No Tough Songs

You always follow through with your dangerous pursuits/With open arms I always say to you/I say I want you to feel like a man/I need you to feel like a man,” sings Sally Seltmann in her new track Billy – the lead number on her latest album Hey Daydreamer. The video features a glamorous-yet-housebound woman (Seltmann) in various stages of dress, meandering through the rooms of a large house (in Sydney suburb Bankstown, no less), lamenting a love lost. It's a creepy kind of series of scenes; there are even weird fairies (also Seltmanns) dancing in the garden – it's more than just a wee bit Lynchian Gothic.

“I just wanted to have a song where I was being like a character, so I'm this woman who's singing about Billy,” says Seltmann of the single. “I wanted the song... It's kind of basically talking about relationships and how much freedom to give your partner in order to keep your relationship alive. She gives her partner Billy freedom to be dangerous, 'cause that's what he desires, but that kills him. But at least she loved him so much that she gave him that freedom. So that's kind of the whole story behind the song.”

As a taste of the new record, Billy sets the scene. On Hey Daydreamer Seltmann has set out to “create a collection of songs that express the full spectrum of human emotion” – no mean feat, one would think, and not your average method for constructing a pop record. It's an approach that most would shrink from; it's overwhelming in its scope. But Seltmann says the 'concept' of the album stemmed more from the songs as they amassed themselves, rather than any grandiose design.

“Usually the way I work for my own albums is that it's all just emotion and, I don't know, the songs that I want to put on my own albums are songs that I am really feeling and relating to at the time,” she says. “I just felt like all of those sorts of songs were just coming out of me. I'd come straight off doing all the touring and stuff with Seeker Lover Keeper and I was feeling like I'd been working so much and I was really exhausted and I felt like my album Heart That's Pounding felt kinda like my big pop album. I kinda just thought I wanted to make an album that was more like stressing all of the different things that we should feel...

I just sat down at the piano and the songs just came out. So it was like, 'Well, this is the body of work that I have'. That felt like a good way for me to work – sort of like not really overthinking everything.”

Listening to Seltmann's music now, it's odd to think that her early musical output came in the form of a four-piece rock outfit called Lustre 4 (“like a two girls and two guys guitary kind of punk band with harmonies”). She formed the group with friend Lara Meyerratken, with whom she shared the writing duties, and they played the Sydney bar circuit before Seltmann moved to Melbourne. It was in Melbourne that she started playing and recording under the moniker New Buffalo. “I thought that it suited me more at the time to play under a different name,” she says of the decision to steer clear of using her own name at the time. “I was kind of naming the music, and I just felt more comfortable doing that back then.”

In 2007 the New Buffalo album Somewhere, Anywhere was nominated for the ARIA for Best Adult Contemporary Album and earned Seltmann the first of two Australian Music Prize nominations. 2010's Heart That's Pounding saw the beginning of the Sally Seltmann-titled material (interestingly Seltmann's her married name, but you've got to admit it has a pretty nice ring to it), and it scored the songwriter her second AMP finals spot.

Throughout her life as a musician, and under her various guises, Seltmann has played a large hand in the production of her recorded music. As with her approach to songwriting, Seltmann relates that it's a practice born out of pragmatism rather than any deeper design. Being in control of the production, she says, simply allows her to carve the songs as she envisages them.

“The main reason why I kind of got into [production] was 'cause Darren [of The Avalanches fame], my husband, really encouraged me to record and produce my first New Buffalo album [The Last Beautiful Day] by myself... I kind of was a bit afraid to do it at first, but after I did it and spent all the hours learning how to use Pro Tools and everything it just felt really empowering to be able to program tracks and record everything on my own... You can have ideas going around in your head and you can actually lay the ideas down on your own, so it makes you feel independent and strong.”

There are elements of Hey Daydreamer that reveal an ever so slightly harder edge to Seltmann's craft. The cover artwork itself is suggestive of an introspective experience – Seltmann stands among an acid-tinged landscape, tangled brush behind her and a path running off into the bush. The cover dares the listener to indulge in something bold; it entices investigation. Seltmann says she knew the artwork had to be very Australian in look – a kind of sly wink at her recent move to LA. “I kind of call it 'psychedelic Australiana' – the look of the cover,” she laughs.

The album bio describes the song I Will Not Wear Your Wedding Ring as “a dark fairytale for grown-ups”, occupying the gloomier end of the human emotional spectrum. “I felt like I have no kind of tough songs,” Seltmann laughs, by way of explanation. “I just wanted to write a song that was a bit darker and a bit tougher... I really like how we got it sounding really primal – how percussive it is – it's got that kind of feel to it.”

On Hey Daydreamer, Seltmann shared production duties with Darren, something they hadn't done before (though in 2001 Darren produced the first New Buffalo EP About Last Night in a solo capacity). “That was him being fully in control of all of the production whereas this one we kind of shared that role so it felt new and made the whole experience seem really kind of personal, which felt like it really suited the songs,” she says of the approach. It makes sense, given the depth and personal nature of the material, that she'd not be bringing too many outsiders in to the process. And what better person to turn to than your musically accomplished husband for the role. “[Hey Daydreamer] felt good; all of his ideas that he had for it I just really loved, so it felt really great working together and I really love all of the things he brought to the songs,” she says.

Of late, Seltmann has been no stranger to musical collaborations of the songwriting sort. A co-writer of Feist's Grammy-nominated hit 1234, and member of acclaimed 'supergroup' Seeker Lover Keeper (alongside noted songwriters Sarah Blasko and Holly Throsby), Seltmann says she finds inspiration in working with other writers. And although she has remained an independent force in her solo stuff, the act of collaboration is something she immensely enjoys. “Both of those [collaborations] were natural and felt easy to do,” she says of working with Blasko and Throsby, as well as Feist. “I just think that, y'know, writing songs for a while and recording your own music it just feels natural to me to branch out and try other things so that's kind of the path I've taken... You always learn something from anyone you ever work with, even if you learn that you know you never want to do something like that again, you'll always come away with something. [It's] very important for creative people to constantly be having sparks that go off in their brain that makes them think things and then create something with those thoughts.”