“The new album is so harmony-centric – the harmonies are such a big part of the songs – I’m still working out how I want to tour for August,” she says. “I know I want a rhythm section, I know I want to play with drums and bass but I’m not sure what else. I do love the stripped-back thing too, and it’s really a cliché but the test of a good song is whether it works well acoustically.”
O Vertigo! is Miller-Heidke’s first release since parting ways with Sony music. Choosing the crowdfunding route, it took just three days for her to reach her target on Pledge Music. So does this return to independent release bring with it fear or freedom? “Freedom I’d say,” she ponders. “The fear would come from the fact that I’ve put out my hand and asked people for money and I might put out something that they might not like. That was the only risk really. But I felt confident enough with the material and the songs that I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t hate it. It was an amazingly liberating feeling to be independent after such a long time.”
While the majority of her music to date has been, in some part, written with creative (and life) partner Keir Nuttall, Miller-Heidke chose to tackle the creative space of this album independently too. “This album was scarier for me because I was working without my long-term collaborator,” she says. “He came and played guitar for a few songs but that was it. I guess I felt a bit older and more comfortable in my own skin so I was more comfortable to reach out to musicians and ask them to be involved.”
As far as cohesion goes, this album has it in spades. For Miller-Heidke there were many risks taken but the end result is an almost perfect representation of each and every one of her musical strengths. “For me the challenge has always been ‘how much can I get away with in the studio without sounding irritating or without it sounding like a gimmick yet while still staying true to the song?’,” she says. “It’s been a long journey for me, literally and metaphorically, to find my voice – what my real – voice is. I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that yes, I have this classical background – I used to be ashamed of it and I thought it was working against me in my songwriting – but now I’m a bit older and feeling more experienced with my voice, what comes with that is more playfulness. With this record I was pushing the boundaries in the studio; it always made sense to push those boundaries live but not as much in the studio. A studio recording is a different medium. You know some albums you love and you see it live and it’s really fucking boring? Or you hear someone live and their album is disappointing? I think I’ve often fallen into that latter camp. This record felt more confident than others.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
