This Mess We're In

Lisa Mitchell is inspired. By everything. Music, film, books, art, the universe, infinity, even vegetables. She wants to discuss it too. In fact, we're about halfway through our allotted fifteen minutes before the realisation hits that she's still answering the first question. It's an endearing and somewhat unexpected trait, especially as the perception of Mitchell is more left of centre girl next door than words per minute land speed record contender. She's not just wasting air though and she certainly has something to talk about in her second record - the cosily titled Bless This Mess. Coming three years after the breakthrough success of her debut Wonder - a record that took her from Idol also ran to Australian Music Prize winning folk pop princess - Bless This Mess is another triumph for Mitchell's increasingly recognisable brand of wide eyed, pastel tinged pop. For the majority of the record Mitchell sounds downright thrilled just to be a full time occupant of our little patch of the solar system, and in explaining the songs that fill it she's no less effusive.

As a record, Bless This Mess sounds so much like a carefree labour of love that's it's hard to believe any level of stress or anxiety could have gone into its genesis. For Mitchell though, spending years on the road on the hard sell for Wonder had steeled her so resolutely to the touring cycle that on return to her home town of Melbourne she found it hard to re-engage with what brought her there in the first place. “With my first record I was so delighted that it did quite well and that a lot of people connected with it, which is so cool,” she explains, her tiny frame giving everything it has into the emphasis of the word 'cool'. “But I guess also knowing that there was an audience psychologically changed how I felt about writing and how I felt when I looked at a guitar - which was pretty heartbreaking because songwriting is my outlet, it's how I digest the world. I found it really confronting feeling like that had been taken away from me. There was a real expectation for everything to be really good and I think if there's one way to cripple someone it's to tell them 'if you have to write something it has to be amazing'.”

To combat what sounds like something of a writers block/existential crisis cocktail (don't drive after a few of those bad boys - or try to write a follow up to a platinum selling debut) Mitchell initially tried a bit of old fashioned stubbornness. As she'd only spent roughly one of the last four years at home, she found solace in simple everyday things like frequenting a local cafe, or starting her own vegetable garden. Eventually though, just as the sheer weight of expectation began to get the better of her, she stumbled upon a choice piece of literature. “I read this book called The Artists Way [by Julia Cameron] which is an incredible, amazing and real book about the creative process,” she explains. ”For anyone - for journalists, for writers, for tap dancers, for chefs. For anyone that's doing anything creative it just explains this beautiful idea that we are not the ones doing the art. The art is the universe and we are just soaking it all up like a little sponge and letting it all out again. I just found that such a beautiful, liberating weight off my shoulders. It was like, 'Oh my God it's not about anything else other than listening to the universe and when you feel full, just letting it out'.”

When that time came then, and Mitchell felt that she was finally full and ready to release her ideas into the stratosphere, she turned to the one man she trusted in the producers chair. Dating right back to her early EP's Mitchell has always worked with Evermore's Dan Hume, who acts as something of a personal sounding board as well as a general soothsayer and creative partner. The temptation to go overseas or even to a bigger name locally must have been present but there seems to be an element of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' at play here. The partnership worked a treat on Wonder, so there was no need to head in any other direction. “Dan and I work so well together. It's just so comfortable but we also really push each other,” Mitchell enthuses. “We both put so many ideas in - then just go through them all to sort them out. I think a big thing about us working so well together is that our influences cross over a little bit. His oldest influences are The Beatles and Bob Dylan, and mine are more Cat Stevens and folkier Dylan stuff. I love The Beatles but I don't really know that much about them. I think you can feel all of those old influences on this record - you can feel the Neil Young guitar lines on a song like The Present and there are a few Beach Boys moments on there -  a bit like (starts singing an unknowable Beach Boys song) 'la laaa'. I reckon it must happen to everyone (note: Mitchell changed her train of thought fairly abruptly here – an apparent habit), like if you're a writer you might remember old books and you keep echoing them as you get older. I just think that when you're at that young age… I don't know… I guess when you get older you still remember certain atmosphere's and sounds and feelings from when you were younger. It's amazing how that happens.”

So here she is – Lisa Mitchell. A little bit star crossed, endearingly absent minded, extremely talented, equally passionate and totally in love with the idea that she gets to be the kind of singer we all want her to be. Her latest single, the title track to Bless This Mess, is a pretty good example of these traits. If ever an artist were to have a theme song – this would be Mitchell's. An altogether more muscular effort than her previous singles, there's a lot of Springsteen swagger in the way the chorus takes off as the syncopated (and stadium sized) drums put weight behind Mitchell's declaration that “there's nothing like infinity baby”. It seems like this idea of infinity is something that's been running tracks through her head for a while, waiting to get out, and Bless This Mess has given her a centimetre perfect easel. “That song just called for that energy - it called for something epic you know? For everyone to be bashing the drums and thrashing away at the piano and all that kind of stuff,” she says, gathering speed and enthusiasm as she goes. “It's just so full blown and it just opens up your chest and, I don't know, makes you think that this is real. I'm alive and isn't it crazy and so messy how everything's changing all the time but... oh my God isn't it beautiful – isn't infinity beautiful? Isn't it all just so scarily fucking beautiful?”

Lisa Mitchell will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 18 October – Bar on the Hill, Newcastle NSW
Friday 19 October – Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW
Saturday 20 October – Uni Bar, Wollongong NSW
Friday 26 October – Astor Theatre, Perth WA
Saturday 27 October – Prince Of Wales, Bunbury WA
Sunday 28 October – HQ, Adelaide SA
Wednesday 31 October – Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Friday 2 November – The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 3 November – Coolangatta Hotel, Coolangatta QLD
Sunday 4 November – Woombye Pub, Woombye QLD
Monday 5 November – Byron Bay Community Centre, Byron Bay NSW