If You're Stuck In A Rut, It Might Be Time To Take A New Path

"Yeah, it was pretty literal," Holly Throsby says by way of introducing and explaining her new album After A Time. "I've always enjoyed naming my albums. I think all artists would enjoy that process. When I was thinking about it I had some titles milling around in my head and it has been such a long time, really, it's been six years since my last record."

Throsby sits outside on a stupidly hot Sydney day at the relative beginning of the 'launching a new record' cycle. She's cool in the best way, seemingly untroubled by the weather or about revisiting the process behind the album that's taken so long to germinate. Opener Aeroplane, she explains, is "a really old song [that] was always going to be a centrepiece for the next record, but it didn't have any friends. I wasn't feeling them, literally." Rather than banging her creative head against a brick wall (or studio floor), Throsby switched outlets.

"For me the solution [for a creative block] is doing something like a children's record or writing a novel," tells Throsby. "I'm always challenging myself creatively and I'd rather move to different media forms to do that — and there is music that I've never released that is really different. I really enjoy making instrumental pieces, for example, and I do them myself at home and I do them just for myself and my own listening or creative pleasure.

"I've had the same font for every album cover and I have had the same width and border for every album and each release too — I've had the same intention as when I started."

"But in terms of this record there's always a kind of progression. This record is a lot more, you know, I had a lot of fun playing electric guitars on this record. It's got some real indie-rock elements in some ways," continues Throsby. "While [2011's] Team was based very much on wooden acoustic elements and the room sound of that church we recorded in [a 19th century church in NSW's Southern highlands]. So it's really different, but I think it's also quite unmistakable. And for me, the way I naturally write songs is… what's the word? I just do what I feel is the right thing to do."

After A Time may have shifted genres, but there's familiarity in the approach that Throsby has purposefully maintained, even as her creative spark has morphed. "There's a really solid line through all of my records," she continues. "I've had the same font for every album cover and I have had the same width and border for every album and each release too — I've had the same intention as when I started. I'm not an artist who's interested in completely re-inventing themselves with every record or anything like that — I'm interested in reflecting on what is in front of me in this time in my life. And I'm interested in song as a form and what the use of that is."

Although this is a solo record, fans of Throsby's collaborations will find plenty to sink their teeth into. While her previous joint output is hard to top — the magnificent Seeker Lover Keeper's self titled album (with Sarah Blasko and Sally Seltmann) or her duet with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy on Would You?, for example — she's certainly had a good crack at it. In addition to a fabulous group of players, there are some amazing feature musicians; Dirty Three's Mick Turner, long-time collaborator Bree van Reyk (Paul Kelly, Seeker Lover Keeper), Marcus Whale and feature vocalist Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters). Although most of these weren't new partnerships, it's lovely to hear Throsby describe her process of getting the players on board. Her fangirl-ness, stories of building on older creative connections and shared love of the creative scene is infectious — and certainly gets captured in the sounds on the record.

"It's not necessarily that hard to organise," she says of getting the group together. "Bree has played drums for me forever, since 2005 or something. And as for playing with Mick, I went to a Dirty Three show the last time they played at the State Theatre in Sydney, and I was particularly thinking about him playing on a song called Gardening on this record.

"I know Mick personally and his wife Peggy [Frew], who wrote a really great novel," expands Throsby. "I went to her when I was writing my first novel Goodwood for advice and stuff and she was lovely. So after the Dirty Three show I was backstage and I said, 'I have this song,' and he was so generous. He said, 'Absolutely, send it to me,' and after hearing what he did with that one song I said 'There's another four,'" she laughs. "And Marcus Whale has become a close friend, he's kind of a family member of mine, his saxophone playing on the record was just fantastic. I just asked for what I thought the songs needed and invited people in."

A particular gem is What Do You Say?, an unexpected but striking duet with Kozelek that tells the story of a perhaps doomed love. It's almost impossible to listen to without reaching for the repeat button. "I started writing that song in my head, without a guitar," says Throsby. "It was when I was away last Christmas and I was on the Central Coast lying in this hot room and I was thinking about this call and response part, which I'd done before on Would You, which Bonnie Prince Billy sang on. It has always been one of my favourite things that has ever happened — he's one of my heroes, so I still cannot believe that it happened. So I imagined the idea of revising that, like where would you be years later — the beginnings of love and the ideas of commitment, and the idea of 'what do you say?' for the chorus just wrote itself extremely quickly, and as the song goes through and develops it's this real conversation between people. And just as I was going through it in my head I could hear Mark's voice on it. I finally just emailed and said, 'I've got this song and I can hear you on it,' and he essentially said 'Yes' without even hearing it. And he was really into it, which is great. He really loves the song and I think you can hear that in his performance. And he loves the tension in it, I think you can hear that."

Although now firmly back on the musician track of her creative life, Throsby's work as a novelist with recent debut Goodwood has also received much acclaim. While she says she sees those sides of her creative life as "very separate", it's too tempting not to ask if she might score a soundtrack for the novel one day and bring everything together for a short time. "I'd love to do the soundtrack — and I hope that it happens, I've heard some rumours," she laughs. Get out your cheque books, potential backers — let's make this happen.