Tilda Butterworth interviews Australian musician and multimedia artist Annie Hamilton about her new album and creative process.
Collages by Greta Markurt, featuring photographs by Charlie Hardy, Jordan Kirk and Maya Luana. Illustrations by Annie Hamilton.
One October morning (for me, and evening for her) I was fortunate enough to sit down on Zoom with Sydney-based musician and multimedia artist Annie Hamilton.
It was a joy to be able to talk to Annie about her creative process as a self-managed touring musician, ahead of her UK tour with Clews later in November, and to discuss her newly released album stop and smell the lightning, which came out today.
The tour will go to five cities in the UK (Bristol, Manchester, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow), and I strongly recommend that you book a ticket to one of the shows if you’re local. The London show is in one of my favourite venues, St Pancras Old Church.
Annie and I found each other through TikTok serendipitously (or are we just at the mercy of the algorithm…?) Either way it was a blessing. I fell in love with the snippet of one of her songs I came across, and went down a rabbit hole of listening to all of her music. Because it’s where we met, the online sphere is where our discussion began.
A BLACK HOLE / A BLESSING IN DISGUISE
Annie: I have a love-hate relationship with TikTok, and most of the time I feel like I'm so bad at it. I'm like, “Oh, I don't have time and I can't be bothered to make content.” But you actually can make really good connections there. It's a place where you can post something into the abyss and maybe one person will find it who you then have a connection with, and that's really cool.
Tilda: Exactly. It sometimes feels really not worth the effort, especially with the horrible algorithm that puts you somewhere where no one can find you, but I've made so many lovely connections from social media, so I feel like it is worth it. Although it’s kind of a black hole as well.
A: Half of the time I hate it, and then half of the time I'm like, “This is just fun and silly and who cares.”
T: Especially if you manage to be yourself on social media, which it seems like you do. If you're creating a kind of alternative personality, that's really exhausting. You don't want to be doing that.
A: Yeah. I don't know how people do that.
FRENCH LACE BY CANDLELIGHT
T: I love your background, by the way. Is this your bedroom… your studio…?
A: This is my apartment… so yeah, it is my studio. What can you see? Lots of mess and lots of fabric. Mannequins. I've been sewing so much lately, and my apartment has fabric and pins all over the floor. Every time I have friends over I have to tell them to watch out for pins. There are pins everywhere.
T: You design your own merch but you also make your outfits for gigs, which is so cool! You’re a multimedia creator.
A: I love making my own clothes. I'm not particularly good at sewing and I can't sew things that are of sellable quality to other people. I have a clothing label where I design all of the clothes myself and then get them made, locally and sustainably and ethically. But I love making stuff for myself, and costumes for shows and videos. And I made my friend's wedding dress, which has been taking up every minute of my life for the last month.
T: I'm very observant on social media — don’t be creeped out by the fact that I know about everything you're talking about. But I saw the wedding dress and it was so gorgeous.
A: Oh my god, it was insane. So many of my friends were like, “I had no idea you could sew like that,” and I was like, “Neither did I!” It's way above what I thought my skill set was, so I actually surprised myself with that one. I had the fabric spread out over the whole floor of my apartment. On the one hand it was kind of stressful, but on the other hand I was like, “How cool that I can just sit here, put on music, light a candle and sew this beautiful French lace for hours!”
SPIDERS IN THE HALLWAY ONLY
T: I've got five candles burning right now — I felt like I needed to summon that energy, since it’s nighttime for you over there. I have always wanted to come to Australia, but I'm terrified of spiders. Is that an issue that presents itself to you often?
A: I mean, yeah. There are spiders.
T: Quite big ones…
A: The big ones are harmless. That doesn't really help because they're still terrifying. I live near the beach now and I don't really have many spiders in my apartment, but in the house where I used to live there were so many huntsman spiders, which are the big furry ones. I always had a rule that they were fine if they weren’t in my bedroom. As long as they stay in the hallway, they're fine.
