Playing The StalkHer Soundtrack At Wishful Gigs

Fans of Melbourne indie dream-pop five-piece Wishful will be surprised to hear the ethereal voices of the band's singers, sisters Maddy and Memphis Kelly, delivering the  Lynchian theme song from the new Australian feature film StalkHer, directed by and starring John Jarratt of Wolf Creek fame.  

"Originally John Jarratt was going to sing the tracks," Memphis Kelly, whose father is Paul Kelly, explains, "and then I think they decided they wanted to give more of an eerie feminine sort of vibe to it. So our mum Kaarin [Fairfax], who also stars in the movie, she suggested my sister and I come in and sing the track. So, yeah, definitely different to what we would normally sing but it worked out well. The film is all about female empowerment and that sort of thing so our voices worked really well with sort of the theme of the movie. Singing a song that we haven't written ourselves and kind of reworking it into something that we would sing has been really beneficial for us." 

"It's out the back of our dad's house and it's set up pretty well, so we may as well use that, be at home and make cups of coffee at the same time."

Wishful formed four years ago after the sisters met guitarist Sam Humphrey at Queenscliff Music Festival. They recorded a debut EP, 2012's Fifty Days, in an old converted goat shed. "It's out the back of our dad's house and it's set up pretty well," Kelly explains, "so we may as well use that, be at home and make cups of coffee at the same time." Expanding to a five-piece with the addition of bass guitarist Caleb Williams and drummer Harley Hamer, Wishful recorded last year's EP, S, there too.

The sisters recently undertook their first European tour, albeit not with Wishful. "Maddy and I do backing vocals with CW Stoneking occasionally, and he and his band went on tour in Europe and we went along. It was a seven-week tour all over Europe and the UK, which was really incredible, though we didn't really get much time to explore Europe — we did six shows a week for seven weeks — so it was really full-on and intense: a lot of observing Europe out of the van window!"

For fans wondering why Wishful haven't been gigging since the sisters' return, that's down to the band's drummer spraining his wrist and their guitarist hurting his hand at work, "but we've been doing some songwriting sessions and our plans for the next few [months] are to just start workshopping new ideas and get a bunch of new material happening before we play any more shows".

And it looks very likely that most un-Wishful song, StalkHer, will become a regular part of their future sets. "Maddy, Sam and I were working on it the other day so we can actually play it live." That was in preparation for a performance at the Melbourne premiere of the film. "And hopefully, if it's well received, we'll play it more," Kelly chuckles. "It's a good song."

Either way, it doesn't hurt to have a song they're singing sitting on a soundtrack album alongside classic tracks from Nick Cave, The Go-Betweens, Split Enz and Sarah Blasko.