Rising star Imogen Clark’s debut albumLove & Lovely Liesdoesn’t completely fit in one genre or another. Influenced by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Ryan Adams and Paul Kelly, Clark says the record “sway[s] a little bit from side to side” when it comes to style.
“I think the great thing about those artists is that they can kind of explore different genres within their work,” she says. “But it’s all still very authentic and it’s really true to them, and that’s kind of what I’m trying to do with this record.”
One part alt-country and one part Americana, it also has a healthy dose of indie and folk-pop thrown in the mix. Crucial to Clark’s process of exploration and crafting of her sound were recent trips to Nashville.
“I would actually say going to Nashville was possibly the most influential thing on my music that I’ve ever done. I went over there for the first time in 2014 – I kind of was a bit lost, I knew that I loved to write songs but I never knew how to describe them to people … and I was just very confused about it all. ‘It’s not country, it’s not rock, it’s not pop, it’s not folk – what is it?’ And then once I went to America, particularly Nashville, it was for the Americana Festival and I was playing with Sounds of Australia there, and I just remember thinking, ‘This is my lane, this is where I fit, these are my people.’ And it just felt like coming home.”
Clark has been performing and writing music since the age of 13, so it is perhaps unsurprising that Love & Lovely Lies is a self-aware collection of songs. “I know that country is a very heartbreak territory kind of a place, but I didn’t just want to make this record about only heartbreak,” she says. “There are some heartbreak songs on there, but ultimately it kind of looks at love from a bunch of different angles, and analyses the good, the bad and the ugly. And it kind of just celebrates it and dances with it and all of these different things.”
This much is evident on ‘You’ll Only Break My Heart’, the second single and Clark’s favourite song from the record. She says, “[It is a] song about not wanting to give your heart to somebody because you’re guarded and you don’t quite trust them. It’s sort of about falling for someone you don’t quite trust. So that is the core of the album, and that’s why I like it the best.”
Recording the album over one rather intense week with musicians Harry and Jack Hookey in Victoria, Clark actually began work on Love & Lovely Lies about a year ago. She laughs, “It’s amazing how the recording can be so short and all the stuff surrounding it can be so long! It feels like ages. It’s a long time coming, so it’s very exciting for it to be so close [to release]. It’s great.”
Back in her teenage years, Clark got her first break performing at the Blue Tongue Café in the Blue Mountains – “Pretty much every week or at least once every couple of weeks,” she says. “[I’d] just sit in the corner, no amps or anything, just completely acoustic. Just sit there and bash away on my guitar and sing for like three hours.”
It was also at the café that she first performed her own original material. “I remember a friend saying to me, ‘Oh, you should play that song you wrote.’ And I’m going, ‘Oh, I’m too shy, I’m too shy.’ And then once I did it I was so happy because it got a great response, and I just couldn’t stop after that. That was it for me, I was gone.”
Having been bitten by the songwriting bug, Clark increasingly began messing around on the guitar. She would eventually record a number of EPs, and following the release of 2013’s Stories From A Porcelain City, she was shortlisted for APRA’s esteemed Vanda And Young Songwriting Competition, and later received an honourable mention in the Nashville-based International Songwriting Competition. This was a period of time in Clark’s life that was “the real start of feeling like I was being recognised for my writing”, she says.
“It really felt wonderful to feel like you were kind of among this really great community of writers who were giving you the stamp of approval and saying, ‘You could write a great song,’ and that your song was affecting a lot of people. That really meant a lot to me.”
Her writing process has evolved since then. “I used to always start the same way … I’d start with a guitar in my hand, and then I’d sort of throw some melody on top of it and then throw lyrics on top of that.” Now Clark’s approach is more akin to writing poetry – penning lyrics first, and often without an instrument. This is perhaps because she is most creative when she is away.
“[When] I’m out on tour … I’m meeting new people, seeing new places, driving through towns. All that sort of stuff really tends to make me want to write,” she says. “It’s also when I have the least amount of time to write, you know, when I’ve got songs coming out of my ears and [am] trying to write them all down as I’m driving from one place to the other.”
Imogen Clark’sLove & Lovely Liesis out Friday May 6 throughLost Highway/Universal.
