How music pulled Josie Moon out of a dark place

Josie Moon came to songwriting in a dark place. The 21-year-old singersongwriter has spent most of her life on Wellington’s Kapiti Coast, but moved frequently around New Zealand and Australia growing up, due to her dad’s role in the Air Force. It was in her first year of studies at Victoria University of Wellington when things started to sour.

She had aimed to shape her media studies major and musicology minor into a career in music journalism — but it wasn’t working out.

“I figured, ‘I don’t want to be learning about how other people make music, I want to learn how to do it myself’,” she says.

“I just torrented a little interface and started making stuff,” she says. “I was just so miserable doing what I was doing that it was like the only outlet that I had.”

Moon took singing lessons, taught herself how to produce and began experimenting with songwriting — seeing how she could manipulate her understanding of pop music by pulling in RnB and lo-fi influences. Very quickly, music became a lifeline.

“I was pretty depressed . . . 2015 was not a good year for me. The only way I could get out of it was just having something to focus on. I would Josie Moon Rose Tinted EP Today

Playing The Others Way Festival, today, Whammy Backroom, 7.45pm

get back from class and I would work on something, and just seeing those little tiny developments, and getting better in each song, and finding it a little bit easier each time, was the way that I got through it. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have anything to focus on,” she says.

In 2016, Moon released two EPs: Pulse and Lone. They caught the attention of producer Nik Brinkman, who asked if she wanted to do a writing session. They ended up working on Moon’s next EP, Rose Tinted, which is set for release today. It introduces a more distilled pop sound that pairs her nimble lyrical style with lush, ambient production.

She doesn’t brush over the seriousness of her headspace a few years ago; she’s seen her peers fall into similar ruts as they struggle with the sudden life-change of university.

“It upsets me because so many of my friends are going through it. I found that structure is really helpful. I would make timetables for myself and be like, ‘You’re going to do two hours of learning how to do this production technique today, and then you’re going to study this language for a little bit’,” she says.

“Just giving myself that meant that I could put all of this restless energy into something, and make it feel like I wasn’t doing totally useless stuff.”

Rose Tinted, Moon’s “first stab at actually actively trying to create pop music”, was inspired in part by hiphop, RnB and 80s film soundtracks.

Singles After Hours and Call Me are tales of miscommunication and scorn in young love, while closing track 97 was a “frustration” she had to get out; “I wrote that really quick, and I cried a lot writing it,” she says.

“I used to write a lot about my friends and how they do things, but it was really important for me to start being a lot more sincere and blunt and honest with myself . . .”

“With that song, I feel like a little barrier broke or something where I was like, ‘Just write exactly how you’re feeling right now, and see how that goes’.” she says.

“And that was a really satisfying song to have.”