Sahara BeckRising singer-songwriter Sahara Beck wrote and recorded her debut album Volume One (2011) while just fourteen and living on the Sunshine Coast. Now, a full five years later, she has two further EPs and years of musical experience under her belt, and the Brisbane-based artist feels that she's finally finding her voice on long-awaited second album Panacea.
"It's the first project where I've really had 100% say in it without being influenced too much by everyone else's opinions — it's exactly how I wanted it," Beck offers. "All of the songs are more personal to me, and I spent more time in pre-production because I've learnt that if I don't go into the recording studio knowing exactly what I want, then everyone else is going to have more space to splatter their opinions all over the song. Which is fine — and all of the other songs turned out great as well — but with this one I thought that it's time for me to step up and be, like, 'No, this is how I want it.'"
"I've learnt that if I don't go into the recording studio knowing exactly what I want, then everyone else is going to have more space to splatter their opinions all over the song."
Panacea covers a lot of musical terrain — everything from jazz to soul to rock and pop — and Beck explains that it's all about following her eclectic muse.
"I've never really been good at sticking to one genre because I get bored," she laughs. "I write all the time and I get inspired by a lot of different things, and I feel like when I'm writing I don't really stop and go, 'Oh no, that's weird, that doesn't fit in with what we usually do', it's more like, 'This is where I'm going right now, I need to go with it'. I feel that it's not really up to you to decide where an idea takes you, you have to trust that the idea has come to you for a reason because you're going to be able to hear it the way it needs to be heard and present it in the way that it needs to be presented."
Accordingly, a lot of Panacea's lyrics are exceedingly personal.
"With my old songs I'd always watch what my friends were doing and make up stories in my head and write about that, but the last few years have been pretty eventful so these songs are all about stuff that's been going on in my mind and stuff that I've experienced," Beck reflects. "That's why I called the album Panacea, because 'panacea' means the solution to all problems — the remedy or the cure — and to me the solution to a problem is sitting down and hearing out the whole thing and thinking about it properly.
"For me, dealing with all of these things was writing out these songs, so what connects them all for me is that they're a different part of my life that I've found a way to deal with or understand, so hopefully other people can sit down and listen to the music and get that same feeling if they've gone through any of these emotions or experiences."
