STELLA DEBUT

When considering the importance of making first times memorable, Inpress is sure to be delicate when deflowering Melbourne songstress Stella Angelico. Getting her through her first “proper interview” is an easy task, however, as she speaks openly about her wildly artistic family home, music as catharsis and, of course, her upcoming EP launch.

As the daughter of cult cabaret performer Peaches La Crème and international magician Sam Angelico, the childhood Angelico reminisces about is one that has taken her years to acknowledge as unconventional, but it was an upbringing that continues unwaveringly to play a role in her music making.

“It was a household where people expressed their emotions very freely, which was really great and quite exhausting at times,” Angelico says. “One of my earliest memories of my father was seeing him put on his makeup in front of the mirror, and putting wax in the ends of his curly moustache. I thought it was just really normal to watch your dad apply his makeup. I also remember curling up and falling asleep in my mum's furs, which would be under the grand piano, while she played at weddings and gigs, and our father painting socks on us when we'd lost them. It's only really now I think that's so interesting.”

Upon finishing school, Angelico successfully thickened the plot of her life story, and studied to become a Baptist minister. “As a little girl I used to light candles and pray the rosary every night; I was really religious. I wonder now if perhaps the appeal of solid, religious faith was an attempt at some sort of structure and framework in a family that was quite chaotic and very boundary-less. But I think what really appealed to me in religion was the sensuality of it. It was the music and the expression and making sense of my emotional landscape. And it did get to a point where the dogma of it all limited that.”

The hat-trick of influential events, however, came with the death of her mother in 2010; it was an event that played into Angelico's songs very literally. “That was a really powerful experience. At that time I was working in a Catholic boys' school and going a little bit mental, and I wrote a song on the EP called Crying In The Car… then when my mum died everything came to a climax. I felt this compulsion to sing and perform, which I hadn't done in a long time, and I realised my mum couldn't do that any more so I needed to carry that on.”

Angelico's return to the stage, however, was somewhat more spontaneous. “I was having dinner at Rice Queen [restaurant on Smith Street, Fitzroy] one night and looking at their beautiful stage, and I asked them if I could sing there – it was a really impulsive thing. Then I realised I didn't have a band…”

It was then that Angelico got talking to in-laws Dan and Ben Sullivan (now known as The Switch) and they agreed to play together. “So we crammed and compiled enough fun, kitsch dinner music for two sets, and that's how it all started. It began as a one-month residency, but it went so well we ended up there for about 18 months and I think that's where I really found my singing and performing feet.”

Sadly unable to continue entertaining diners given her obligations to the trio's debut EP (not to mention her weekly go-go dancing performances), Angelico speaks enthusiastically about the upcoming launch: “I've done some drawings and [have] been mapping the emotional journey I want to take – I feel excited!”