'Prepare To Feel Everything:' Methyl Ethel, Sui Zhen & More Walk Through New Compilation

Methyl Ethel - Holy Days
It’s just a little B-side goth ballad written between Australia and Portugal about distance, pilgrimages and being forgotten.

HANDSOME - The Walker feat. Essie Holt (Christine & The Queens cover)

HANDSOME: When you love a song so dearly, and you have the opportunity to make it your own it is such a privilege. There are so many elements that excite me about releasing this song. From the first moment I saw the video clip with Chris walking alongside the bull my jaw dropped and my heart pounded. Its political sentiment is both educational and powerful. It is brave, but it also reminds us that we can learn from each other - and within the context of homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and interphobia - this is fearless for Chris to take on. Making this song with Essie Holt was truly wonderful. As an artist I have undying respect for her work, as a person I also think she is fearless. Her recent EP was a coming out story much like my first EP and it was so honest and courageous. What an honour to make music with her. We really focussed on the lyric "violent hits, violent blossoms akin", because this is what the queer community does effortlessly: we turn hatred into beauty. It just felt so right - to release a cover of a song by a queer woman, with two queer women about the power of our community, in Pride Month. Hopefully it is a reminder to some that we are here for each other.

Essie Holt: Chris’ album has been huge for me in coming out as a queer woman quite recently and is always a lot of fun to dance to with friends. Chris is fearless and so captivating as a performer. My first introduction to The Walker was via the music video and I was so moved seeing Chris walk side-by-side with the bull - a huge movement in standing against homophobia. This made the song super visceral to me, and when I sing it I think of all the people in my life that have been on my queer journey, and made me feel supported. HANDSOME and I covered this song for Midsumma Festival in Melbourne in January. It was so beautiful to see a queer crowd connecting to the lyrics and felt like a real nice moment we all got to share together. HANDSOME and I have been fans of each other’s work for a while now, so it was great to finally get in the studio and collaborate on this song together. It feels like a really special blend of both of our styles as artists, with a shared empowerment and love for Christine & The Queens.

Carla Geneve - Red Rocks
I wrote Red Rocks when I was in Year 12. It was originally for an English lit assignment but I decided to put it to music. Evidently I was angry about some things and I just put them in the song. This was also one of the first songs I ever recorded in a studio. It’s definitely not the song I’m most proud of, and I think you can hear how young I was when I wrote it. However I do think it’s important not to be ashamed or embarrassed of the work that you have done in the past. It is what it is and it reflects how songwriting changes with you as you grow as an artist and a person.

Sunbeam Sound Machine - Worry Wart
This song has been kicking around in my head for years. I’ve tried to record versions of it for previous albums but it just didn’t quite work so it never made the cut. I started recording it again this year and although it finally came together, I still didn’t feel like it would fit onto the next album. That’s when Dot Dash rang asking if I had anything I’d want to put onto a compilation. The song is about a frequent daydream I had when I was very little about my family having secretly been aliens the whole time, and the day when they all revealed their secret and flew away. I think it’s about wanting to hold onto your loved ones.

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Obscura Hail - Martyr
Naturally, it was written and arranged as I recorded it in my bedroom, and I didn't expect it to go beyond my ears, so the quality of the tracks took a backseat in exchange for a stream of consciousness. An older song I re-approached recently to make the beat not so raw and repetitive. An overview of my life while I was at uni, this is me trying to feel the shape stuff I haven't digested yet. Some bitterness over my naivety and celebrations of small victories, but mostly an attempt to accept the idea of fate.

Gena Rose Bruce - Upper Hand
A short diary entry, this song never felt like it needed more than a guitar and voice. I couldn't make it work on my album, it always stood alone to me.

Jess Ribeiro - Ghost
Ghost is about a friend who died a few years ago. A lifelong creative comrade and rascal, we met when we were 5. I thought we'd be together until we both grew really old. Written and recorded at Neil Finn's place in Auckland during the 2019 APRA NZ co-writing sessions. Neil's wife has a lampshade shop next door so all the rooms at his studio (Roundhead) are full of weird and beautiful light fittings. I liked tinkering around the building playing their instruments and looking at all the cool trinkets they owned like life-sized porcelain leopards and whacky outsider style paintings. It was inspiring, everyone was friendly. I love New Zealand, it's a groovy vibe.

