Sarah Tout unveils her new solo material this Sunday December 7, at Mojos, with help from Erasers and Childsaint. BOB GORDON checks in.
You’ve played around Perth for around five years, but perhaps in a more high profile sense in the last 18 months as part of Simone & Girlfunkle. What’s that experience been like and how have you grown from it?
It’s been an amazing time, I feel like in joining S&G I have not only been fortunate enough to play with really incredible musicians but I’ve found the most wonderful family. They are tremendous people. We’ve played big festivals and east coast tours, so it has really allowed me to find a home on stage and given me an opportunity to connect with a wide range of audiences. It’s been humbling and challenging and immense fun.
I joined the band as a vocalist; the harmony singing has been a wonderful challenge and has kind of fired up new musical neural pathways. It’s made me a better singer, and at the same time inspired me to explore other musical styles. While S&G make beautiful folk/pop, I also love post rock and experimental music so that’s kind of the direction my solo work seems to be taking.
Tell us about your upcoming single, Let Go?
Let Go I wrote earlier this year and is one of the first songs I wrote on my Telecaster. It’s darker and louder. It’s about launching yourself into something new so is perhaps quite a fitting way to kick off a release. It needed drums and bass so the uber talented Rob Stephens (Simone and Girlfunkle, Hyla, Fait) helped out there and the amazing Pete Guazzelli (Ghostdrums, Rachael Dease, Fall Electric) has added drums. It’s in the mix at the moment and should be ready for release in 2015.
Is this to say there is other recorded work set to roll out? Is Let Go something of an entree?
Yup. That’s the plan. I’ll see which songs the audience responds to at this gig on Sunday and work a select few into a short release with Let Go, and plan a few projects around those songs for the coming year.
Pete Guazzelli’s performing with you this Sunday, what’s the instrumental dynamic like?
Oh my gosh, Pete is such a great musician. Not only can he play drums like nobody’s business he has an innate sensibility for composition and how songs need to move and form. So together with my broody vocals and dark, rhythmic, simple song structures he fleshes out intricate decoration adding accents and beats in the percussion that completely lift the work and help to convey the ideas I’d like to communicate. It also makes it much more interesting I think to listen to and more entertaining. It’s loud but lovely.
2015 – how’s it look from here?
It looks like a lot of writing, more recording, hopefully more shows and the natural next steps in the evolution of this project. Which is hopefully making a lot more music for people to enjoy.
