Project Description

Interview with

ANGIE HART

By Benjamin Smith

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Photo – Steve McKenzie

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Some years ago Angie Hart endeared herself to Australia as the face of indie pop collective Frente! Since then she’s been involved in all kinds of unusual projects. She was in a two-piece called Splendid with then husband Jessie Tobias. She did some collaborative work with Joss Whedon. She was in a band called Holidays on Ice for some time and has released a few solo records.

She was also involved with Women of Letters since its inception, a project describing itself as a celebration of the lost art of letter writing with monthly salons featuring five prominent female artists, writers, politicians and comedians. The project drew strong praise from figures as diverse as Amanda Palmer and actress-cum-jazz singer Molly Ringwald.

In between,  she and a group of friends formed the a-capella sextet Ladychoir. She recorded two tracks for a new project called Borrowed Verse which brings musicians and poets together to capture the best of both. She’s had a round of shows with Parlour, a touring company that connects fans and artists in the unique setting of their own backyards and living rooms. On top of that she’s been writing for not one but two albums; one solo and one with her old sparring partner from Frente! Simon Austin. She’s also mother to a three year old. In other words, its fair to say Angie has been busy.

Generously, Angie took a few minutes out of her very busy schedule to talk to AMNplify about many things.

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Benjamin: First let me ask you about a project you’re involved in called Borrowed Verse. What can you tell me about that project. How did you get involved with it, what do you bring to it, what do you feel like you got out of it?

Angie: Well, like most things you just get a message one day. Someone approaches and asks you if you’d like to be a part of their project and this particular one really resonated with me. I’m not a great poetry reader, not a broad poetry reader, but I do have favourite poems and this project was about adapting works of a poet that you liked. I had been given this book by Dorothy Porter ‘The Bee Hut’, during a time of grief for myself and it was just a really great touchstone for accessing my emotions at the time. I didn’t know how to get my grief started I guess you could say, so it was really great to take some of these poems and think about how I would put them into a song. I’ve been really stuck trying to write my own solo material at the moment and one of my biggest roadblocks has been grief so it really got things started for me. I started on piano, which I never do. I’m a words person so having the words already there, when that’s my job is actually really liberating. And daunting. So it appealed to me for a lot of reasons. 

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Benjamin: Do you feel like you have much of a connection to Porter herself? She is kind of an interesting figure. Daughter of this towering figure of the legal world, influential queer poet, partner of another prominent queer literary personality. Did you feel like you developed something of an understanding of her and her work in making your contribution to the project?

Angie: Um, honestly I didn’t know much about her until I was given this book and, then even more so once I started working on Borrowed Verse. I still have so much to learn about her but I’m now definitely in deep, but it was all news to me which is great to find out about women doing this kind of work. Once again going back to the grief, her work was so joyous and alive and the way that she’s able to access her feelings and what she needs to talk about. I felt that that was very victorious and powerful and that is something that I struggle with in my writing when I’m trying to access my darker feelings, so I guess she’s become quite a role model for me quite quickly?

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Benjamin: When are we likely to see some material released from the project? 

Angie: I think there should be something released around mid-June. 

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Benjamin: On the subject of women as role models, what can you tell me about the Women of Letters project that you’ve been involved with for a while now? 

Angie:  Women of Letters I’ve been involved with in some capacity from the start. I was one of the readers on their first date, which was ‘A Letter to the Night that I’d Rather Forget’. And they had no idea what the event was going to be like back then. I seem to often do pilots for people and I was definitely one of their pilots. My letter was pretty awful, I’m learning more about the format and what people bring to it. I’ve written a few letters since then and they’re definitely more in the spirit of what Women of Letters was all about. I was quite protective and quite cagey. I wrote like a composite letter of a few instances without really giving too much away, which  I made up for later.  I wrote a couple of letters that were really cathartic. Knowing that its a one-off and knowing that you’re going to read it to this audience and then have it evaporate if you would like. I wrote a letter to the child I was never going to have. She turned up right around the time of publication, which was pretty amazing for me. So she has a letter of how much we wanted her, which is pretty cool. 

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Benjamin: You’re now the chair of Women of Letters and have a much more active role in running proceedings, is that right?

Angie: Yeah, so I’ve been hosting and co-curating for about a year. We’re coming to a close now, we’re taking a very long hiatus and I’m not sure what the next incarnation of Women of Letters will be. I’m going to stand aside. We had our last event for now at the Sydney Writers Festival and it’s a corker. I’m really looking forward to that and it’s a nice way to close it for me, but it will live on.

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Angie Hart

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Benjamin: Continuing with the theme of collaborating with other women how did you work with Ladychoir come about? 