Sui Zhen - All I Really Want (Alanis Morissette covered for Sissy Screens)
I was asked to cover an Alanis song for a new magazine called Sissy Screens that champions queer film and screen culture. I chose this particular Alanis song because the lyrics resonated with me. It's been over 20 years since I bought Jagged Little Pill on CD but I can still remember all the lyrics. It's incredible that music can stay with you for so long and remain imprinted upon your psyche. Singing it in today's context gave me a different feeling - it's taken me many years to fully comprehend how I relate to the sentiments expressed here and I thought it would be powerful to bring back this message. There is beauty in all ways to identify and all paths to womanhood, personhood. There is no one way to be woman/womyn and we need to see ourselves reflected in myriad ways to break the trappings of patriarchy. I think Alanis helped many people to realise this. It also feels like to revisit teenage music during this time of lockdown, when many people are busying themselves with domestic hobbies and spending lots of time on their own.

Huntly - Tempelhof (Ahm’s Saviour Remix)
Elspeth: Tempelhof was originally written as a way to try to capture an intense, exquisite connection I had with someone. But straight after its release in 2017, I felt like I could say goodbye to the lust held in that song and the story, and it could shift into a darker place. As a band we were heading into more complex territory.

Andy: The remix was born shortly after, when I was first discovering the joy of breaks. I wanted to make an edit of Tempelhof that focused on the rhythmic elements of the second half of the track, with the dance floor in mind. From memory we first performed this version of the song at our Cool Room set supporting Laurel Halo in 2018. It made it into a few of our subsequent live sets during a particularly turbo period, but has since sat undisturbed and unloved on an old hard drive — until now.

friendships - Purebred Dogs feat. Yaw Faso & thelovelyme (friendships VIP)
I did this groove edit in 2016 as a B side to Purebred Dogs. The original is so fast and maximalist, with the intent to feel rushed, rattling, overwhelming and intense. Yaw Faso and thelovelyme are rapid fire at 140bpm, so I wanted to slow it down by 50bpm and explore intonation and create groove - kind of like walking around their words (underneath and above) and let the backing sonics bloom and simmer. I finished the edit, played it out a couple of times and never released it. The beat now, seems timestamped to the producer I was in 2016. Aggressive EQs, exaggerated fx, intense saturation, seemingly archaic techniques which are equally engaging, periodical and perplexing. I thought this would never leave my hard drive, so I'm really happy it's found a home on this compilation.

Milwaukee Banks - Hold The Phone
This song was a track we had never put on any album or EP. Not because we didn’t like it but it kind of just got lost in session files and was never brought to the light. Hold The Phone has a loose West Coast vibe and fun feel to it. Nothing too serious, but more that feeling when the sun comes out after a long winter and hits you in the face for the first time. The moment you realise a hater can’t take you down... water off a duck's back.

Ryan Downey - Good Time Girl (Sofi Tukker cover)
Sofi Tukker’s Good Time Girl played a strong and woozy part in the soundtrack to my early weeks of lockdown life. The first show I binged was Paolo Sorrentino’s masterful HBO series The New Pope and that’s where, in the nun-fun opening credits, I discovered the song. It led me to Sofi Tukker’s daily Instagram DJ sets which I’ve used to motivate my house-bound workouts. With time on my hands and the song in my head, I decided to dive into the electro world for a moment and make this cover. I'm coeliac, so sourdough was never an option.

Dorsal Fins - Heart On The Floor (Live At Newmarket)
Heart On The Floor is probably the Dorsal Fins live favourite, tracking anywhere between six and 12 minutes at any one of our shows, depending on the mood of the room. This recording marks one of the first times we ever played live as a group, recorded live… for an intimate audience at Newmarket Studios, then run by our great friend and collaborator Cal Barter (who recorded Mind Renovation). To me, it’s the quintessential Dorsal Fins song… fun, intense, honest and of course, pretty weird. It’s really the 10 of us who worked on the record in a room feeling it out for the first time. Hope you feel it on the floor.

