by myself that people don't think I'm just passing through or whatever. In the early days I was constantly accused of that, and as a result – or as a backlash – I basically refused to speak to newspapers. I had to turn down free promo, but it was basically just them wanting to talk to me about my sister, which was a waste of time for everyone involved. Them's the breaks, that's what happens if you have the same surname as someone who's successful.”