On Laying Her Cards On The Table With New Album

It seems like a cliche to say, but the last few years have been a whirlwind for Vera Blue aka Celia Pavey. Since the inception of her Vera Blue project, Pavey has worked with the likes of Illy on his track Papercuts, spent time working overseas and is now on the cusp of releasing Perennial, the debut album under her new moniker.

At just 23, Pavey has come a long way from her hometown of Forbes in the central west of New South Wales, and she's come even further from being known as the girl who sang Scarborough Fair on the The Voice Australia back in 2013. At the suggestion that Pavey changed her name to buy herself some freedom from her reality show earned fame, she disagrees.

"It wasn't intentional, it just worked that way. I feel so blessed that, especially triple j, took the project and just embraced it and it could have just not worked but we just felt so strongly about it. There's something about the shift that really helped, I guess," she explains. "It wasn't like I wasn't going to go anywhere as Celia Pavey, but I think it was just the next phase, I was ready to move forward as doing another project and that doesn't close the door on the Celia Pavey stuff."

Maybe it's a sign of her age, maybe it's a sign of the freedom she feels under the protection of Vera Blue, but looking back on old photos and performances, there's a new breath of maturity and confidence in how Pavey now carries herself. It's a sentiment that follows to the new album, with Perennial seeing Pavey swapping the guitar folk tunes she's become synonymous with for vocal driven electro pop.

"It is a big change. Before the Vera Blue stuff was born, I was just writing folk songs on my own and folk, it's who I am. Folk music is everything. I look up to artists like Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel and artists like that, Angus & Julia Stone, and I was always writing songs like that," says Pavey. "I was super late to it but I discovered electronic music and I was like 'oh my Lord, I've just fallen in love'. I listen to a lot of alt-J, FKA Twigs, and even songs back in the day by Massive Attack and stuff like that, and I just fell in love with the emotional side of electronic blending with the folk."

It's been a collaboration with brothers Andy and Thom Mak, producers who have previously worked with Boy & Bear and Bertie Blackman, that has played the biggest role in changing the music Pavey creates.

"I met Andy on a writing camp called the Native Tongue, and I was in a session with him and Australian singer-songwriter Gossling, and I said to him 'I write folk songs, I've got this song called Fingertips that I've written a chorus for and I don't know how to finish it. I really love electronic music and I want to blend the two.' And he was like 'sweet, let's just write the song.' So Gossling and I finished the song and then we recorded it with just a voice and a guitar and Andy was like 'I'm just gunna get to work on this and really experiment' and that's how the song happened.

"And that was before the title Vera Blue came about as well. It was really like just an experimental moment that really grabbed us and we were like we probably should continue working. And then we did the EP and Andy introduced his younger brother Thom, who's a co-writer, and the ball kept rolling and just got us really excited."

The role the Mak brothers have played in the development of the Vera Blue sound is clear, with Pavey explaining how they are as much a part of the Vera Blue identity as she is.

"Gossling, she was the one that put the idea into my head because she has a name as well. And before I was just going to keep Celia Pavey Music which was totally who I was at the time. Because the sound was so different, I was like 'I feel like it deserves its own name' so Vera Blue just kind of came from a few little things.

"Whenever I think of Vera Blue, I think of it as the collective. It's me, Andy, Thom and also another person, who's just working with us now, Jackson [Barclay]. He does a lot of engineering and then recently he started working with my manager in the States, Adam Anders, who is very fond of the project, so we finished the album with him."

For the new album, Pavey has shown no hesitation in being absolutely and completely honest.

"The album is called Perennial and my dad actually came up with the name because he's a horticulturist," she explains. "The term is used to describe plants and flowers that grow back year after year, and I really loved the word. It related to feelings and emotions and memories returning, reoccurring, coming back and that's definitely what the album's really about in a nutshell."

"The album as a whole is very much acknowledging vulnerability and the fact that I wear my heart on my sleeve."

"It's funny, some people are saying [it's] 'very honest, very real' and it's definitely part of who I am and who I've become as an artist as well. A lot of artists like to hide their thoughts and their feelings behind metaphors but with this record, I would just say stuff.

"I think with the production as well, we had no fear. There was a real sense of no fear and just kind of going for it and exploring and just having a lot of fun. It is a very, very honest record and in a way, that's touching back on the vulnerable thing. It's really being open and I'm really proud of the fact I've been so honest with my listeners as well, I think that's why they connect with it a lot."

As much as Pavey comes across as the consummate professional with her succinct, clever and considered answers, it's in the moments where she lets her guard down - sharing experiences from her time at Splendour In The Grass last year, running into Jack Garratt in an elevator in New York, telling of how Kasey Chambers complimented her work at the ARIAs, the opportunity of a future collaboration with her friend Flume - that really show the warmth, humour and honesty that that many know her for.

The Perennial album launch arrives a few days before this story went to print. Watching Pavey perform the new album, everything she's spoken about comes together; there's no acoustic guitar in front of her and she seems just as comfortable in playing a MIDI board and sauntering around the stage, the emotion of her lyrics always sitting right at the surface. It's hard not to think that maybe this was what she had in mind the whole time and was just waiting for the right moment to unleash it.