Covering Our Own

21 September 2014 | 10:19 am | Liz Giuffre

Missy Higgins on getting "creepy" with Amanda Palmer.

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Missy Higgins’ roots have always been clearer than most – her lovely Aussie twang as proudly evident as Eddie Vedder’s growl or a Bee Gees falsetto. She’s also done some cracker covers in her time, including a sexy as crooner take on Skyhooks’ You Just Like Me ‘Cause I’m Good In Bed for triple j’s 30th and a mega version of Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody’s From Little Things Big Things Grow. With her new album, Oz, Higgins flips through the songbook to find some old gold as well as polish up some lost gems.

“There were quite a few songs that were big inspirations to me, or artists like The Waifs and Frenté and Colin Hay, and they’re songs I love to play at home because I love the songs and they influenced me so much, but I couldn’t think of anything original to do with them,” Higgins says of the selection process for the album’s tracks.

"We were bringing the really creepy side of the lyrics to the forefront, making him sound like a stalker."



“I guess because [there are some artists that] influenced my sound so much, I couldn’t extract myself out from the general sound enough to create something new out of it. So I had to look a little bit further out of my genre to artists that I may not have heard of, that I wasn’t necessarily directly inspired by, so that I could reinvent that song with fresh ears.”

Sometimes the process of ‘extraction’ was as simple as moving a bit sideways or back a generation. Take her venture into Slim Dusty, via The Waifs, for example. When just a young latté-sipping Melbourne jazz singer, she would have lost serious cred trying to tackle Slim a while back, now, with the right tune and a bit of help from Dan Sultan, she’s done the old bloke proud.

“I was a huge fan of The Waifs when I was 17 and I know they’re cut from the same cloth as Slim. He’s such a huge part of Australian musical history that I thought, ‘I can’t have an album of Australian covers and not have a Slim Dusty song,’ although there were a lot of artists I felt that way about and it didn’t work out so much. But I had a good look through his catalogue of songs and there are so many classic songs of his but they’re very much him, and very much outback Australian, I don’t know, it’s hard to describe, but I couldn’t sing those songs authentically in my own voice, so I had find songs that I could relate to and find the emotional heart of. And when I found The Biggest Disappointment I thought ‘that’s just such a great line’ – ‘the biggest disappointment in the family was me’ – everybody can relate to that feeling in one way of another.”

In addition to finding the right tune, Higgins was determined to give songs a bit of a revamp as well. For Dusty’s tune it was “an old microphone and a ukulele on there and really ramp up the twee-ness on it,” while Paul Kelly’s Before Too Long turned into a darkly hilarious duet, performed with Amanda Palmer.

“It was quite interesting to get into the studio with Amanda and then just realise that we were bringing the really creepy side of the lyrics to the forefront, making him sound like a stalker. But when you read into the lyrics it’s hard not to think, ‘this is the actual true meaning of the song,’” Higgins laughs. “But Paul’s songs have such a universal quality to them that they really lend themselves to be covered by other artists. It’s really hard to pinpoint why. His own instrumentation and production is usually quite simple; he never overdoes the emotion on his songs, he always sings them straight down the line, he never gets overly theatrical. Which then leaves it open for other artists to pull it in any direction they want.”

In addition to the album Higgins has also written a short collection of essays to accompany her covers, part love letters to the tunes, as well as short insights into how they’ve come to make sense in their new setting. She describes this idea as “kind of like being at a show and having me tell stories just in between songs, really,” and certainly her characteristic humour, honesty and sweet dagginess come through in the prose. Like, for example, her description of the fan letter she wrote to Paul Dempsey which introduces her cover of Something For Kate’s You Only Hide, or explaining a weird affinity with ‘Amanda’ in The Angels’ No Secrets. There’s also just a desire to right the wrong that is the “criminally underrated” Neil Murray with Calm And Crystal Clear.

As our chat goes on Higgins rubs her tummy occasionally, her first baby perhaps not quite developed enough yet to get much beyond the sound vibrations of heartbeats, but no doubt in for some serious musical education over its life.

“I think kids have a really great ability to fall in love with great music; we just have to expose them to it. If they don’t get really cheesy kids’ music then they won’t know the difference. Anything that’s really melodic they’ll like, and ultimately you just wanna make your kid smile.” One little bub’s going to have the best lullabies ever.

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