Acoustic pop diva Amelia Cormack has released her self-titled debut album, and it’s as stunning as she is.
Filled with all original tracks, it’s a collection of some of her best music written over the past 10 years.
It’s a far cry from her onstage personas – most recently her appearance in Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical – but does reflect a childhood love of music, beginning with violin at the age of six, piano at nine and then guitar in her adolescence – an instrument she again returned to for the writing of this album.
‘Going back to an instrument I wasn’t familiar with kind of unlocked a sound for me,’ Cormack said of her recent return to the guitar.
‘And because I have such fat short fingers I find it difficult to play bar chords so what it meant was that I was able to find all these different sounds on the guitar because I had to work out how to play them differently to the way other people played them.
‘It then meant that when I came back to the piano I kind of had an idea of the sounds that I wanted so it kind of all came from there.’
The result is a span of sincerity from ballads to poppier, slightly rockier numbers.
‘There’s one called Siren which I actually play the violin on which is really haunting and really beautiful,’ Cormack said of highlights on the album.
‘What I’m also really proud of is that there are so many different sounds on there. There are some really rock out sounds, there’s some really gentle intimate things and the other one is Love You Like I Do, which is like a Harry Connick Jr tribute. That was great.’
What sets Cormack apart from other musicians is her integrity: she has refused at all points to use Auto Tune throughout the recording of this album, instead sticking to her guns and creating a work that is all her voice.
‘The thing I’m most proud about the album is that I’m really passionate about how computerised pop music has become in the last couple of years because for me all of a sudden we’re trying to remove all humanity from the human voice.
Missy Higgins has been a huge influence for me. She was unearthed by Triple J right when I started writing and I’ve always identified with her sound and I think the thing I love about her is that her sound is so organic and so raw and it’s so human you hear her breathing, you hear emotion in her voice and it’s not perfect and I think that’s something I’ve really tried to capture on the album is a sense that I’m a real person not a computer.
‘And I was quite strict with my producer about it in that I didn’t want to use any Auto Tune. I wanted it to feel like I’m in the room with the listener’
Amelia Cormack’s independent, self-titled album is currently available online through Middle 8 Music and iTunes. www.myspace.com/ameliacormackmusic
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
