Carla Geneve Had Her Guitars Stolen & She's Not Letting That Get Her Down

From humble beginnings, 20-year-old Carla Geneve suddenly stands on the cusp of widespread exposure, with a soon-to-be-released self-titled EP, followed by a tour of North America supporting San Cisco. But only a few years ago, the good citizens of Albany, WA, could have caught Geneve – not yet old enough to enter pubs, let alone play them – finding her voice on the streets as a busker. Glamorous, maybe not, but it certainly helped her develop as an artist.

“I guess it makes you a bit like, louder,” she muses. “Kids that busk probably have like better projection, because you have to be heard. Busking’s also good for learning how to cope with rejection as well – people just walking past. It’s not like people have come to see you. You just do your thing and put up with whatever happens.” 

Projecting is something Geneve does extremely well. Fronting up to a close to 1300 capacity crowd in support of Cat Power at the Perth Festival Gardens, she crackled with apparently nerveless energy. It’s slightly surprising then that over the phone she, fighting off the tail-end of a cold, sometimes seems a tad unsure of herself. It’s also somewhat of a surprise given her confidence performing songs loaded with autobiographical detail. 

“They’re all pretty personal,” she explains. “But I just think that personal references are something I love to hear in songs. Someone like Jen Cloher would drop a lot of stuff like that. Just makes you feel like you know them, that you were there. You feel like you know them at the end of the song.” 

The new, eponymous EP continues in that vein. As Geneve puts it, “It’s a collection of songs spanning a long time. Some of them I wrote quite a long time ago. I wanted the record to be sort of capturing what we’ve done live for the past two years. We’ve played so many gigs but haven’t really recorded that much. But I wanted it to sound really live and reflect the live show.” 

Naturally, she’s “hell excited” about her upcoming travels. “I’m heading to US with San Cisco for their US tour as a support. When I’m in New York I’ll do a headline thingo, just a tiny, little, really small show but it’s very exciting. I’m really keen.”

Following that she hopes to have more recorded music out by the end of the year. “I’m sort of writing a lot at the moment. Probably working on another release towards the end of the year, but I don’t know what it’s going to be yet,” she enthuses. “It’s going really good. I’m enjoying it. It’s fun to write with an end goal of an album or another EP in mind. Previously I’ve kind of just written songs, but I’m excited to put everything together into like a bit more of a narrative. Make it make sense as a whole. It’s interesting and a good challenge for me.” 

What sort of direction is this new material taking? “Maybe a bit more instrumentation. I don’t think I’ll go crazy. Generally go on the side of simplicity. When we hit the studio for the EP, it was very live and kind of just how we’d just do it on stage. So we decided to like, not delve too deeply into production, but we may spend a bit more time on it. Have a bit more depth maybe.”

It hasn’t been a bump-free ride though. Last month Geneve’s guitars were stolen from her home. “Probably won’t [get them back] I’m starting to realise,” she reflects. “But it’s alight. It’s not a good feeling, but you deal with it. I’m trying not to be too sentimental about the guitars. It’s easier that way. They are pretty personal, but I’m fine. I’ve got my insurance so I’m going to buy a new guitar this week before I head off to the States.”

So who’s guitar was she playing during her recent batch of shows? “I borrowed Donna [Simpson] from The Waifs guitar, which was like very cool. It was kind of like a blessing in disguise I got to play this guitar. I think that’s the best part about the Perth music scene. Because it’s so small and isolated, everyone’s so supportive.”