This has been a trend for years and I think it’s time for it to bite the dust. And yes, whilst it’s been about the embrace of pop by artists who genuinely do love and respect the songwriting at the heart of these major pop hits (like DMAs doing ‘Life after Love’), there’s also been a lot of co-opting of work by mostly black artists to lend credibility and a shot at going viral for mostly white, mostly rock or alt-leaning artists.

What happened last week wasn’t just that a band said something dumb, it’s that they said the quiet part of LAV doctrine out loud: this is an uncool, inauthentic pop song, but through us covering it, it becomes cool and authentic.

I don’t want to spend too much time rehashing what happened - you can read about it here if you want to go deep - but basically Radio Free Alice, an up and coming band I have not stopped hearing about as Australia’s next big band and saviours of rock, covered Usher’s DJ got us Fallin in Love for Triple J’s Like a Version last week. The cover went well and got a good reception on Youtube. But then Triple J socials posted a clip of their frontman talking about the band’s reason for covering the song (standard for most LAV now) and his comments have ignited a barrage of global outrage (global!!!) for, amongst other things, committing the one cardinal sin of rock: being cringe.

The video has since been deleted, but you can watch the whole thing and the remaining excruciating remarks on that bastion of journalism the daily mail website.

I’m not here to defend what was said. Or to say that the band should be absolved of their crime of cringe, nor the racial undertones whatever their intent, or the fact they seem to be doubling down on the cringe in the comments sections replying to parodies with lines like “imagine if this was about us laugh crying emoji” (someone, for the love of god, take the phone away from whoever is doing that). It’s bad faith to pick a song you don’t like, and then bash it, and a lack of sincerity will always, ultimately come back to bite you as a musician.

But there are other things at play here too, including the conflicting metrics of what success looks like for Triple J that has created an environment where acts think covering a song they think is questionable will get hits. And what I’m really interested in is whatever the hell Triple J is doing posting a video like this. It’s absolutely diabolical behaviour, for many reasons.

I know how involved Triple J are in green-lighting and controlling L.A.Vs. Back in 2017 when The Preatures did LAV, I wanted to do ‘LoveFool’ by The Cardigans. I am a huge Cardigans fan. Instead we were encouraged to do something from a current JJJ Feature Album so they could maximise cross promotion, and we were given a list of suitable tracks that we narrowed down with our manager, before we settled on ‘Everything Now’ by Arcade Fire. I remember being fairly sour about this at the time but feeling as though I didn’t have much of a choice - we had a tour to promote and tickets to sell1. Around the same time, it came back to us that Lorde had wanted to cover our song Is This How You Feel? for her Like a Version that year, and Triple J had allegedly said no because a small indie band called The Holidays had done it for LAV four years before. She had then declined to do an LAV at all that year, which was pretty badass (as a global star with a global market I guess she could afford to have her principles intact). Ella and I ended up meeting at the end of that year, and she confirmed it was indeed true. At the time I wondered what business Triple J had telling any artist, but especially one as big as Lorde, what they could and could not cover, as well as depriving us of that moment artistically - surely that wasn’t their job?

All this to say that Triple J is a media company. One that sits in a unique space between taxpayer funded broadcaster with responsibilities to the community as well as enormous pressure in recent years to justify its existence and stay relevant under increased budget cuts and loss of expertise and leadership. This has led it down the path of behaving more like a corporate broadcaster, chasing engagement and viral moments. In going down this road, it has created and prescribed the conditions in which a young band thinks they should be covering Usher’s DJ got us falling in love ironically and that it will make them look irreverent.

I remember during The Preatures interview for the Arcade Fire LAV I had to figure out a way to speak about why we covered the song without saying because Triple J and our manager thought it was the right strategic choice. I can’t remember what I said, because it was only on air and not filmed, but I do remember I did not really like the song a great deal. But you know, by that stage I was more of a professional, 28 years old, and I swallowed my pride and got on with it because that’s showbiz, and I had a tour to sell. Which is to say, I can kind of understand why someone who does all their shirt buttons up and likes block party and is young and white and male, would be inclined to tell more of the truth of the situation than I felt I could.

