It was on a Tuesday that Sydney indie rockers, The Preatures, called it quits. On 25 May 2021, to be exact, a note posted to their Instagram feed read...
“After 10 years, The Preatures have disbanded. We want to thank everybody who was part of the journey and especially you for being such a dedicated fan base. Izzi will continue to release her own music.”
Naturally, fans were devastated that the ‘Is This How You Feel?” giants were no longer.
For lead vocalist and keyboardist, Isabella ‘Izzi’ Manfredi, it was her euphoric emancipation.
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Behind the scenes of the bright bubbly exterior animated by anthems ‘Somebody’s Talking’ and ‘Yanada’, The Preatures story was clouded by financial stressors stemming from antiquated record deals, a decade-long romantic relationship breakdown, and dynamic misalignment.
Stepping away from the music family, forged at the Australian Institute of Music, to ‘go solo’ was not the intention for Manfredi but would be the outcome.
She explains, “There was a point where I presented a Preatures record and a solo record and there was a point where there was a lot of scrutiny on my solo stuff to make sure it was differentiated from Preatures stuff enough as far as if I were releasing them both – which I had originally intended. I wanted to stay in the band and write music as The Preatures but I also want to do my own thing because I feel like I have more to say and more to give. That didn’t end up happening.”
Manfredi’s decision to venture outside of the band was met by confusion and blame for the band’s premature industry departure, with a cliched egomaniac stigma attached to the experience.
“The scrutiny I experienced in that situation made me realise for me going solo, one, it’s just a music industry trope, that ‘going solo’, so there are all kinds of expectations and cliches and stereotypes when it doesn’t work – case in point Freddy Mercury when he went solo was a disaster – and there are all those tropes about the lead singer – ‘you give them a mile and they want to indulge themselves’ and ‘it’s the members of the band that keep them in check’.”
“I definitely wrestled with a lot of those beliefs myself, and insecurities, I think. I was very conscious of not doing that when I went solo. For me it was only about being about to actually move. I felt like I couldn’t move in the band. We just felt stuck in one place. Two records in ten years was like torture for me. Two records! Ten years! I’d like to do a bit more than that!”
On Friday 2 September, Manfredi will be one album into her solo catalogue with the release of her debut record, izzi. Following a 45-show-long run of Preatures shows across regional Victoria, Manfredi has a “fuck, I’ve gotta get out of here. I have to get off the island” moment. She headed on a writing trip at the end of 2018 where the genesis of izzi began through experimentation.
“I had worked with a bunch of people like Anton Newcombe from Brian Jonestown Massacre and went and worked with a big pop guy in New York, just trying out a bunch of stuff to see where I might find myself.”
It was friend and collaborator, Emma Louise, who appears on tracks ‘Seasons Change’ ‘Sleepwalking’ and ‘Only Child’, who helped form her identity as a solo artist, one not dissimilar to that of her Preatures self.
“When I ended up in L.A with Emma, she was the one who said to me ‘You have a classic voice. Don’t lose that, don’t change it!’ and I loved that because I felt like she was giving me permission to just be me and that I was enough. Sometimes that is all you need!”
She continues, “the funny thing was when I released the first couple of singles, people were like ‘it sounds like The Preatures’ and I was like ‘yeah no shit [laughs] – I wrote the songs’! People didn’t think I was an agent of my own creative destiny which is so typical. I’m really excited for people to just see that side of me without the illusion that people around me make me who I am.”
With Emma’s advice in mind, Manfredi recruited a pool of talent to bring izzi to life. Along with Emma Louise, izzi credits Lucy Taylor as a co write and flautist for ‘Living In The Wind’, Chris Collins as a producer, Stella Mozgawa on drums, Mikey di Francesco (Touch Sensitive) on bass, Kirin J Callinan on guitar, and PRICIE with a verse contribution on ‘Naive’. Isabella Manfredi’s team was further expanded by Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Angel Olsen), Jeffertitti Moon, Drew Erickson, and full-circle collaboration with The Preatures’ debut EP, Shaking Hands, producer, Tony Buchen.
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“I’d always written with the band so it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to a lot of collaborators, but what was different about it was that the people in the room with me were in service to what I wanted,” she explains.
“In the band I had to experience having to fight and pitch ideas and getting shut down a lot, which sometimes, artistically and creatively can be a good thing, and it is what made the Preatures, the Preatures. But personally I don’t see a huge difference between the songwriting I did in the band and the songwriting I’ve done on my own, essentially. It’s still me.”
The nickname titled final product is Isabella Manfredi as her true authentic self; The Preatures but a bit more pop, passion-filled but imperfect, without pitching and without parameters.
“That was a goal of mine overall, I wanted it to feel more pop than Preatures,” she says.
“I think naturally I’m a much more prolific artist. I don’t care about perfection. Things have to be good enough and my level of good enough is probably maybe 6 in-between. I think because I’m not a super pro musician – I’m a good musician – but I still have the mind of a beginner, an amateur, that even though I’ve absorbed a lot of things productions-wise and technically from being surrounded by that in the band, I also don’t mind if things are abit scrappy, a bit imperfect. I like a bit of character in my recordings so I have a different metric of success for this album and these songs. I’m always going for the feeling, I just want things to feel good! You’ll notice that in this album. There are artifacts in this record.”
The wunderkammer of Isabella Manfredi that is izzi will be open for exploration on Friday 2 September, released via Island Records.
