Despite the obnoxious hip hop seeping through the ceiling and the fact she still hasn’t shaken off the Paris jetlag, Martha Brown, AKA Banoffee, has hit the ground running.

Her new EP Do I Make You Nervous? is unveiled this Friday, and the Melbourne singer/producer is bouncing off the walls with excitement. Her thoughts arrive in an entertaining rush, and there is truly never a dull moment as the self-confessed over-sharer looks to her upcoming tour and why embarrassing yourself in front of a crowd can be an enviable thing.

“I love being onstage but I need to make sure I don’t start bawling my eyes out,” she laughs, “which sometimes I do. It’s happened a couple of times, and it’s seriously embarrassing.”

For real? There is a risk Banoffee might start tearing up mid-song?

“I really do! All the tracks I make mean a lot to me, which works in two ways. One, I feel super exposed, which can be quite scary, but at the same time, it’s really nice to feel connected. I think it really works for me performing to have that feeling, because it means they’re paying attention. You’re giving your audience something that’s real; I’m not lying to anyone. But it means that sometimes I cry, and I also tell really embarrassing stories. I’ll go on a rant about something that no-one should know, and suddenly I’ve told 300 people. A lot of jokes are just met by dead silence and me thinking, ‘Ahhhh, shit. I’ve done it again.’”

While it may sound like the stuff of nightmares – dropping a punchline to the sounds of tumbleweed and crickets – it’s also quite endearing. Banoffee has been acclimatising herself to performance for years, amidst tours with her sister Hazel (AKA Otouto), and is sincere in her attempts to engage with crowds minus a mask. Tears notwithstanding, what you see is what you get.

“It’s funny. You kind of have to have an ego and no ego to play music. You have to believe you’re worth standing up there and command people’s attention, but you also have to be willing to play to a crowd of people all talking over the top of you, who are all pretty annoyed that your music is louder than their conversation. Or the football is playing over the top of you. I try my best not to be someone else onstage – I don’t come up and go, [puts on sultry voice], ‘Hello, I am Banoffee.’ When I started playing and speaking to people, I found they were having a conversation with me. I wasn’t standing up there being completely disconnected from them. I think if you show the audience respect, they give it back to you.”

As Banoffee’s new single, ‘With Her’, soars past 60,000 plays, it’s evident that the integrity of her live performance has translated across to recording. It is a track that characterises who Banoffee is and what she is drawn towards – a kind of alt-pop R&B – though somewhat removed from her usual allegorical leanings. It is a more literal song, tracing her efforts to recall a memory and write it down scene by scene.

“The truth is, I often go into songs trying to unravel something. But often if I’m feeling a certain way or going through something, and I don’t know how to communicate it to someone…” She searches for words. “It’s like explaining something to someone who has never felt it, so you use symbols or metaphors to make it clearer. Say, something horrible like domestic violence might be a good example of a relationship people have within themselves. Or something in nature might be a great representation of something that happens between friends, and I’ll think, ‘Oh cool, great, I want to write about that.’ And then once writing, I’ll realise how it relates to me. So it goes both ways. ‘With Her’ is more literal and I think it works, but sometimes I can be too literal and hit a wall. I can’t go any further with the words that I have.”

With her inclusion on next year’s Laneway Festival lineup, Banoffee is poised to have her songs reach a wider audience yet again. Her career and aspirations have been building slowly for almost three years, and while she is content to continue releasing EPs until she feels an album is justified, she is still searching for the sound that reflects who she truly is.

“I don’t know whether I’ve found it. I don’t know whether I’ll ever find it, to be honest. People recognise sounds that they connect to Banoffee, but in terms of finding the sound that’s me, I don’t know that I ever want to find it.

“I had so much paranoia and fear after my first release. I started thinking, ‘People who liked it now have expectations, and how am I going to serve those people? How am I going to continue the theme of what Banoffee is?’ But the only theme I can really recognise in my music is that it’s all coming from my experiences. There’s no instrument I’m trying to cling to, there’s no recipe for songs. I just try to enjoy each one as I make them, and I think this EP does that.

“I’m a bit of a wide-eyed child, following things one at a time and jumping across. ‘Hey, what’s that over there?! Oh look, candy!’”

On the line-up forSt. Jerome’s Laneway Festival 2016, Sunday February 7 at Sydney College of the Arts, Banoffee hasDo I Make You Nervous?out Friday October 2 through Dot Dash/Remote Control.

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