Soaked Oats - Houdini (Live At The Others Way 2019)
This recording of Houdini was taken from our performance at The Others Way Festival in August 2019, where we performed at the Mercury Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand. It was recorded by Radio New Zealand and mixed/mastered by their engineer extraordinaire Andre Upston. This was our first time playing in a theatre and we were nervous as hell, so to get into the swing of things we scrubbed up, slicked back our hair and dressed in top hats and tails. Much fun!

Jess Locke - Change Anything
This is one of the first songs I wrote when I was working on a new album. We recorded this demo at home and when it came to recording the album in the studio we just couldn’t beat the charm of this demo. It’s about putting your money where your mouth is and being accountable to yourself.

Siberian Tiger - Everything is Free (Gillian Welch cover)
Everything Is Free is by Gillian Welch from the album Time (The Revelator). This album is one of Bree's favourites, it got her through a lot of The Middle East tours overseas. We were recently listening to the album again and this song came on, it seemed more relevant than ever. I guess as you creep into adulthood, deeper water, you do catch yourself hoping to earn a living off music if/where possible. Sometimes you feel so torn, offering to give something away for free that cost you thousands of dollars, blood, sweat & tears to produce... Other days it feels good to embrace the free-spirited nature of streaming. No-one really 'owns' music, and if streaming platforms are the best way for music to reach people and connect with them, then c'est la vie? To us, this song is an ode to those ever-conflicting beliefs.

Jeremy Neale - Doom & Terrorise
I wrote Doom & Terrorise after recording the In Stranger Times EP (2013). It very much sat with my output at the time and so it entered the live set - waiting patiently for its time to shine in the studio. But that time never came. 2015's Let Me Go Out In Style was a massive sonic shift and old mate Doom & Terrorise just didn't play well with the rest of the crew. Again it was ported over to the sessions for the 2017 debut album Getting The Team Together but didn't gel with the message of the record. The song was destined to drift forever... until now. We were able to use the partial recordings we had from said 2017 session and pair it with a vocal I recorded at home during social distancing. And now thanks to Bloom & Simmer, Doom & Terrorise has finally found its forever home.

Wolf & Cub - The Watcher (Motörhead cover)
This cover of The Watcher was initially recorded shortly after Lemmy had passed away in 2015. We had grand aspirations of releasing it in his honour as a special 7” for Record Store Day the following year, but much like many of our grand plans it never eventuated so it's been sitting on a hard drive ever since. I'm glad we were able to get it released now though because I’ve always enjoyed it and was slightly bothered that we never managed to do anything with it! For what it's worth, our version references the one he did with Hawkwind, which first appeared on their third record Doremi Fasol Latido and is, in my opinion, far superior to the Motörhead one that they recorded later on.

Velociraptor - Ramona (Acoustic)
I know how it is - you own a kickass elevator but you're not allowed to play music featuring drums in it. :( You scream to the heavens, "When will Enya join Velociraptor!?". Well, scream no more - it's Velociraptor's hit song Ramona in acoustic form! Perfect for weddings, candle-lit dinners and your next 'Me Time, Self-care 2020' playlist. Prepare to feel everything, all over again.

Gabriella Cohen - Let's Stay & Look At The Moon (Demo)
This was one of the first songs I recorded on Garage Band in 2013. It was about 10pm, I had just returned from a gig in Brisbane city that I was very reluctant to attend in the first place. And I was frustrated, because it was my early 20s but I rarely wanted to ‘go out’. I’d rather be alone and record. So, there you have it folks. Oh, and it was a full moon.

Black Cab - Empire States (Live In Sydney)
In 2016 Cab made one of their brief sojourns to Sydney as part of the Uniforms launch tour. Somewhat wary of Sydney venues, we were pleasantly surprised by the very Melbourne vibe of Newtown Social Club plus a sold out crowd who were very much up for it. We'd heard that FBi Radio was recording the set but we didn't see them until after the show and their recording was top shelf. In true Sydney style, the venue was almost immediately turned into a pizza joint to ensure we'd never enjoy it again.

Bloom & Simmer is due for release this Friday 26 June via Remote Control Records. Find out more about it and pre-save here.