Fast-forward to the present and with years of performance experience under her belt, having played alongside some of Australia’s most talented musicians including James Morrison, Moodie’s sound has undergone a transformation. A discovery of dancehall, reggae and electronic, as well as a friendship with local MC Diafrix, has rounded out her influences, as well as creating an informed and unique sound that sets her apart from the plethora of run of the mill, neo-soul revivalists.
With a new self-titled EP that has embraced her now disparate inspirations, Moodie throws back to the classic sounds of Etta James as much as rival the likes of FKA Twigs and The xx for reinterpretations of modern day soul, R&B and blues. Just don’t try to pigeonhole her.
“To be honest I just didn’t want to be pigeonholed, full stop. I like being versatile and keeping people guessing,” Moodie says. “I grew up heavily influenced by jazz and blues and have been lucky enough to work with some amazing musicians of that genre. But over the years my music taste and what I connect with has evolved. I don’t force it to be anything in particular, so when I’m writing these songs all of these influences combine naturally to me.”
Having expressed herself musically from such a young age, her influences aren’t the only thing to have developed dramatically, with Moodie approaching the songwriting of her self-titled EP in more collaborative process. “When I was younger I used to always wonder whether I was writing the ‘right way’ but I soon found out that there wasn’t one,” she reveals with a self–deprecating laugh. “I remember years ago with Black Coffee I had that bass line going around in my head for such a long time and from there came the lyrics and melody. But a song this time around like Unforgiving was completely different altogether. MoMO had this beat that he played me one day and it just clicked with me. I was writing it as I was listening to it for the first time. I love it when that happens. That song basically wrote itself.”
And MoMO isn’t the latest avant-garde museum you haven’t been to yet; he is Moodie’s producer and collaborator, the Jamie XX to Moodie’s Romy so to speak. “MoMo is very versatile with his production so he plays a big part in terms of the instrumentation. Sometimes the songs start with a beat from Mo and other times I would write a tune on which he would build a beat.” It’s clear her musical brain is constantly ticking, but as much as her evolution sonically has been marked, her lyrical maturation is also a cornerstone of the new EP.
“It’s actually really fascinating to me to see how my lyrics are perceived by other people. Everyone has a different experience listening to the same song. Sometimes I think people need to be vulnerable and there are songs where I want to keep a little piece of myself hidden away, but then there are times where I want to shout it from the rooftops.” With the emotion dripping all over songs like Murky Love, she’s quite aware of the passion inside of her. “Am I ruled by my heart? For sure, that’s just who I am.”
But this is not Taylor Swift broken-hearted sobbing. Instead, it’s quite classic in its approach to expressing her emotion, sparking comparisons to the elder stateswomen of soul. Probed about the 21st century dilution of the genre and even the word ‘soul’ in music in 2014, she offers a poignant opinion: “A lot of the soul we hear now has become much more production-based rather than live recordings. Artists like Lauryn Hill will always have an impact on my musical creativity, particularly in the lyrical sense. Her soul is always out there in her writing and I am drawn to that in an artistic sense.”
BY CHRISTOPHER LEWIS
