Pretty Badass

"Well, there was a plank of wood beside the house because I live underneath an art gallery, so we put that over the bathtub, and put my couch cushions over it. It looks great but it is terrible.” That's how the 21-year-old Queenslander – whose 2011 single, Jungle, and subsequent debut album, Vs Head Vs Heart, catapulted her from teenager to international artist – describes her current sleeping arrangement.

It's taken a few attempts to connect with Emma Louise, the first conversation halted by reception on her way to play a flower festival in Toowoomba. “Lots of flowers and lots of sneezing” is the summary, and when we finally reconnect she's pretty tired from a few days of having both a cold and some house guests – the reason for her temporary move to the bathroom. “I've got a few more interviews. Then I'm having a nap because Mum and Dad have been sleeping in my bed.” Louise describes her parents as “very supportive”, but her path is a big step away from what was expected. “You know, I wouldn't say I'm a black sheep in my family but I'm definitely a multi-coloured animal in my family. Because nobody plays music, so this whole thing is so foreign to them.”

The singer could probably justify a nap of a few years, having packed in a career's worth of achievements since 2011, including signings to labels Frenchkiss and Vertigo, five overseas tours with growing followings in the US and Europe, and a few little extras like sharing the stage with her teenage idols, a swathe of QMAs and a gold independent EP just to name a few. It's hard to imagine the singer sleeping for too long though; there's just too much to do, and she's ready to do it. Being soft-spoken, uber-pretty and getting radio-play at an early stage, famously without having listened to much music outside the Australian singer-songwriter pop of Missy Higgins, Josh Pyke and Lior, Louise is often described as “delicate” and “sweet”, but her choices so far are closer to warranting the titles 'unconventional', 'entrepreneurial' and 'pretty badass'. There are the stories of her getting fired as a hair model for shaving her head, a spontaneous post-brownie Byron Bay tattoo, seeing a picture of someone with a mullet in an airplane magazine and having one done that night at 10pm to the amusement of her bandmates. “I'm definitely not wild,” Louise laughs. “I'm not a party animal or anything like that. I guess I can be... I don't want to say the word impulsive but... I sometimes do things that are a little bit random, I guess. I used to always do things when I was little like buy animals without my parents knowing and paint my bathroom without my parents knowing. You know, doing little weird things. I did it [bringing home pets] a few times... It was a duck, a chicken, and mice. I got a few mice.”

The surprise menagerie seldom lasted long – “I kept the chicken in my room for a few days” – but the other “weird little things” Louise was doing from an early age – like gradually giving up on schoolwork to practise songwriting and teach herself to play guitar – endured and eventually turned into golden geese. The story goes that she was picked up by manager Rick Chazan as a 15-year-old, but her independence and entrepreneurial spirit were already at work. Uploading songs to YouTube while still in high school, she'd layer harmonies over the basic laptop-cam productions. Busking in the malls she'd make a mini-killing selling burnt CDs of her music as well as collecting loose change from shoppers. “You know, you're gonna be a star, you know exactly who you are,” Louise sings in one of her early YouTube clips, and it seems it was both prophetic and inevitable, given her talent, work ethic and nonchalant confidence. Only a few years on, performing an Alt-J cover on triple j's Like A Version, riding a Kaos pad with gloved hands and confidently rocking a monochrome floral suit, the progression is impressive, but so is the continuity of spirit that took the singer from surprise childhood bathroom renovator to successful artist.

A follow-up album is mostly written, despite Louise's epic touring schedule, but she's waiting to commit to a recording process for her next offering. “I'm inspired by empty big space; being alone. If there's a guitar amp and my guitar and an empty room, that's just so inspiring. I've got songs for the album now but I haven't given [recording] much thought yet. I'm just doing the tour and keeping it all open-ended.”