Freya Josephine Hollick on avoiding genre labels
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Freya Josephine Hollick on avoiding genre labels

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Feral Fusion, the new album from Freya Josephine Hollick, taps into the Melbourne songwriter’s wide-ranging tastes. 

Growing up in Ballarat, Hollick was exposed to jazz, soul and indie rock before discovering old-timey folk, blues and country music. Feral Fusion takes inspiration from even further afield with the inclusion of Latin rhythms, orchestral arrangements and elements of funk.

“I grew up in a household where we were introduced to music like Karen Dalton, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Bill Frisell, Al Green and Etta James at a young age,” she says. “Mum and Dad were always buying and listening to new music, back when you’d buy tapes for the car and CDs for the house.

“A lot of my friends grew up on a diet of ABBA and The Carpenters, not that there is anything wrong with that, but I really lucked out with my folks’ diverse taste in music.”

Hollick established herself as a country singer on 2016’s The Unceremonious Junking of Me and last year’s follow-up EP, Don’t Mess With the Doyenne. Although Feral Fusion isn’t confined to the genre, country remains the foundation of Hollick’s songwriting. To a certain extent, country music has moved past the stigma that was attached to it through the ‘90s and ‘00s, but some scepticism lingers.

“I still get turned down by festivals because I’m ‘too country’,” Hollick says. “But really all music stems from folk music, and what real contemporary country music is is a fusion of all these folk musics into one delicious-sounding thing. It’s why I called the record Feral Fusion – it’s a fusion of all these styles I love.

“My preference is to avoid all labels when it comes to genre. I would hope I’m making music everyone can enjoy. It’s not directed at any single group of people or exclusive to any club.”

For a long time, Australian country music was typified by Tamworth, cheesy grins, cowboy hats and formulaic sounds. But Melbourne is now home to a flourishing country music community led by the likes of Raised By Eagles, Tracy McNeil & the Good Life, and Lost Ragas.

One-half of Lost Ragas, Shane Reilly and Roger Bergodaz, produced Feral Fusion, adding versatile instrumentation that ably supports Hollick’s ambitious songwriting.

“Shane plays an array of instruments – Rhodes, pedal steel, baritone guitar – and he is responsible also for all of the orchestral arrangements,” Hollick says. “Shane is a freak of nature, an incredibly talented musician who can understand the weird way I try and communicate how I want things to sound. Roger is the rhythm section for the majority of the record and he is also the engineer. Roger also blows my mind, so skilled, so easy to work with.

“Thomas Brooks plays about a million things on the record also – pedal steel, baritone guitar, piano, nylon string, and all those wild sounding Nels Cline-esque electric guitar sounds. Yet another freak of nature.”

Recorded at Brunswick’s Union Street Studio, the record also features guitarists Jacob McGuffie and Sam Lemann, double bassist Ben Franz, fiddler Esther Henderson and drummer Oscar Henfrey on a few tracks.

Hollick will launch Feral Fusion at the Curtin Bandroom, backed by a four-piece band. “It’s going to be so much fun. The band will be made up of Thomas Brooks, Shane Reilly, Roger Bergodaz and Grant Arthur; one of the band’s regular members who is great. We’ll be playing the majority of the new record along with some stuff off Don’t Mess With the Doyenne and maybe a Willie Nelson song or two.”