Angie: It’s been a sneaky little creep up, that one. We’re all friends and I’ve known most of the girls in some capacity in music along the way. There was about five years ago or so, maybe longer, I did some backup vocals on Emma Heeney’s record and then Sophie Koh was doing some songs and wanted a choir singing on some of her stuff and so we got together informally and did some work on her songs and after a while it just started to feel like a thing. Tess Hilderbrand-Burke, who says she’s not the leader of Ladychoir but really is, officially got us all together. She made the first arrangements and got us rehearsing them and doing house concerts and now we’re a thing.

Benjamin: I see that you perform from time to time but do you have any plans to record? 

Angie: We would like to. Its really difficult at this stage of all our careers to have a slow burn on something and to just let something evolve and see how it goes and I feel like Ladychoir has really been able to do that. We’ve been together now for maybe two years and we’ve been rotating our songs and bringing in some originals and some that are actually new. I like feel like I’m in my early twenties, just musically that is, not in any other way. Its seldom that you get a chance to do that, to work something up and really get your form so I think that we’re going get our form and then I’m sure we’re going to record. 

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Benjamin: Before we talk about your new solo record I wanted to ask you about some things to do with your previous release. There are some really interesting collaborations and interesting pieces on that record. Going back over Eat My Shadow there is a real sense of optimism that comes through. It’s kind of a picture of someone who is confident and comfortable in their own skin, forward facing. When you look back at that record is that how it feels to you now, in hindsight?

Angie: Um, that’s a really nice take on it. I’m not sure that is how I felt about it and from where I’m standing now I wish that I felt that way. Its great when you put a record together and you get that certainty and you just collect all your thought and everything culminates just for the time of making the record. There is a moment of clarity and then you move on and start analysing everything again and start pulling it all apart. 

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Benjamin: I feel like people don’t often make albums that have a central theme like that tying it all together so it’s interesting for that reason in itself, but I also feel like a lot of the successful stuff on that record comes from co-writes. Simple, is a co-write?

Angie: That’s right, with Ben Lee.

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Benjamin: Am I right in thinking that he’s a friend of yours?

Angie: We became friends in LA, which is hilarious. We’ve toured the world kind of circling around each other for years and it wasn’t until I quit music and moved to LA that we became friends. So that was weird. And good. 

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Angie Hart

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Benjamin: You were talking before about the lyrics generally being your job, were the lyrics in that piece mostly yours or was it more co-operative than that?

Angie: Some people I write with come up with a chord progression and I  write a melody and lyrics. Its different all the time. Sometimes we piece it together like a jigsaw and Ben’s definitely one of those where you work together in tandem on every part of it, so it was a joint effort across the board. You can definitely hear some of Ben’s phrasing on that one. 

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Benjamin: Little Bridges is another one, the Bonnie Prince Billy duet, its also a co-written number?

Angie: Yeah, that one’s written with Mark Seymour.

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Benjamin: In terms of the new record, does it have a central theme that you can identify as emerging?

Angie: Yeah, I guess I always do. I write in batches and I’m always pondering over some matter or another. Eat My Shadow was definitely about facing up to your darker side and facing your fears. This new record is not completely written because I’ve written a lot of songs and shelved them. I’ve been avoiding writing for a long time. I had a lot of doubts about it because I think this album is going to be about mortality and who wants to listen to songs about death. I’ve been quite heartened over the time I’ve been writing because there have been quite a few releases dealing with grief or mortality and doing it with such aplomb. I’ll never be able to make an album the way that some of these people have done but its given me the impetus to see the value in it and go ahead and do it anyway.

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Benjamin: What records are you thinking of in particular?

Angie: Seeing the value for humankind I would say Nick Cave’s last record and Sufjan Stevens‘ last record. They were both such generous albums about grief and a personal mining of how that’s affected them. I don’t know Nick Cave personally but from what I’ve heard spoken about that record it’s about a choice to forge on ahead with music and to be active in your music and to use it as a conduit for something that you don’t know how to deal with. That spoke to me so strongly and I just thought it was so brave and generous. I think generous is the word that always comes to mind when I hear that record. Its such a gift for other people. 

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Benjamin:  I wanted to ask you about covers as well. When I look back over your work there is a real canon of other people’s work that you’ve interpreted. Going right back to Bizarre Love Triangle and Here You Come Again, but also there’s a nice cover of Reckless in there, there’s a great cover of  Pictures Of You. That one especially, their version is so dark and moody whereas yours is more kind of plaintive and wistful. How do you choose a song to do a cover of and how do you go about stripping away all of the associations people have with those songs and find a way to make it your own?

Angie: We all have our favourites. I’m terrible at desert island discs because I have such a big rotating cycle and I love so many and have so many that I admire. When you do a cover of a song you get to study a song and how they put it all together and in stripping it back you get to hear maybe the bones of the song. The New Order song especially is a great example, its such a great song it stands alone without all those beats and production. I think that the rest is just limitations on my part. You know you can’t really do things in an y other way but your own. I just try to go into a meditative state and ask what my true presentation of that song would be. 

