“It’s just a coping mechanism”: Alice Skye reflects on her intimately personal songwriting
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07.09.2020

“It’s just a coping mechanism”: Alice Skye reflects on her intimately personal songwriting

WORDS BY AUGUSTUS WELBY

Alice Skye joins us for episode 14 of the Turning Heads podcast.

We’re happy to welcome Wergaia and Wemba Wemba songwriter Alice Skye to the podcast this week. Now based in Melbourne, Skye grew up in Horsham in rural western Victoria and started releasing music in 2016. She put out the singles ‘You Are the Mountains’, ‘60%’ and ‘Poetry By Text’ in the lead up to her debut album, Friends With Feelings, which arrived in 2018.

Friends With Feelings was recorded in Alice Springs with support from CAAMA Music (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) and a range of session musicians. Since recording Friends With Feelings, Skye has struck up a partnership with musicians (and twins) Sam and Kane King, who play guitar and drums in her live band. They’re also from Horsham and their contributions have helped to evolve the sound of Skye’s music.

This can be heard on her latest two singles, ‘I Feel Better But I Don’t Feel Good’ and ‘Grand Ideas’, which show off a more assertive and rockier sound. Both songs will appear on Skye’s forthcoming second album, which was produced by Jen Cloher and is coming out via Briggs’ Bad Apples Music label.

The podcast chat covers not being able to perform live due to coronavirus, Alice’s childhood influences, working with the twins and Jen Cloher and writing about her mental health.

Check out the podcast episode below:

I will be back with a new episode of Turning Heads next week. You can find the podcast on SpotifyPodbean and through Apple.

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