First Flight

"I was a fan of his work with the Sarah Blasko stuff,” Sydney singer-songwriter Katie Whyte explains of her meeting with multi-instrumentalist Robert F Cranny, “and I saw that he was doing a solo show at the Excelsior in Surry Hills and I just went down and asked to buy him a beer and I guess it went from there.”

Cranny cowrote and coproduced Blasko's first two albums, but has also recorded and performed with Ben Salter, 78 Saab and Gersey among others, and produced tracks for Salter and Abby Dobson, so he's got a few credits under his belt. Whyte on the other hand is still very much a novice, having only begun performing with a band, The Pales, in the last year.

“I probably started writing songs about ten years ago. After high school I was really interested in music but I chose to do some tertiary education and so I studied music at uni – that was really interesting. I think I've just been in love with pop songs for a very long time, so it's nice that I'm able to pursue that on some level,” she chuckles. “Lots of my friends are in bands and have the same lifestyle, so it's really nice that we can share that. It's been interesting taking it from the bedroom to where people can watch you,” Whyte laughs again.

The first “great leap forward” in the process of course was meeting Cranny and finding that they could write comfortably together.

“I really enjoy the co-writing,” she says. “It's quite a challenge but it's quite an exciting process. I find sometimes you can get a little stuck when you're writing by yourself, but if you're writing with a second person, they can help you to continue if you do get stuck at any point. I'll usually bring something to a session but it's very much both of us thinking about the melody and the lyrics. Rob's much better at arranging than I am.

“I think my songwriting was quite different before Robert came along. I think I overcomplicated chords and melodies, so with Rob I was, for example, able to simplify choruses, and I think that's very important if you want to work with pop songs. Pop songs are pretty tricky as well,” Whyte giggles. “Even now I still tend to overcomplicate things and need to simplify.”

Though the pair have been working together for a few years now, it was only last year they finally felt they had a group of songs that worked well enough together to justify going into former-Oils current-Break guitarist Jim Moginie's studio on Sydney's northern beaches to record a debut album, Where The Ocean Starts.

“We were working to a certain sound,” Whyte explains, regarding the prominent place the drumkit takes in the mix, a sound Cranny particularly favours. “Various songs that we were doing, they were very different from each other, and I think with these songs you can still tell that they are different from each other but cohesive as a group.”

The five songs that make up the EP – and inner city denizens will particularly appreciate the last track, Low Flying Planes – according to Whyte, “really stood out, which is good because it made it a very easy process, what songs we should choose, due to their strengths.”

And if you listen closely to the lyrics of the EP's second track, Strong Glowing Lights, you'll get an idea of Whyte's feelings as a performer in these early stages of what is hoped will be a long and creative career. “That song is about being nervous about performing, to be honest,” she laughs. “Yeah, so that's an interesting one.”

Katie Whyte will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 10 January - The Standard, Darlinghurst NSW