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Benjamin: Are there going to be covers on the new record?

Angie: Um, I don’t know yet. We’ll see how we go when I’m done. I’ve got some restrictions that I’m putting on the record just to get to a certain point. It’s all piano at the moment. There are no collaborations. I just want to have a singular stream, so there’ll be no hits. And Ladychoir will be involved so it’ll be very vocal, which will be a different kind of presentation. I do love doing covers so I’m sure by the time I’m done there’ll be something.

Benjamin: Because you’re not co-writing is there a bit of pressure? Is there a bit of a sense that it’s all on your shoulders? 

Angie: I’m trying to do the opposite and just have there be absolutely no pressure. I just want to write the songs in the way that they want to be written. The recordings are pretty simple too and I just want it to be a really pure experience for me. So hopefully if I can keep this brain on and make all my outside influences shut up it should be quite a lovely experience I hope. 

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Benjamin: I think I also heard that you were working on a new Frente album. Is that right?

Angie: Um, yeah that’s right. Its taking a very very long time but we’ve made some headway and that feels really great. I think we’re ready to do this with each other so its really interesting doing that in tandem to my solo album, where I’m doing just the opposite. 

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Benjamin: Touching on Frente, it feels to me like you’ve kind of spent the last two decades educating your audiences to think of you as something other than just Frente and to leave that behind a little bit. Do you feel like you’ve succeeded at that to the point where you can go back to it now? Or do you not think about it that way at all?

Angie: I don’t think you can ask people to think of you differently. Its pretty plain, I think your spread of listeners becomes more varied. So there are people that maybe weren’t Frente fans to begin with that might listen to my other material but you can’t go the other way around. I think that main person that I’ve been working on is me. I really needed to do a lot of work on how I felt about my music and how I felt about what I was doing with it and so now I’m ready. 

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Benjamin: When you’re writing for two very distinct projects at the same time how do you decide which project a particular piece is meant for? Do you start working on a song for your solo album and think ‘oh that’s more a Frente piece” or ‘this one’s too personal for that, it’ll be a solo record piece”? How does the process work?

Angie: Simon and I are still working out what we want to say with this record so the personal is not out of the question. It just depends. We’re both bringing separate ideas to each other and we’re both generating new ones from scratch together and seeing what kind of message we would like to be working with. 

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Angie Hart

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Benjamin: Do you see some scope for touring and some live work together as well?

Angie: Yeah, we’ve been dabbling. It never goes away. We’ve got such a great chemistry on stage together and its just too enjoyable not to do so we will do what I imagine will be some pretty light touring. I have a three year old and Simon is at the other end of the spectrum, his kids are in primary and high school so we’re a bit out of sync there. So we’ll be weekend tourers.

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Benjamin: In terms of the touring, tell me about the Parlour tours. They are an interesting phenomenon, but tell me how are they different from even other small tours you’ve done? 

Angie: I know Deborah Conway has been doing it off her own back for fifteen or twenty years. She is her own parlour tourer. Frente did a competition thing with TripleJ back when it was a different beast where you would get Frente to come and play in your backyard and there was one for every state. We fulfilled those as we toured around Australia; just turning up to people’s houses and that was really fun and terrifying at the same time. Cut to now and it’s so much more formalised. Parlour have really got it worked out. I think they’ve really ironed out a lot of the kinks. We really enjoyed doing them and if we’ve got a release we might partner up with them again and do some more of those. I heard about it through Sophie Koh who did a round of them and then they approached me separately and because they were already tried and trusted by a friend I jumped in. 

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Benjamin: What is the difference between doing them as solo tours and doing them as Frente tours?

Angie: The banter! The banter is 100% different. Simon and I have a thing, its just such a game of badminton, whereas when its just my solo thing there’s a very different conversation. I mean I joke but my songs are such downers that it’s not much of a joke. Not quite the party atmosphere.

Benjamin: You sound like you have so much going on. How do you not get overwhelmed by it all? 

Angie: I feel like I’m learning to prioritise. When I had my baby I feel like I had this overwhelming urge to work which is ridiculous because I wanted her so badly, but as soon as I had her I felt like, as a mother, I needed to have a career as well. So, kind of juggling that. I had my first gig when she was five weeks old. Since then I’ve just been going hammer and tongs. So with the Women of Letters I really felt like that chapter needed to come to a close because I really need to streamline some of this business  and do some songwriting. You know they talk about the art of being busy and spend your time using up your time or you can build some long lead things and that’s what I’m going to do. 

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Benjamin: Angie Hart, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us about your super hectic life.

Angie: Thanks, talk soon. 

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Angie Hart

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