We interviewed Jen Cloher who will be headlining NGV Friday Nights at NGV International on 5 Aug 2016.
Describe your sound in 5 words or less?
Powerful, sensual, dramatic, humorous, ludicrous.
If your music was an artwork what would it look like?
I would aspire to Picasso’s Guernica but it’s probably more like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
What’s your favourite gig you have played to date?
I just returned from playing Barunga Festival an indigenous run community festival not far from Arnhem Land. It was one of the most relaxed and beautiful places I have played in.
What inspires/influences your music the most?
Music, art and the slow bizarre reveal of life.
What song do you wish you wrote?
Today I am listening to Elliot Smith’s A Basement on a Hill. I’d be pretty happy to have written an album as good as this.
What part of making music excites you the most?
Watching the songs take shape with a band in the studio.
What can someone expect from your live show?
A great band, Courtney Barnett on guitar, Jen Sholakis on drums and Bones Sloane on bass. And I guess a bit of a trip, my songs tend to go to all sorts of different places sonically and emotionally. We promise not to be boring.
Tell us about the last song or album you created?
The last song I recorded Famously Monogamous was part of the Milk! Records 2015 compilation album which we toured with 6 of the bands on the Milk! Records roster. 22 people in a bus heading up the East Coast of Australia – fun! It’s an ode to Kim Gordon in some regards and influenced by Sonic Youth’s sound to some extent too.
Degas: A New Vision showcases works by Edgar Degas that reveal how the artist observed the world around him. How do you feel your music reflects life today?
I have always written very much from my own observation and feeling. I’m currently writing my fourth album and for the first time I’m starting to look more to the outside world and discuss larger ideas. As a friend recently observed, “how would it be if you walked into a bookstore and all that was onsale were autobiographies.”
What are you working on now?
My next album due out in 2017.