Jess McAvoy's Struggles As An Acoustic Artist

Back in Melbourne after a two-year stint in Toronto – a city she admits was a “place of healing” for her, though it “thinks it’s bigger than it is” – Jess McAvoy has got a string of shows booked this month; some in her usual mould as a solo artist, but one which explores a whole new musical style and personal side. Heroine is a fresh venture for the 34-year-old, and it’s a platform she’s wanted to sing out from for a while now.

“I’ve been an acoustic singer-songwriter for 20 years, and it just got to a point where trying to pull people into a room to listen to introspective chick music is really challenging,” she admits. “I’ve been really blessed and fortunate with my audience over the years, but once you get to a certain point where people see you do it once or twice, it’s like, ‘Well, I don’t really want to sit there and think about stuff.’ People want to go into a room and have an experience they’re going to be guaranteed to enjoy, and if you’re rocking out or doing something that makes people want to move, it seems to be easier to entice people in to try something new.”

The Quickening – the debut track doing the rounds from Heroine – is a co-write with Karnivool guitarist Drew Goddard, an old friend of McAvoy’s from her hometown of Perth. “I’ve been writing these tracks for years, just to see if it was something I could do. And when it turned out I’m actually not shit at it I threw it at Drew and [asked him] if he wanted to [contribute], so we wrote that song over Christmas.”

“I’ve been writing these tracks for years, just to see if it was something I could do."

Indeed, a menacing Karnivool-styled bottom-end can be heard on The Quickening, while another bit of crossover contact – producer Forrester Savell – helped McAvoy pull musicians together for Heroine, with the band set to debut at the Evelyn as a spirited seven-piece unit in amongst McAvoy’s month-long solo residency at Retreat Hotel.

“There hasn’t really been an example like [this] for a really long time,” McAvoy admits of Heroine. “There really hasn’t been something heavy that’s trying to hit the pop markets since the Divinyls, and that was the ‘80s. I chose singer-songwriter music when I was 14 and that became ingrained in me. But it really took me almost quitting [music] to realise that there were other things that I could explore.”

And since McAvoy has dug into this rockier realm, she admits to having a better perspective as a songwriter. “Now I just write a song if it feels good,” she smiles. “It can go over here, it can go over there, or maybe it doesn’t have to go anywhere? I don’t have that anxiety of, ‘Who Am I?’ and ‘How am I going to define myself?’ People aren’t expecting anything, I’m expecting things. So the more I broaden my [scope], the less pressure I put on myself, because fuck, no one knows who they are.”