It’s also helped her come up with ideas for unusual ways to add value to her albums, putting extras in for people who pick up the physical versions. Her previous release came with a comic book and the new album, What A Treat, comes with a double-sided jigsaw puzzle. “It’s been good getting a graphic designer’s brain on for thinking of new and interesting ways to package stuff.” She’s also had to come up with new and interesting ways to raise money. Although Imbruglia received a grant to help with the cost of the album’s recording, she thought of an inventive way to pay for promoting her tour. “I put a thing on Twitter saying, ‘In desperate need of cash: will perform sexual favours for cash. By sexual favours I mean I will sing Let’s Get It On to you via Skype.’ I was just joking and then I thought maybe I can actually earn money doing that? I created a Bandcamp product and set a fee for filming myself singing songs for people with a personal dedication. I just put it online to see if anyone would buy them and they sold out really quickly. In fact I probably charged not enough for them for the amount of time it takes me to put them together, but I might make them a permanent merch item and up the price.” You can find these videos on YouTube; watching Laura Imbruglia perform a lively rendition of Blondie’s Call Me as a birthday present for someone named Grzegorz is entirely worth your time. All the hustle and grind is in aid of an album that’s also worth your time, one that contains a lovelorn duet with Ben Salter (Limerence), a psych-rock song about insects (Incest) and a boot-scooting country-rock number about howling at the moon (Awoooh!). That last one features a video for which Imbruglia spent several hours having makeup applied to make her look like she’d stepped straight out of Teen Wolf.
In spite of completing another album, her third now, Imbruglia doesn’t seem to think much of her achievements. She recently turned 30, the age when many people have the moment where they take stock and wonder why they haven’t travelled the world or finished a novel or had two kids. “I’ve been having that moment for the past five years,” she says, “so it wasn’t like a sudden thing. I regularly have that moment where I go, ‘God, what am I doing? This is not an adult’s life. Where’s my house and car?’ But it’s the musician’s life; it’s pretty hard to have those things. I have been achieving things but they’ve just been musical I guess.”
BY JODY MACGREGOR
