Phia Breaks Down Every Track On Her Self Titled Album

The Path
This song was written in a moment of pure frustration, a heightened emotion moment, kind of like when you stamp your foot as a child. 

I wrote the riff originally on the piano before moving it to the kalimba and loops. Once I had that arrangement I invited Josh into play who creates an expansive landscape with his guitar sounds. Arranging the choir parts was the final piece of the puzzle and when I heard them sing the opening 3 notes I knew it was the sound I wanted to open the album!

Turning Around
I wrote the first verse to this song when I was living in Berlin, but then didn’t know what to do with it so it just sat in a note on my phone for a few years. I found it in the midst of writing for this album and kind of had to read into it what it was about - it’s about me grappling with being distracted by my phone, wanting to look ahead into the future but being hit with images from the past and other people through social media. I came up with the basic kalimba loop arrangement and then Josh added in the awesome afrobeat style guitar lines.

Full Circle
The opening line to this song was written as I was riding my bike home from a party, where there was a lot of talk about an upcoming wedding and I felt a bit alienated. It was grounding to put my thoughts into this song, trying to articulate complex feelings about identity, wanting to be a parent, scared of losing my independence. I started thinking about how we carry our inner child’s voice around with us. I love the joyous vibe that the choir adds to the track. Perfect hand clap indie-pop! Of course since recording the album, I now have an 18 month old son, so it adds an extra resonance when I hear it now!

Fitzroy
I was trying to capture a feeling I had in the early years of moving back to Melbourne from Berlin, thinking about family and distance.

Wash Me In The Ocean
I wrote this song about Point Roadnight beach and recorded it at producer Nick Huggin’s studio in Point Lonsdale, so I feel like the whole song has the smell of the sea breeze about it. One of the things I missed most about Australia when living in Europe was the ocean. The release, the freedom, the wildness. This song is about that and about the renewal and change of coming back home:

Someone Out There ft Xavia
This album is me getting honest with myself, for better or worse. Once I gave myself permission to say the things that I found the most scary, the songs started to flow. This was one of the very first, written in the heat of the feelings. Once we’d recorded the kalimba and vocals, I sent it to Xavia, a cellist and looping artist from Alice Springs who I’d met on tour a few years ago. She added her parts remotely and I love what she brings to it. 

All My Friends
One of the reasons I love working with the producer and engineer of the album Nick Huggins is he is a thoughtful and empathic deep listener. He was the first person I showed a lot of these lyrics and he listened without judgement which was a real gift. The trust I felt in Nick helped me feel proud of the really vulnerable moments in the songs. 

It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better
This song came from looking at a map of the stars and thinking about the early navigators using only the night sky to find their way. And thinking about how sometimes things are painful because they’re changing, growing, not because something is “wrong”. Writing the choir parts for this was such fun, and writing in little changes and Beatles-style answering lines in the lyrics.

Coffee After 3
A song that came out of the little things I noticed when moving back to Melbourne. I delved pretty deeply into some 90s/00s girl group references for the layering of my vocal harmonies (All Saints!) and then Josh came on board and pushed that reference even further with the 90s r&b guitar licks (I hear Aaliyah!). The song is about memory and nostalgia too, the musical references feel apt.

Cool Change
A song I wrote back before I moved to Berlin, but I was anticipating change. It felt right to put this on the album.

Radio Waves
This is bookended with one of the most recent songs I wrote for the album. A song about miscommunication, frustration, empathy. I looped the opening line like a mantra, trying to understand it by saying it over and over again. The outro gets pretty massive and I've never really had a moment like that on an album before, it's really fun to play live. My kalimba through a trippy delay pedal, Josh's epic guitar soundscapes and the choir's "ahs" are like warring voices, pleading to be heard. It felt like a perfect closer.