Link to our Facebook
Link to our Instagram
Link to our TikTok

A Messy Birth

16 October 2012 | 7:45 am | Dave Drayton

“It’s kind of like childbirth,” an expecting Lisa Mitchell tells Dave Drayton about album number two, Bless This Mess.

More Lisa Mitchell More Lisa Mitchell

"Not that I've given birth to a child,” Mitchell is quick to point out, “but that real incubation period, where it's growing and you're putting all this love. Then I kind of feel like we're nearing the birth now, all this last minute, 'Come on! Get out! I just want you to be gone and out and into the world!' I think there's a lot of similarities between actual birth and any kind of creative project, so it's definitely getting to that stage where it just feels like crunch time.”

There are plenty of songwriters who undergo a reawakening, a creative epiphany of sorts – perhaps a rebirth, as it were – that reignites the flame, or offers a new direction for their sound, or just reassures them that business of making music is the business they want to keep busy with. Oftentimes, though not always, there is a religious or spiritual discovery driving these revelations. The Beatles had their stint in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, our own Missy Higgins took some time there while re-evaluating her career as musician and attending Ben Lee's wedding (Lee too has noted the impact, spiritually and musically, that his meditative time abroad has had).

So, who's been inspiring Lisa Mitchell? She too was at the top of the game. This is, it should be noted, not to compare her achievements to that of The Beatles, but to her credit, the former Australian Idol contestant had a slew of hit singles under her belt, multiple ARIA nominations and an Australian Music Prize win for her debut album, Wonder, before taking a little time off, and, by her own admission, pondering what all this music stuff meant to her. “I just wanted to kind of regroup my life together, just after touring a lot and not feeling that real feeling of putting down a root since I started touring when I was 18, 19,” she explains. “So I just basically spent a lot of time in Melbourne making a nest.”

Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter

The answer: Eckhart Tolle, a German-born Canadian-based spiritual writer known for the best-selling books The Power Of Now and A New Earth; his teachings, inspired by his own spiritual awakening, shed light on finding happiness. You can hear the influence of his philosophy on Mitchell's new album, Bless This Mess, both in its instrumentation – grand and jubilant, a wonderful counter to that almost-fragile voice of hers (and yes, there is sitar to boot) – and the lyrics; most prevalent of all in The Present.

The Present, that's one of my favourite songs on the album. It was inspired by Eckhart Tolle, basically – I don't want to ramble, because I ramble ramble ramble,” Mitchell forewarns, and true to her word, she does, here, and elsewhere in the interview, bubbling and excitable, as eager to discuss Tolle's influence as she is the time spent recording the album at Stables Recording Studio, or her penchant for drawing: her doodles have graced the CD artwork of her earlier releases, and have again seen the spotlight with the handmade zines Mitchell began peddling around the release of the Spiritus EP, the precursor to this album.

“But,” she takes a breath, “he basically is a spiritual teacher and one of his main philosophies – well, he'd be a philosopher, really, as well – is that the present moment is the most powerful place to be, and that's where you're not thinking, you're not planning about the future, and you're not worrying or agonizing over the past. The song, The Present, is literally, 'We just want to be happy, happy in the present', and it's a mantra and a chant that is very influenced as well by an Indian style of singing, where they just repeat a mantra and I guess the power of repeating something, even like a thought, a positive thought, it starts to restructure your thought pattern, and it's so powerful. That was one of the influences of The Present, therefore it really felt like it had an Indian, kind of ancient Indian influence, so that's why we tried the sitar, so it's this little pocket of Indian philosophy,” Mitchell reveals.

Happiness seems to be central Bless This Mess, an album that, like Wonder before it (and once again with Dann Hume helming production, something that should not be overlooked given the indelible mark he has left on both recordings), showcases a Lisa Mitchell that rarely seems to grace stages; one that is bolder, grander, more ecstatic, and removed from the crippling but affable awkwardness that often colours live performances.

“One of the reasons why I chose that title… and I had that title for a long time!” Mitchell adds dramatically before teasing with another ramble, “I literally knew what the album was going to be called – this always happens to me, I already know the title of my new album, which I don't want to tell you because it's a secret – but, I remember it being like, 'Ah, Bless This Mess', there's a whole world of possibilities in that. And of course I later wrote the song Bless This Mess and that was quite fateful that that happened. 'Bless this mess' is obviously a really old, generic, household kind of term and the fact that so many people know it so well, I love that and I love playing with really generic phrases like that because there's so much extra meaning and so much… I think there's so much truth in that. I guess society, and what we're brought up with, we're meant to be so clean and ordered and that's the way to live your life. But really, nature is not like that, you know? There is a natural order of class, but we aren't wired to be really perfect. I always get so much joy, and so much understanding and patience with myself when I really embrace how messy I am and how not like society's beliefs I am – so I think there's a lot of freedom and a lot of power in embracing that.

 “A lot of the songs have that kind philosophy behind it,” says Mitchell, stopping for breath, and in a moment of reflection. “The chaos of life and how there's so much darkness and there's so much light and it's a constant war between the two. So I love talking about it, I feel like it's opened up this thing in myself where I can just talk to people for ages, and I love that, I find it really inspiring. It's that real truth, of acknowledging that we are not perfect beings, and that that is powerful as well, and there's great magic in that as well. It's really fun.”

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 Hotel, Perth WA

Wednesday 31 October - Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne VIC

Sunday 25 November - Queenscliff Music Festival, Queenscliff VIC

Saturday 29 December - Falls Festival, Lorne VIC

Friday 2 November - The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD

Saturday 3 November - Coolangatta Hotel, Coolangatta QLD

Sunday 4 November - Woombye Pub, Woombye QLD
Friday 4 - Saturday 5 January - Soutbound, Sir Stewart Bovell Park, Busselton WA