Parting Ways

Exhibiting a songwriting maturity far beyond that of her peers, Ainslie Wills' 2010 single Wide Load – a bluesy romp of complex vocal melodies – earmarked the Melbourne singer-songwriter as one to watch. With the release of her debut album, You Go Your Way, I'll Go Mine, this year Wills reveals how closely she worked with co-producer Lawrence Folvig in the writing process. Filled with fabulously innovative folk-rock arrangements that allow Wills to layer soulful and often complex harmonies on top, it's an impressive record that has benefited greatly from the shared approach.   

“We've been songwriting since about 2009 but we've known each other a lot longer, and I think that there's an immense amount of trust between us to be able to write songs the way that we have,” Wills tells of the pairing with Folvig. “Rhythms are Lawrence's sort of specialty. I very much write most of my songs either in 6/8 or 4/4 [timing]… We both studied jazz and did a lot of improvised music and stuff like that at college, but he's actually a lot more into rap music and hip hop and into making that type of music aside from what we do in the band together. Harmonically I feel like we both influence the songs in a way that it's not necessarily predictable.”

Wills has a vocal style one can get lost in; it's as much about the cadence of her lyrics as it is a sense of believable vulnerability. “I went to music school back in 2003 and I had a singing teacher there that was very much about trying to make sure that with the translation of the lyrics that you had in your head, once you were in recording mode you were trying to make that transition from you to the recording as transparent as possible so there was a feeling that when people were able to listen to the recorded music, that they were almost able to insert themselves into the characters that are outlined in the songs,” Wills recalls. “And there's other people like Jeff Buckley and those kind of artists that I look up to, the way in which they would emotionally connect to the songs and to the lyrics – I think that's something that I try and aspire to.”

With a very DIY approach to her first two EPs, it was a natural step for Wills and her band to forgo traditional studios for the album; recording strings in Northcote's Uniting Church, vocals in a converted studio that was previously the family home of Wills' best friend, and tracking in a beach house in Blairgowrie, the influence of space particularly interests Wills.

“It felt like a retreat, in a way,” Wills says of the ten days spent on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. “We were away from everybody; it was winter time, we could go in the breaks between recording sessions for walks along the beach and we all pitched in and helped cook the meals; it was a feeling of camping and being all together but the ultimate goal was to come out of those ten days and have the bare bones of each song recorded. We were really inspired by seeing Look At What The Light Did Now, that documentary by Feist. It was the making of The Reminder when she went to that French chateaux and it was so nice to see how the space influenced that recording and I think that not having the pressure of a conventional studio environment influenced how we recorded in a really positive way… It yields a very different result.”

Ainslie Wills will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 11 May - Railway Friendly, Byron Bay NSW
Sunday 12 May - Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane QLD