February 14th, 2021Just 15 and creating futuristic folk songs
With a diverse range of influences from mope rockers Radiohead to alt-J and Laura Marling, over the past couple of years she has performed regularly and put out a regular stream of singles. Her debut album Living Thing is due to be released in a couple of months.
This year started out pretty well for the Romsey singer/songwriter when she won the Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s Battle of the Bandwidth competition in early January. The judges were no doubt impressed with her songwriting skills which she started developing at nine years old.
With pieces such as Rights for Robots inspired by Karel Čapek’s 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.), it should come as no surprise that she is an avid reader of sci-fi/fantasy with dystopian and end-of-the-world themes.
“I get a lot of inspiration from the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas, Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games) and Robin Hobb (creator of the Realm of the Elderlings universe.)
“I just find it very easy to write about those kinds of situations because there is a lot you can do with them. You can make a song really sad or moving if it’s about something kind of tragic. It doesn’t always have to be the case but I just find it a lot easier to write like that.”
Another important aspect of her artistic output is video clips. One of those was produced with the assistance of David Blake of Kelly’s Lane Studio in Kilmore. The studio has a travelling pop-up component called Montville Lane Sessions and David worked with Sage to produce a brooding clip filmed among fogbound hills for her song Iron and Lashing.
“Since then I have produced more in my film class and I actually have a new song coming out which I did completely by myself. I’m really excited for people to see that because I put so much effort into it. It’s called Here are the Mountains. I like working by myself and can be a bit of a control freak at times. I like to know exactly what’s happening in the production.”
Like many performers she has been trying to put a positive spin on being locked down over most of the past year. But it is not hard to detect a bit of excitement in her voice when she talks about her next live gig – March 7 at Palling Bros Brewery, Heathcote.
“2020 had its benefits and I was able to sit down and write,” she says in another recent interview. “I have written so many songs over lockdown…and have also recorded quite a few songs. But I would definitely prefer to be out there playing live. There is something different to playing to an audience rather than a screen.”
Words: Tony Sawrey | Top image: Jacqueline Rae
