Outlaw country musician Freya Josephine Hollick has finally begun recording the follow-up to her acclaimed LP The Real World.
The Ballarat musician’s third album came out in September 2022, and it received widespread industry acclaim.
ABC Country commended Hollick’s “textured cosmic country canvas” and her lyrical exploration of self-transformation, climate catastrophe and resilience in the face of authoritarianism. “Like all great artists she is making us think,” said the ABC’s review.
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Triple R made The Real World their Album of the Week, and Double J named it one of the 50 best albums of 2022. The Real World debuted at #2 on ARIA’s Australian country albums chart and #7 on the vinyl albums chart.
But one crucial factor has stalled the production of a new album. “I’ve been waiting for funding to make a record,” Hollick says.
After having several grant applications denied and struggling to stack up enough money from touring and merch sales to fund a new album, Hollick reached out to her community. “I ran a Pozible campaign because the funding just never came,” she says.
Launched earlier this year, the campaign was beyond successful – the initial fundraising target was $18,000, but once she hit that, Hollick stretched the target out to $23,000. The funds will not only help pay for the new record, but also support Hollick’s application for a US touring visa.
“I was pleasantly surprised by how supportive people were and how much they wanted another record from me,” Hollick says.
Hollick is recording the new album with songwriter and producer Tim Rogers, better known as Jack Ladder. The pair have been discussing making an album together since before The Real World came out.
“If you’re across Jack Ladder’s music, you know that it’s quite different to my music, but we have a lot of similar tastes,” Hollick says.
The original plan was to make a contemporary-sounding record that blended aspects of country music with electronic production.
“There’s a lot of people doing traditional country music or really hamming up the cowboy pastiche,” Hollick says. “And I wanted to make something that’s a little bit less like a caricature and more like me.”
With Rogers’ input, Hollick is exploring the synth-laden, drum machine-powered sounds of ’80s power ballads and indulging her love of disco music. “I also love the music featured in David Lynch films,” she says, “which is a touch point for both Tim and I.”
At this point, Hollick is not thinking about whether the record will fit under the country music tag. “It’s marrying those [influences] together without making it overtly country, or without trying to emulate what’s already happened in country music before, and trying to do something a bit different,” she says.
While there’s no firm release date, Hollick hopes the record will be out this year. In the meantime, we’ve got Inevitable Sorrow, an outlaw country tune influenced by greats of the genre such as Blaze Foley, Townes Van Zandt and Steve Young.
“I wrote this song maybe like two years ago and had been playing it live a bunch,” Hollick says. “I just decided I would go into my friend Roger [Bergodaz]’s studio, Union Street Studios in Brunswick West. I played it twice through and then I was like, ‘Okay, that sounds pretty good.’”
Hollick then sent the recording – which centres on her voice and acoustic guitar – to a couple of musicians in the US: Josh Hedley, who added fiddle, and Geoffrey Muller, who added banjo. It all came together very easily, she says.
“I deliberated about putting it out because I was like, we didn’t have to work very much for this. Is it shit? And then I decided it was good and I would just put it out. And so, that’s what we did.”
The fact that Inevitable Sorrow and the handful of singles that preceded it will not feature on the new album is an example of how prolific Hollick is.
“The only time that I stop writing is when it’s like, I really need to make an album,” she says. “And I’ve been in that sort of limbo phase for a couple of years now where I was just writing so much.”
She adds, “I would quite happily release an album a year if I had the funding to do that.”
Freya Josephine Hollick is playing Memo Music Hall on 4 July. Grab tickets here.
