Never Gonna Be The Joy To Courtney's Slim Dusty

As soon as we pressed play on Forgot Myself, the lead single from Jen Cloher's upcoming record, excitement set in. The distant guitar picking, jaunty drums, sneaky bass and Cloher's deliberately over-it vocal tone ("You've been gone so long you could've been dead") swirl around, gradually building to become a dervish of frustration - expressed both instrumentally and vocally - until the arrangement implodes and resolves.

Sitting inside Thornbury's Short Round cafe wearing a black jumper, Cloher jokes that she feels like The Fonz as she bids one journalist farewell while inviting us join her at a corner table. There's a sense that Cloher's self-titled fourth album will usher in the success she so richly deserves - it's definitely her time/turn - and Cloher admits she's "really loved talking about the record". "It feels like because it’s had an international release as well, and there’s a team in the UK and a team in the States… Just having that scope to be able to really go for it, you know? Has been really fun."   

She then considers,"If there's anything that's really different about this album to my other three, it's not so much that it's candid or that I talk about my life, 'cause I've always done that - particularly Hidden Hands and In Blood Memory; I do write from my own rich life experience. But I feel that in this album I also step to the side and start to talk about my view of the world, or my view on certain issues, or trying to make sense and understand the world that I'm currently living in. And I think that's why I decided in the end that there was no title that suited it better than Jen Cloher, because it does really sum up where I am right now in my life - what's going on, what I'm thinking about, the issues that are important to me, what I've been through recently. I mean, anyone who comes to my music - whether they know much about me at all - would've been curious, like, 'I wonder what it's like being with a partner who is also in the same profession who all of a sudden became one of the hottest acts in independent music around the world?'… So, you know, I'm telling them," she laughs.

"I think it's an interesting record, you know, to have discussions around because it's not just talking about a broken heart or missing someone from afar; I mean, there's deeper issues in there. And it's a very Australian album and I think also - I'm not sure, but it feels like maybe one of the few Australian albums that really talks about the music industry, and not in a romanticised way. You know, songs like Shoegazers and Great Australian Bite - I'm really having a conversation directly there to people who work in the music industry: to artists, to those who have gone before us… and, I dunno, I just think acknowledging that there has been struggle; that it's been a really hard country to grow up, as an artist, in - for anyone. Um, and even those like yourself who work in and around the music industry, it's tough, you know? Making a living in this really massive country with such a small population - just to hang in there and to keep doing it; to get up every day [laughs] and go, 'I'm gonna keep doing it. It's fucking hard to make a living, but I'm so passionate about it and I'm just gonna keep doing it'." 

Her band is rounded out by musicians she shares with other bands: partner Courtney Barnett on guitar, Bones Sloane (also in Barnett's band) on bass and Jen "Sholaki" Sholakis (also in East Brunswick All Girls Choir and Jade Imagine) on drums. As such, Cloher admits that "just finding the time for [her] music has been a bit of a struggle". Those lucky enough to catch Cloher and co performing as part of the Milk! Records residency that took over Coburg RSL recently would find it hard to believe that the band didn't rehearse much beforehand. "We’ve played together for a long time and we record a lot of our albums live," Cloher points out, "and so it doesn’t take too long to kind of get us in shape. But I’m excited about touring, because we’ll actually get to play a good sort of 16 or 17 shows in a row - so in Australia, then to Europe, then to England - which’ll be great for our band, ‘cause we’ve never really been able to do that. Because touring Australia - unless you’re a much bigger band, you can’t really play more than maybe seven or eight songs on a tour."

The bulk of Cloher's latest set was recorded at Jumbunna in South Gippsland, Victoria in "about eight or nine days". Greg Walker "helped produce and record" and Cloher enthuses, "He's a genius, I think, when it comes to sounds and ideas and arranging".

"It was so great, because it took us all out of our lives," Cloher recalls of this isolated recording experience. "We were able to go home at the end of the day and cook meals with our partners there and pets - Sholaki had her dogs… I wanted to include partners, because I'd gone through the experience of music kind of separating me and Courtney, and I know what it feels like to spend a lotta time away from your partner because of music." And Bones' and Sholaki's partners were even called upon to supply BVs. "They came in and sang on Strong Woman in the choir," Cloher confirms.  

On the second single to be lifted from her self-titled set, Cloher muses, "Regional Echo's really kind of, I guess, in a way the heart of the album; like, it's kind of talking about how maybe we don't dream big, or we don't think big. And I'm using the small town as a metaphor, you know. There's that kind of romantic aspect of being an Australian, so the flipside of that - the shadow side of it - is that maybe we never sort of see beyond our backyard a little bit."

