Olivia Bartley, otherwise known as art-pop singer-songwriter Olympia, is amped for the 44 gigs she has ahead of her between now and the end of the year.
Bartley says there are a few reasons why she feels excited about her upcoming Leave Yourself Behind tour. For one, it’s been a “hot minute” between band shows. For another, the pressures she experienced while touring her first two albums are past.
“I’m really looking forward to hanging out with some of my closest friends who I play music with, and having a really fun time on stage,” says Bartley. “It’s really come back to the artistry and music and performance, and I can’t wait.”
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Between Olympia’s Leave Yourself Behind tour and her spot on the forthcoming Rockwiz tour, she has 44 gigs before the end of the year.
To prepare, she’s doing the work to get her delicately-wired voice into peak condition. Likewise, her fingers, two of which she recently crushed at the gym.
“Right now, I’m just focused on ‘energy out’, which is all about getting ready for the gig, getting fitness up, making sure my fingers are strong and my voice is strong and in good knick. It’s sort of like a lazy athlete – like, I still have cake at night.”
You might know Bartley for many things. Her debut Olympia record, Self Talk, reached number 26 on the ARIA charts. The expansive synth-pop driven LP was nominated for an ARIA, shortlisted in the Australian Music Prize and included as a triple j feature album.
2019 follow-up, Flamingo, hit heights of joy that manifested out of personal experiences of grief. Olympia dialled up the tempos and guitars within her highly architected dream-pop soundscapes and earned international airplay and tours across Europe and the UK.
You might have seen Bartley performing guitar, keys and backing vocals as a touring musician with Something For Kate, or playing on Rockwiz too.
Many lesser-known facts offer more clues into the music Bartley makes today: she travelled to an artist’s village in Taipei after Self Talk to write more music, she taught herself to play guitar by watching YouTube videos, she spent her twenties as a graphic designer and switched to grant application writing later in life, she sang and played piano at her local church in Wollongong as a kid and she wrote her first song in school.
“I’ve always been driven by this sense of ideas that I don’t know yet, so it’s always like you’re pursuing something, but you’re not quite sure what it is. That’s what has always fuelled everything. That’s what keeps me interested and keeps me on edge.”
It’s five years since Bartley released a new album — she has two to release — but it’s not just the creative process she has to think about. The economic rationale is something she has to reckon with as well.
“I spent a lot of time making these records,” says Bartley. “So much work goes into them and so much money. I wish my sole focus could be to create music, but… I mean, 2019, we did three headline tours of Europe that I paid for.”
Barley says it was a huge investment and as the world fell into lockdown, it didn’t pay off as she’d expected. This played a part in the lengthy gap of time between releasing music.
“I think a lot of the audience don’t realise that they’re not paying for music. At some point, there is a gap between what people understand and what people expect,” she says.
“I want to create art that withstands the test of time, which means it takes longer. I’m not trying to service a trend for something that will be over in six months and I’m not trying to write for TikTok. I really believe in what I do, but it just takes time.”
In May, Bartley released her latest EP, Love For One, a four-song collection recorded and produced by herself and Burked Reid. Her forthcoming tour takes its name, Leave Yourself Behind, from the fourth song on that EP.
“When Burke Reid and I made this body of work in London, our brief to each other was that we would have fun making it and that there would be a maximum of four instruments at one time. I think we forgot that second one,” Bartley says.
“But we do absolutely have so much fun and there is so much love between us. He definitely gets in the trench with me when we make art. But yes, it has been a real revisioning. It’s so much fun, and there are so many great sounds in this EP…. It’s going to be a lot of fun to recreate live, but it will be very very different.”
Olympia will bring her Leave Yourself Behind tour to the Brunswick Ballroom on October 18. To keep up with Olympia, head here.
