Performance Anxiety

18 September 2013 | 4:00 am | Samson McDougall

"I did all those solo shows with the last record and went through all that pain – as well as pleasure, don’t get me wrong. It was good fun, but when it was hard it was hard."

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"It was just packed with weird cats,” Adalita Srsen says, of her musical birthplace, Geelong's Barwon Club in the late-'80s/early-'90s. “[There were] all these young people that just came from maybe dysfunctional families or whatever and didn't have anywhere to go and just needed a scene... [It was] like, 'Yeah, we're weird but we're proud and this is what we do and this is the music we love and this is what we wear and this is how we talk and this is the hairdo I've got'. And, you know, you just felt like you had a family in that kind of scene.” From this scene emerged the band that would define Srsen's musical existence for the next 20-odd years, Magic Dirt.

Magic Dirt occupied that rare musical space that appeals in equal measures to radio tastemakers (they even appeared on John Peel's BBC radio show in 1997), career-making (or breaking) label types and a wide spectrum of the public. They were a popular band that maintained their edge. They hovered around the fringes of mainstream success, seemingly enough to make a go of it but without ever really forgetting where they'd come from.

Key to the band's emergence and successes was the pairing of Srsen and bass player Dean Turner. Their relationship, musical and otherwise, formed a platform from which Srsen developed her own musical chops. “It was completely accidental, I had no ambition to be in a rock band or make music, it wasn't something that I did or loved or [that] was on my radar at all,” Srsen says of her teenage years. “I'd always written poetry, so I had words and things. So then I started learning the guitar, self-taught from a book, and then I started putting the words of my poetry with my music and then recorded little things on cassettes, when cassettes were around. Then I met Dean and he heard the tapes and he said, 'These are great songs, we should do something'. I was like, 'Okay'.”

Needless to say, the thing took off – the Magic Dirt chapter of Adalita's story is now well told. But Turner was also to play a vital role in the next instalment of his friend's story: the birth of the solo artist, Adalita. “Dean really encouraged me to branch out and try these other songs and I was really nervous about it and kind of didn't want to do it because I was too nervous playing live,” she says. “I didn't mind the recording part, I enjoyed that, but live, I thought, 'I can't do this, it's too hard'... Early on even Dean was surprised that I kept doing the shows because he thought I was probably too afraid to keep doing it.”

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The first, and self-titled, Adalita album dropped in 2011 after a prolonged recording process. Sadly, Turner was never to see the fruits of his encouragement as he passed away during the production of the record from a rare form of cancer in August 2009. He was only 37 years old. The resultant debut album is pure emotion on wax. Armed with nothing but an electric guitar and what had developed into some serious songwriting abilities, Adalita laid a benchmark that would be incredibly difficult to better.

Understandably, it was a highly charged undertaking, and the subsequent tours came with their fair share of apprehensions. For Srsen, the prospect of standing on stage, alone with a guitar and her new batch of songs, was nerve-wracking to say the least. “I did all those solo shows with the last record and went through all that pain – as well as pleasure, don't get me wrong. It was good fun, but when it was hard it was hard. So I feel like just 'cause I went through it all and faced my fears with it, I feel like now I've got to a point where I'm not so fearful anymore. I still get the butterflies and I'm still nervous but I'm not fearful. I think there's a difference.”

With new record, All Day Venus, Adalita just seems excited to get out and hit the road. It's a different beast of a record in almost every way; it's a band record for a start, with the bass and drum sounds she missed so much rumbling beneath the guitar. Srsen's unmistakable vocals and guitar playing draw a line back to the debut, but this is a much grander affair. “I still wanted it to be lush and beautiful and spacious, so I kept that minimalist attitude throughout – I didn't want to overcrowd or overcook it or make it this big bombastic record,” she says. “I just wanted it to be like the first record in that cinematic spacious quality but just have a band and have the pedal on.

“I kept it really, really, really minimal and I just wanted the guitars and the vocals to be there and just do their thing and tell the story... But I really wanted to push for really, really simple – just a skeleton that's draped in a few flowers; nothing too meaty, nothing too overdone, not what you'd expect.”

Along with the three drummers used on the recording of All Day Venus – no less than Jim White, Hugo Cran and Lee Parker – friend Matt Bailey played bass and there's a guest spot from violinist Willow Stahlut. Bailey remains in the upcoming tour band and will be joined by drummer Dan McKay and second guitarist Lewis Boyes. The recording represents Adalita's first time as master of puppets. Not only did she write most of the constituent parts for every instrument, but she took charge of the arrangement in order to best tell the story she set out to express.

“I feel confident that I actually explored the ideas and I made them happen,” she says of the outcome. “That was a pretty big deal – anyone would be nervous about that, I would imagine. I was sort of in charge and had to make it happen... [I] put my trust in others and everyone just delivered, I was really lucky I picked some amazing musicians and they all stepped up to the plate...

“I don't wanna get too dramatic but I think most of the people that are on the record realised how much of a big deal it was for me and they were all really sensitive to the project and everyone was so lovely and awesome. I feel really emotional about it all. I think it's really a sacred space and bringing people into that space you're taking a chance and hoping for the best.”

Adalita says she set out to produce a band record as “minimal and bare and essential” as her previous solo works; a record as bare bones in terms of parts, narrative and themes, and not diluted in any way. She's keen to push the live band even further, to relish having the power of three other musicians plugged in and on stage and cutting loose. “The way we're jamming and the way Lewis makes up his parts – I'm just making a whole other new take on the songs,” she says of the live approach. Interestingly, no formation of the band were ever brought together during the recording of the album. “It'll be the same songs and it'll sound similar but live I don't want to copy the record too much, it's a whole other beast... I don't wanna be tied down to any rules. The record's the record, put it on if you wanna hear that. But if you come to the show this is how we're gonna play it.”