Bones stars in this song's music video about which Cloher reveals, "The idea for the second clip, which was where Bones went back to Goulburn - that was actually something I thought up." Annelise Hickey, who directed the Forgot Myself clip, was also recruited to shoot Regional Echo and Cloher chuckles, "It's really funny, actually. I saw that [the Regional Echo clip] was on the Goulburn city council page or something like that, and all of these people from Goulburn have come to the Jen Cloher Facebook page and just left comments under the clip, going, 'Oh, my god! That's next to your dad's shop!' or, 'Oh, that's near your street!' Just Goulburn spotting, which is really sweet.

"It wouldn't be hard, I think, for people from other countries to see themselves in that clip as well," Cloher continues. "Maybe the landscape's different… but I think it's a really common experience all around the world, you know. I think the reason why we saw someone like Trump being voted into office is that there's all of these people that feel very kind of cut-off and ignored, and they're not living in the big cities, and they feel like they haven't had a voice for a long time. And I guess it's not kind of romanticising that, but I think it's also worthwhile understanding - I really had to try to understand how things like Brexit and Trump and Abbott happened. How did we get to a point where this happened? And a lot of the album was about me trying to make sense of a world that I'm not a part of and I don't live in.   

"You get out of the cities and you start to see the real Australia, the real America, the real UK - it's not what we know, you know? In our sort of left-leaning arts culture, inner-city living… I think, for all of us, it's really safe to stay in a set of beliefs that support our life, and our reality, and I guess I was trying to step outside of that understanding… and look a little into what it might be like to be someone else, you know? And I think it's really important to do that and to not just listen to left-leaning podcasts and not just read left media, like, just to get a fuller understanding of how people come to believe certain things - or decide to vote in a certain way… It's worthwhile, it keeps me from becoming too narrow-minded myself and I think it also helps me to really stand by what I believe in. You know, if I understand the other side and really go in depth into understanding how someone might think of immigration, for example, or how they might think about marriage equality from the other side; it gives me, I dunno, a more intelligent place to present my own argument or my own viewpoints."

For the music geeks among us, Cloher's self-titled album contains many nods and references to iconic artists and songs. Kinda Biblical includes a lyrical nod to Sonic Youth's Kool Thing and Cloher admits to being "a BIG fan of Sonic Youth". "[In Kool Thing] Kim Gordon says, basically, 'Are you gonna liberate us girls from white male capitalist culture?' - something along those lines. I probably haven't quoted that correctly, but that's the idea. And I felt like it really ties in with what was happening in America with this white male capitalist culture, which has taken over lots of the world."

A couple more lyrical nods to listen out for? "Dirty deeds done dirt cheap"; "Wide open road" and "watching the Dirty Three" - fun game, huh?

When we ask Cloher if we've missed any other sneaky references, she offers, "I do reference The Rolling Stones in Forgot Myself, where I say, "You're ridin' 'round the world, you're doin' this and you're signin' that," which is from [(I Can't Get No)] Satisfaction… I snuck in a John Lennon quote in Waiting In The Wings where I say, you know, 'I'm lost/Planning or remembering/I don't remember,' and, um, 'Plans are disappointments waiting in the wings/Life is what happens when you're making them' - you know, that great Lennon quote where he goes, 'Life is what happens when you're making plans,' or whatever - he's got this quote ["Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans"]. 

"I'm just trying to think if there's any others snuck in there. Oh, I also reference - it's not a reference from a song, but I reference Slim Dusty where I say, in Sensory Memory, 'I guess I'm never gonna be the Joy to your Slim Dusty'. So Joy Dusty was incredible, you know - I'm sure her last name wasn't Dusty, it was probably whatever his real name is, I can't remember [laughs] - but Joy, you know, basically went out on the road in a caravan with Slim and their kids, home schooled them in the caravan, wrote most of his songs - like, wrote at least half of the songs - managed him, was totally in there, you know, she really was the business of Slim Dusty... [In Sensory Memory] I'm just saying, 'I'm probably not gonna be that person that's out on the road with you living the touring life, because it's not for me, like, it's too hard," she laughs.

We discuss the importance of chasing your own dreams and Cloher opines, "You don't wanna give up your life and your identity… and, I mean, it's also that thing of, like, friends and community, and my home and our cat, and the garden that makes me happy and, you know, I guess I'm at a point in my life where I need those things. I mean, I'm 43, you know? I'm not a kid anymore. I'm sure had I been the same age as Courtney - and she's 30, or nearly 30 - when all of this stuff happened, maybe I would've been like, 'Let's do it!' you know? Like, 'I'll go out on the road and party on and just take each day as it comes,' but I'm just at a different place in my life. And to do that I think would've - well, I wouldn't have written another album and recorded another album, and the record probably wouldn't be what it is and all sorts of things wouldn't have happened so, yeah." 

After our interview concludes, we wander towards the counter to settle up. But Cloher makes a detour to what she laughingly refers to as "my office", making another cheeky reference to The Fonz.