You Changed Me

Emma Russack’s second album is a great leap forward for her as a songwriter, and a meaningful meditation on time and place, writes DOUG WALLEN.

Surroundings loom large in Emma Russack’s songwriting. True to its title, 2012?s Sounds of the City* communed with her newfound base of Melbourne as well as echoing time spent in South America and Wollongong. Two years later, *You Changed Me dwells in settings just as powerfully and just as naturally. There’s the ?London Town? of one song’s title, the Paris of another (?He wants to show me his city?) and the lure of relocating someplace warmer (?Cairns?) or closer to her rural upbringing in Narooma, NSW (?Get Back?). ?In the End? was even recorded in the bush, with bird sounds accompanying her wavering vocals and acoustic guitar.

It’s not just towns and cities that lend a sense of time and place: Russack taps the personal (in fact, autobiographical) resonance of dwelling in supermarket aisles, of reading meaning into unfolded sofa beds and of crying all the way home in a cab – wherever ?home? might be at the moment.

Teamed again with Alec Marshall (Hot Palms) and Cameron Potts (Cuba is Japan, Baseball) – who contribute beautifully mercurial guitar and drums, respectively – Russack takes a great leap forward as a songwriter here, lingering on words and details for devastating effect. She makes lyrics about heartbreak seem anything but stock-standard, but rather transformative (see the album title) and eviscerating. There’s such a frankness to what she sings that it’s almost shocking at times; she complicates the import of the verb ?fucked? by drawing it out on ?London Town? – ?On the last day when we fucked?? – making it seem at once cheap, profound, regrettable and impossible to forget. ?It was not nothing,? she sings, trying to convince the subject (an older man) after it’s far too late. That’s fitting, as it’s a song about seeing the truth only in hindsight – ?I thought I was dangerous/I thought I was wild/I thought I was everything you liked.?

?It’s all a way of wringing out the full potential of her words.?

That’s not to say it’s heavy listening. In fact, for all those personal revelations, Russack sings with a breezy assurance that seems more strengthened by the lyrics? ordeals than shaken by then. And some songs are simply lighter in tone than others: while the opening ?Get Back? establishes the album’s intimate lyrical honesty, it’s tempered with soothing country licks. So goes ?Cairns?, its spindly hook curling forward like the tangible aroma of something delicious in an old cartoon. ?Stars?, a reflection on lying on a trampoline at night at age 14, is short and relatively sweet; when a classmate gushes about the science behind the stars they’re looking up at, she muses: ?But what about the way they shine??

Even with the differences in tone, these songs are so of a piece with each other in terms of musical and vocal delivery – save for the field trip of ?In the End? – that You Changed Me often feels like one long, snaking track. Adding to that feeling is ?Scented Candles?, its suite-like structure pointing back to its origins as a would-be rock opera. (Ditto the brief moment of prog-folk menace around the line ?What have I become??) Russack may dabble in varied arrangements, spanning flute on ?Women?, strings on ?Paris? and pedal steel on ?Two Lovers?, but it’s all a way of wringing out the full potential of her words.

?One wishes other songwriters could deal so convincingly with power and sexuality in relationships.?

Those words, again, are worth poring over. ?You don’t like me when I’m loose/When I’m anybody’s woman,? she sings on ?In the End?, with backing vocals by The Middle East’s Jordan Ireland disappearing from her side. ?You Shouldn’t? recalls ?playing with fire? in a relationship that’s unhealthy but yet makes you feel ?wanted, so wanted.? Similarly, the title situation of ?Two Lovers? doubles the affection she’s getting ?but it’s not good for my head.? One wishes other songwriters could deal so convincingly with power and sexuality in relationships; on the psych-tinged and album-defining ?Woman?, Russack maps out the influence of a man who turns her on to ?animal calls in bed – men in dress shoes – sport on TV – fine wine, fromage at 4am.? She adds, ?It’s no surprise you’re seeing lots of women/?Cause I felt like a woman with you.?

That song gives us the album’s thesis – a whispered ?You changed me? – and we’re left wondering how much that change was for the better, and how much of it even stuck in the end. Closing with ?Paris?, which radiates a kind of sadness that warms your belly somehow, the album drifts off instrumentally for a spell, like the credits of a film or the moment-of-truth, time-spanning final pages of a novel. If the first album was all about the city, this one is about the world, and those final moments answer reflections on the past with a future that’s still wide open.

As Russack advises earlier on the record, as much to herself as to anyone else: ?Life is short/Make the most of the time you have/Fall in love, see the world.?

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##?You Changed Me? is out now on Spunk. Tour dates below. Read Russack’s Track by Track about the album.

Fri, May 30 – Boney, Melbourne, VIC [w/Oliver Mann + Totally Mild]
Sun, June 1 – MONA Hobart [daytime show]
Sun, June 1 – Republic Bar, Hobart, TAS
Wed, June 18 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD [w/Cured Pink, Soda Eaves + Dag]
Thurs, June 19 – RAD, Wollongong, NSW [w/Soda Eaves, Snowy Nasdaq + Catman]
Sat, June 21 – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney, NSW [w/Soda Eaves, Joseph Liddy + Snowy Nasdaq]
Fri, July 4 – Hotel Metro, Adelaide, SA [w/Choral Grief]
Thurs, Oct 9 – Mojo’s Bar, Fremantle, WA
Sat, Oct 11 – The Bird, Perth, WA