An ARIA, a wedding, and set of twins later, singer-songwriter Clare Bowditch is back with her third album The Moon Looked On, an album that tackles topics such as shagging in a call centre cubicle and includes instruments such as the yak’s toenails.
OiP: How does this album depart from your first two?
Clare: The themes always reveal themselves unconsciously, what was left on the first two was an album that centred on the experience of grief and the joy of loving and the pain of losing. This album centres around lust and temptation and freedom. It’s written from more of a fictional point of view… I’ve been with the same guy for quite awhile and had twins this year. So, it was a year where I wrote an album about a very different stage of life from the one I’m currently at… I’m obviously still working through my teens and 20s.
OiP: What are some of your favourite tracks and the stories behind them?
Clare: Well, ‘You Look So Good’ is a really fun track about shagging a co-worker in a cubicle at a call centre I worked for, now whether or not that was me is up for interpretation.
OiP: You’ve picked up a lot of world music influences. What role has travel played in your life and career?
Clare: A lot of people get really burned out by the amount of travel that we have to do to make a living out of making music, particularly in Australia where the distances are so long. For me, I find travelling with my lover and our kids and our friends really exciting… My real life these days is when I’m at home with my family and doing everything to keep that experience settled and centred. So, when I get to nick off for a night and do a show, I come back home with a new kind of energy that fuels the work again.
OiP: In your travels, you have picked up quite a few intriguing instruments, including yak’s toenails, an instrument from Tibet. Is that a personal favourite?
Clare: Well, it makes such a great sound, then when you find out it’s yak’s toenails, it strikes terror into your heart for a little while because you wonder how do they grow that long? They are quite literally an inch or two long.
OiP: Are they hygienic to play?
Clare: You try not to lick the toenails in anyway or get them near your face. And you wash your hands after.
OiP: Did having the responsibilities of family and ‘settling down’ change your song-writing process at all?
Clare: I don’t know because I don’t have a set technique. There’s no kind of tradition or discipline that I lean on to write – it’s fairly random. What changed was the amount of sleep I didn’t get. Anyone who has ever suffered from lack of sleep will know that your emotions and all your subconscious thoughts really come to the surface and are very present. For me, the best way to deal with that was to sit down with my guitar and try and channel that into being inspired and telling the truth because often in that overtired state you are willing to tell truths that you can’t always tell.
OiP: Your husband Marty was also your producer. How did the two of you handle working together with the pregnancy?
Clare: The twin pregnancy was like running a marathon for someone who had been in a wheelchair for most of their life. It was this task that I didn’t know how I was going to get to the end of it, and I certainly didn’t have enough air to be singing. I was too big to hold a guitar. So, there came a point in the album, where I just said, ‘Marty, go for it.’ The only vocals on this album we could keep from when I was pregnant were ‘Between the Tea and the Toast’ because of the lack of air issue – quite literally, anyone who saw the footage of me walking up to collect the ARIA on television, and the first thing I said was ‘I can hardly breathe’. I had to teach Marty a lot of the guitar parts for him to play. I have always played guitar on my own albums, but again it was a problem of not being able to hold a guitar, literally.
OiP: Did winning the ARIA for Best Female Artist in 2006 change your career course?
Clare: The fluke about that was that we were artists who had a relatively obscure following. We were musicians who are on the indie fringe in many ways, which is why it was such a lovely surprise, but it doesn’t change the fact that our music won’t appeal to everyone. It’s never going to be that appeals to the lowest common denominator, I’m not saying we are always artsy and interesting, just that Delta Goodrem and myself will be very different in terms of music. The ARIA was just a lovely acknowledgement from people within the industry really they had noticed what we were doing and we should keep making the best music we can. For me it was just a pat on the back, saying ‘keep at it.’
Clare Bowditch comes to Perth for a show at Fly By Night in Fremantle on November 9. Tickets available from www.bocsticketing.com.au.