NAMING ONESELF
T: Your old band was called Little May. Where did the name come from?
A: Honestly, I think Liz's [one of the other girls’] mum suggested it. And we were like, “Yeah, that's cool.” When I left Little May and started my solo project I really wanted to have a stage name, and I just couldn't think of anything. I thought, “If I pluck something random from the air I'll probably end up hating it in six months' time.” If I had a nickname or something that made sense I would've probably used that instead of my full name, because I liked the idea of having a bit of separation, so I could have my personal life and then a character. But I actually think now it's probably good that I went with my own name, because it just means that everything I put out is very me. The more me it is, the better.
AUTHENTICITY, SERENDIPITY, CHAOS AND HOWLING DOGS
T: I think that does come through. That's why I was drawn to your music in the first place — it feels very authentic, and very tied to your immediate surroundings and the urban landscape.
A: My music is very personal. Even the songs that are more fantasies are inspired by things I've been through, conversations I've had and places I've been. This album especially feels urban to me, but urban in a weird surrealist or magic realist way, where it's a little bit dreamy and ethereal.
T: Like you’re driving through the night and you don’t know where you’re going. I think that comes through in the visuals too. And in the background, there are these strange noises… and that's a bit different I think from your previous songs. It feels more experimental, perhaps, and noisier.
A: I never want to make the same thing twice, and I always want my music to be evolving. I always want be pushing it into new territory. I had so much fun with the production on this album — all the sounds in dynamite, for example. That song is so obnoxious…. so arrogant and confident and over the top and playful. We had so much fun making and finding all of the weird sounds for that song, like the screeching car and the howling dog. Jake and I were sifting through howling dog sounds on the Internet, and then we were like, “Fuck it, let's make our own.” So we set up a mic in the studio, and we went into the studio, and we were like, howling noises.
I recorded from the hotel pool i draw a line all in one take. I wanted it to be really lo-fi. When I listened back there were birds tweeting, a dog barking and some random stuff falling down in the corner. These are the sounds that really give it a sense of place and make it feel like you're in the room.
T: The chaos approach of letting it be serendipitous and surprising is what we’re always trying to do at Cult. That's our ethos — we don't want things to be really polished. We want it to be experimental and be a place for people to make mistakes and be a bit weird. That's why it makes so much sense to interview you!
A: I love print media. I love paper and I love typography and I love design. I love physical objects. Even though financially it doesn't make sense to be doing print zines or whatever, they're fucking beautiful. There'll always be a place for it.
T: It doesn't make any financial sense. It's like pouring money into a hole. But I feel like people have so little interest in writing a piece and it just being published online by some random outlet. They want to be able to hold it in their hands and see it, also alongside other people's work. I think that's the best thing about it — you make connections between things.
CINEMATIC SLOW BURN
T: I noticed that you have the phrase ‘sunshine gothic’ in your Instagram bio, and you mentioned Australian gothic in a recent post asking for film recommendations. Do you feel like cinema influences you a lot, and would you say any of that has gone into this album?
A: You know what? I wish, but I'm so bad at watching films. I love making all my film clips, and whenever I write a song I already know what the video will be. Everything's so visual to me. But I suck at watching things… I very rarely watch films. I think it’s because I work 24/7. I am doing way too many things, and [as a musician] I’m fully independent and self-managed.
T: That's a huge job.
A: I also do all the design and all the visuals, and I edit the videos. It's very hands-on. And I work as a graphic designer, and I play in other bands.
T: Where would watching a film fit into all of this??
A: Whenever I go to the cinema, I'm like, “Man, I love the cinema.” Being fully immersed and focussed is so beautiful, but I've probably gone to the cinema, I don't know, three times in the last five years. I want to compose a soundtrack for a film. But I feel like a fraud!
T: No, you're not a fraud. You just haven't come to your cinema era yet, I think.
