Living in beauty
TWO NEW ALBUMS REVEAL HOW PERSONAL STORIES CAN HELP HEAL IN A TUMULTUOUS WORLD
At the end of a long day of recording up and coming artists, ARIA Award winning singer songwriter Shane Nicholson would pour a glass of whiskey and spend an hour or two tinkering on a new song.
Like dozens of Australia’s studio wizards, Nicholson has been flat chat since the pandemic shut down touring, helping almost 20 other artists bring their songs to life for new singles, EPs and records.
After 18 months of late-night sessions at his studio on the NSW Central Coast, he ended up with his own record Living In Colour.
“For a while there, I was doing double sessions, starting at 3am or 4am on editing someone’s vocal sessions and then an artist would turn up at the studio at 10am and I’d work with them,” Nicholson says. “Then maybe I’d do an hour on my record at night.”
There are a raft of Australian releases coming out in the next few months which were created in isolation during lockdown with producers juggling both their own creative output and helping to realise the musical ambitions of their collaborators.
Also released this week is indie rock duo Holy Holy’s new record Hello My Beautiful World, which was wholly produced by band members Oscar Dawson from Melbourne and Tim Carroll in Tasmania.
Dawson has also been a go-to producer for several artists, with his credit appearing on new releases this year from Tia Gostelow, Ali Barter and Bakers Eddy.
“In terms of making music, thank god this pandemic didn’t happen 20 years ago. We were able to do a lot of things, more easily than ever before,” Dawson says.
“The title track is about the natural world but the record was made with every bit of digital technology we could get our mitts on. I don’t feel nostalgia for the music making of yesteryear. I love it, but I don’t want to do it.”
While they come from entirely different musical worlds, Nicholson and Holy Holy’s records share the songwriter’s quest to share their own deeply personal stories in an attempt to make sense of these tumultuous times.
The suicide of one of his best mates and musical companion, Glen
Hannah, in 2019 followed by the loss of a succession of loved ones – grandparent s, his partner’s father, close friends, all heartbreaking
– had
Nicholson turning to music to wrestle with grief.
He also got into Zoom hangs with his mates – a tough ask for an artistic studio hermit – to check in on each other as lockdowns rolled on.
“Glen pops up in a lot of the songs, not him specifically but the idea of grief and how extra importance needs to be placed on family and relationships at that time to help navigate that,” Nicholson says.
“The record is concerned with growing older and realising maybe it’s good to foster some of these close friendships you have rather than just take that for granted … actually work on them like you would a relationship with a partner. “After Glen died, my band, the guys that worked with him every day, it forced us into doing that. We thought we were a really tight group. And then when you lose somebody in that group to suicide, you wonder if you really are that tight so we’ve started chipping away at that together.”
For Holy Holy, songs like the single The Aftergone, featuring pop siblings Clews, explore the emotional and philosophical wrestle with the uncertainty wreaked on the world. Carroll prefers to leave space for the listener to ascribe their own meaning, but it is virtually – and in real life – impossible to listen to the title track without contemplating the existential question of the climate crisis.
The title was inspired when his young son pulled back the curtains one morning and, looking out on the family’s farm outside of Launceston, declared “Hello, my beautiful world”.
He mentally tucked away the moment and one day, listening to soaring strings arranged by composer Toby Alexander – a Holy Holy fan and now a collaborator – he was inspired to pen a stunningly beautiful poem which greets all our natural wonders, our sun, oceans and moon, our blood and veins.
“On Hello My Beautiful World
The title track is about the natural world but the record was made with every bit of digital technology we could get our mitts on
(the poem) there’s no reference to climate change, or habitat destruction or pollution. But that story is there too. The listener mourns that for themselves. Or not,” Carroll said.
“The album title can be experienced in a similar way. By leaving space in the stories, the listener fills those breaks to fit with their reality, and the feeling it creates is more nuanced and subtle and complete for that reason.”
Both artists wrote and recorded their albums with the ultimate goal of having new songs to play to their fans. When that can happen now remains uncertain.
“I miss live shows. We were able to do some early this year and that was great,” Dawson says.
“It’s that cliche, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. But we’ll come back.”
Shane Nicholson’s Living In Colour and Holy Holy’s Hello My Beautiful World are out now
For their tour updates, visit holyholymusic.com and shanenicholson.com
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