The Different Kinds Of Love & Taking Inspiration From Hitchcock

18 May 2018 | 10:20 am | Liz Giuffre

"I wonder sometimes if that kind of love is even possible with other people, especially with a lover relationship."

Unlike her work with Warpaint, singer/guitarist Theresa Wayman's debut solo record - released under the name TT - is rarely anchored in guitar. Built instead on synths and strong, engaging lyrics, LoveLaws is completely catchy and beguiling.

A big theme that runs through the album is love; romantic love, yes, but more often the kind that moves beyond this such as love in friendships and the type of love that Wayman feels for and receives from her young son. Chatting with The Music from a hotel, Wayman has a lot to say about the topic, sharing that LoveLaws track The Dream, in particular, is "about this unconditional love fantasy between people".

"And it doesn't have to be a romantic relationship," shares Wayman. "It's just like, 'Why can't we just take the high road with each other and be there for each other?' Because everybody has low moments and we need people to not just react to them or take things personally, but to see if someone is struggling [and] to help. Because you know that in the next moment you could be the one who's had a shitty morning and you react to something in a bad way and you're like, 'Why am I doing that? Why am I taking out a bad feeling on the person that I love?'

"My son is kind of like that, he loves me so unconditionally and I love him so unconditionally that we have that relationship that we can be there for each other in hard moments. I wonder sometimes if that kind of love is even possible with other people, especially with a lover relationship. He can be open and vulnerable and tell me that he loves me a 100 times a day, and he does, he says, 'I love you,' all the time, but you know how sometimes people in romantic relationships play these games with each other and if someone were to be that easy to catch with their feelings then there's something that's undesirable about them? It's one of those weird things that humans go through that don't necessarily make sense."

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One of Wayman's key goals for this first solo endeavour was to explore not just broader themes, but also soundscapes. The outcome is sonically diverse and gorgeous, layered in surprising ways.

While tracks like Sassafras Interlude and Too Sweet offer relatively straightforward (but still extremely satisfying) listening, hang in there for strange gems like Safe. Inspired by Wayman's love of Hitchcock films and her interest in "the Old Hollywood aesthetic", this track is actually built around a moment in Rear Window.

"There's this scene that starts with Jimmy Stewart looking out the window," says Wayman, "and the camera pans across and you see the opera singer doing her warm-ups, and you see the lady across the way just doing things in her kitchen and dancing around, and then it comes to him and Grace Kelly walks in, and they have this fun little dialogue, and it's really up close and intimate.

"I recorded the clip [from the film] as a sample, so it was setting it up, setting the scene, you know, and I did kind of love that it put [my song] into a place, into a context of someone's room in a way... But I wasn't allowed to actually use the clip because it would have cost, like, $30,000 to clear that sample.

"It's ridiculous, and I actually think it's kind of funny," Wayman says, with completely understandable disbelief. "I think people absolutely should not use other people's art for free, but I'm not Kanye West or Beyonce - I don't have that kind of money and I'm not even going to make that kind of money off of this album. But you don't have anybody with a sense of what art is [looking after samples], you have people who, for the most part, are just accountants that are monitoring the estate of these people. 

"I would have had to clear it with Jimmy Stewart's estate, Grace Kelly's estate, the opera singer and Alfred Hitchcock and Paramount - so crazy. So we re-recorded. I did it with my friend, they're really cool lines, and we left the opera singer in there because she's doing scales. So we hired an opera singer to do scales and then we recreated the soundscape. Then I had to reverse the dialogue and so now it's just, like, mumbo jumbo, but it still has the feelings and sets a scene."