It’s nearly ten years since Tracy McNeil relocated to Melbourne from Canada, and she’s now well and truly enmeshed in the Australian music scene.

This is evident just by looking at the members of her band The GoodLife. Dan Parsons and Raised By Eagles’ Luke Sinclair share guitar duties, while Trent McKenzie (formerly of Sal Kimber and The Rollin’ Wheel) is on bass and Bree Hartley plays drums. They’re all established musicians elsewhere, but they yielded to McNeil’s leadership to put together the new album, Thieves.

“I think regardless of what’s coming out around me, I want to make a better record than the last record,” McNeil says. “You always want to do better with each record and you hope you’re growing as an artist. [For Thieves], the goal was to make the best record I possibly could in that given time and just be true to what I’m writing.”

Due out on Friday July 1, Thieves follows McNeil’s successful 2014 release, Nobody Ever Leaves. The members of The GoodLife and their various pursuits are indicative of the extent of quality alt-country and Americana to have emerged from Australia, and especially Melbourne, in recent years. This pool of evidence expands when you look more closely at McNeil’s career trajectory – she’s previously collaborated with Jordie Lane, toured with the likes of Liz Stringer, and Shane O’Mara produced Thieves.

“I can name a myriad of artists coming out of Melbourne that have made amazing records in the last couple of years,” McNeil says. “The bar has been set. I don’t think I consciously thought about it [when making Thieves], but I’m sure it’s in there. We all want to be making sure that we’re making good quality stuff that people are going to connect to. We’re aware of what everybody else is doing around us and it pushes you to do better, for sure.”

If McNeil is harbouring any competitive thoughts towards her contemporaries, they’re of a decidedly friendly nature. “Since I got here in 2007 it’s been such a warm music community, and everybody is willing to [cooperate],” she says. “It’s really been an open arms situation and people are willing to help each other out. There’s so many music venues in Melbourne, and the turnover is quite high.”

The members of The GoodLife have plenty to offer as players, writers and vocalists, which gives an extra dimension to the tracks on Thieves. However, McNeil had all the songs ready to go before bringing them to the band.

“As far as the lyrics, the melody, the structure – I take those songs finished to the band,” she says. “But they’ll come up with their own vocal harmonies, they’ll come up with their own guitar lines – Dan and Luke are really enjoying that kind of Allman Brothers guitarmony, ’70s thing. I might have a melody line, Dan picks it out on guitar, Luke adds a harmony. So it is a collaboration, but a collaboration in terms of the guitar tones, their parts. I certainly don’t tell them what to play. The songs are pretty fully formed when I bring them in, but it’s a democracy afterwards.”

The band’s collaborative bond is strengthened by the fact the members all share very similar tastes. “We’re all coming at it from the same place of loving [the same music],” McNeil says. “From the ’70s: Fleetwood Mac, Allman Brothers, Steve Miller, even the Eagles, dare I say it. All that old stuff with the harmonies, and then new contemporary bands like Shovels & Rope, Houndmouth, Dawes, Jenny Lewis. So we’ve got this real blend, but we’re all into the same stuff. So any ideas people would have, we’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s fuckin’ cool,’ because it’s not like someone’s coming from left field, listening to death metal or wanting to take it to a funk level. I feel safe and we all trust each other’s ideas.”

There is some variety among the artists McNeil names as influences, but there’s nothing radically different about them either. Accordingly, McNeil’s stylistic orientation is quite distinctive, but Thieves doesn’t stay fixed on a particular sound. There are more introspective songs, like ‘Ashes’ and ‘Blueprint’, which sit in contrast to upbeat numbers like ‘Middle Of The Night’ and ‘Paradise’, and the psychedelic-tinged ‘White Rose’. But rather than a premeditated plan of attack for the album’s dynamic range, Thieves developed in correlation to McNeil’s personal circumstances.

“I wrote the songs throughout [last year], and I was travelling. I was in Canada for three months – my father had cancer, and I was trying to spend as much time as I could with him. I was thinking the whole time I’d fly back to Australia and he’d pass away, but he happened to pass away while I was there. So it was a tumultuous year. The whole year was insane. There were a lot of friends around me going through marriage break-ups or affairs and craziness. And then two weeks after [my father’s] funeral I hopped on a plane and met my band in Nashville and we played the Americana Music Festival, and then we were in LA.

“So I was writing from where I was at the time, not thinking about how it would all work in the end. I knew I was trying to write a record, but everything was so specific. The songs are all really personal.”

Thieves is out Friday July 1 through SlipRail/MGM; andTracy McNeil And The GoodLifeappear at theUnion Hotel Thursday June 30, andMarrickville Bowling ClubonSunday July 3.

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