Hideaway Songs

Over the course of two EPs and two albums, Amaya Laucirica has beguiled audiences with a delicately unique blend of country, folk, rock and pop, landing a coveted triple j feature album for 2010’s Early Summer, and a host of supports with the likes of Blonde Redhead, Mark Lanegan and Adalita along the way. With her third long-player, Sway, a dreamier aesthetic has crept into her sound, thanks to a new songwriting approach.

“When I started writing for the album it was very similar to Early Summer and I decided to take a break and revaluate and try and get into the right headspace, which took a bit of time,” explains Laucirica. “I started being interested in writing a rhythm track first and building a song on top of that, which was quite a different approach to writing; I usually just write melody first and then build a song on top of that. That put the album in its own different space. I also got inspired doing that and writing on a new instrument; I got this old analogue synth and I started to write a lot of songs on that, so the combination of writing rhythm tracks and creating these drum machine tracks on a little iPad app called DM1 and then demoing songs from there, it just created this whole new world for me to write songs in.

“I found it really inspiring, and half the album was written from writing sessions working in that format, and the other half of the album is kind of writing in a more conventional, traditional way. It felt like there was two different parts to the songwriting approach but when we recorded it, it felt very unified. It took a long time but I feel happy with the result. I felt very satisfied once we recorded the album – more satisfied than I’ve ever been – so I feel like it was a good evolution from the second album.”

An important part of the writing process that didn’t change on Sway was Laucirica’s need to be removed from the distraction of daily life.

“Cape Liptrap is a place where we’ve been working on songs for years, since the first album,” she says of her South Gippsland retreat. “I just kind of stumbled across this place that was for rent and it seemed perfect for a band to work in because it’s on land and there’s no neighbours and you can be as noisy as you like, and it’s surrounded by bushland. It’s a very inspiring place because you’re totally isolated from the rest of the world and we always seem to have written a lot of songs there as well as working on songs.

“I try to find isolated places to write. I like to be in a place where I don’t feel like I can be intruded upon while writing, so I find it really nice to be in a rural country area. Songs can be reflective of where you are. And there is a kind of spaciousness in the songs of Sway.”