A: I do think my music is naturally very cinematic. I love a really textured cinematic slow burn.
Annie told me that she’s planning to compile a list of film recommendations from her followers, and is considering starting an online film club… as if she wasn’t already doing enough!
ON THE ROAD
T: Do you like touring?
A: I love it. I love travelling, I love playing live, and I love meeting people — playing a gig and then hanging out with all the people who were watching and finding out how they discovered me and what they like. How cool that I can go to the other side of the world and play in, like, an old church, and people will come! That is so insane to me. If I could live on a tour bus, I would do it.
T: That makes me happy to hear, because I feel like sometimes you go and see touring artists and you feel almost guilty that you've made them come all that way, because they just seem so tired. I'm glad that it's something that you get energy from rather than being drained.
A: I like the little bubble when you're on tour and it's all you have to think about. Your only responsibilities are to get to the venue on time and play a good show. That’s where all your energy goes.
T: I really romanticise the idea of touring in my mind, but I think in practice I would be absolutely terrible at it. I need at least five hours of alone time a day.
A: Oh, I’m the same! I'm really introverted. But I think I've learnt, going on tour, to be like, “Okay. Bye, everyone. I'm gonna go exploring. I'll be back in three hours.” And then I have my alone time going through a new city and it's so romantic. Then I get to go back to the show and do the extrovert time. I have done the really gruelling tours, where it's exhausting and everyone's burnt out and you don't get enough sleep and you're driving for seven hours a day in a shitty van and it sucks. But this upcoming one will be a breeze.
ON TOUR WITH THE NATIONAL
A: In 2020, I was meant to sing with [The National] for their Australia and New Zealand tour. It was meant to be me and Phoebe Bridgers. I was like, “This is gonna be the best thing that's ever happened in my entire life. Phoebe and I will become best friends. We'll run away into the sunset. It'll be magical.” And then three days before the first show, Covid started and they cancelled the whole tour.
T: That period was such an exercise in dealing with disappointment.
A: It was just disappointment after disappointment. They tried to reschedule the tour so many times and then they just cancelled it. So then when I got the offer this time to support them, that was just amazing. I've been such a big fan for years. The whole band and crew are amazing. It's like one big happy family. They really looked after me. They're so generous.
T: They're so wonderful live, and they play such long shows. And they also have that serendipity element, because the setlist is different each time!
A: I learned so much from watching them. When I was in Little May we recorded an album with Aaron Dessner. So that's how I met Aaron, and then I've met the rest of the band a few times through Aaron. But still every night, they were like, “Come out for dinner with us!” It was really welcoming and so special. With some bands, you'll support them and literally never even meet them. So they don't have to do that.
QUICK FIRE
T: Favourite album?
A: I'm gonna say Post by Björk.
T: Favourite book?
A: I really love One Hundred Years of Solitude [by Gabriel García Márquez]. The magic realism in that influenced my writing a lot.
T: Favourite piece of visual art, or favourite photographer?
A: Francesca Woodman. Her work has inspired me a lot in terms of how much of a story you can tell with one image, particularly in terms of the feminine experience.
T: Finally, can you describe your new album in one sentence?
A: I always just wanna say it's a zigzag. It's a zigzag late night walk home. That's what it is.
A DANCE-AWAY-THE-SADNESS ANTHEM
without you is the first song Annie wrote for the album, and she says it informed the entire direction of the rest of the album, the spirit of the song infecting everything that came afterwards.
A: The music video for without you is gonna be the coolest thing in the world. It’s so unhinged. It's me dancing around semi-naked, frying eggs and setting the kitchen on fire.
T: Incredible. I do that all the time.
A: Total chaos.
T: Actually, one of my questions that I haven’t asked yet was, “Is your approach more calm or more chaos?” But I think that's become really apparent. I don't need to ask.
A: It's always a chaotic scramble at the very last minute. But that's just what I'm like, and I might as well celebrate it!
Comments