We actually did a pretty good job and I made it my own. But I do look pissed off.

I have a source who has told me that, after shooting the section in question with Radio Free Alice, the other band member in the clip said he disagreed with what was said, felt uncomfortable, and asked that it not be posted. Fair. Apparently, the people in the room said they wouldn’t do anything that would make the band feel uncomfortable, and offered the videos be approved by the band before posting, which sounds plausible and also fairly standard practice. But then it went up anyway. Also - allegedly - JJJ then contacted the band to let them know they would be posting even more of the interview without the band’s permission this week, before then deleting everything - the cover AND the interview - from their socials yesterday. I’ve also heard in the time the clip was up, comments were turned on and off sporadically. What the fuck is going on here?? I definitely don’t have all the information, but it seems like some serious shit has gone down behind the scenes.

Pro tip: as you get more experienced being in a band with other people, you get better at roasting them for ridiculous things they say mid-sentence, interrupting them to disagree, and generally being more protective of your own self getting tangled up in nonsense. It took me 10 years.

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Why did they choose to publish that?

When you’re filming, there is usually some grace in interviews, as musicians aren’t politicians. I can say this from experience: sometimes (and often when you’re young and nervous) you say some dumb shit. I remember times when the camera was in my face when I just talked, without any real sense of what I was saying, and then realised I had said something really cringe. Like a Version is filmed at least a few days or a week in advance, you usually have some grace to retake your songs, and edit what you need to, so I’m assuming they would approach the interview the same way? It also lends more complexity when you consider that when you’re in a band, one person’s speech is often construed for the opinion of the entire unit, when in reality it’s barely true for 4 or 5 people to hold all the same thoughts and beliefs about anything. And there are other things to consider: was he answering a leading question? Was the comment directed in any way? We don’t know.

But I do think Triple J bear some accountability here - because any reasonable person would understand the implications of posting a clip like that, and they have chosen, for whatever unexplained reason, to light this band’s career on fire for clicks. Are they now in the business of gotcha journalism and clickbait? Choosing to edit and control when it suits their own interests but not the interests of artists? Or is there some more innocent version where they just didn’t think it was their place to censor? But if other members of the band did not approve the clips going up, and actually expressed concern, what responsibility does JJJ have to them? It’s all incredibly confusing. My first thought when I saw that interview clip was not omg, why are they saying this? It was: why am I seeing this?

I like the one in the sunnies. He looks friendly.

The ‘but they’re rich kids’ schadenfreude

The ick about this band being boys of rich and connected families speaks to a contempt for the gatekeeping costs involved in being a musician in today’s world - a very valid trigger point for our community as a whole. It’s hard to watch opportunities like LAV occupied by men who don’t appreciate the simple power of a Max Martin song. There is also another power dynamic at play here though, which is that everyone (beside work placement and internships) on staff at the ABC have regular income, benefits, holidays and sick leave. If something happens to them in the workplace they find unjustifiable or unethical, they have direct pathways to resolution. That, I would argue, immediately puts them in a more secure and privileged position than 95% of the Australian artists walking through Triple J’s doors, even those who are privileged and connected.

To put it bluntly: RFA’s leg-ups are speculative (living at home? connections? actual cash?), but they are still in the early apprenticeship of their career, their business in its infancy, and they are working for nothing. (Consider how much you’d need to generate a minimum, liveable wage ($940 a week) for 4 or 5 people plus super - sorry, daddy and mummy ain’t paying that for them to be musicians).

I know it sounds like I’m really defending the band here or being apologist for their comments. I’m not. What I’m trying to point out is that the moment that threatens to take down their career has been co-created by Triple J, our national broadcaster, who has seemingly done this to generate engagement for its own platform. And that is not good! No matter how rich and annoying the band is!!! I repeat this is not a drill!!!

What I want to defend is the vulnerability of young artists in these kinds of high pressure, high stakes moments at inflection points in their careers, wherein both the expectations and content is prescribed and created by Triple J, which is a historical monopoly as our only alternative broadcaster. There is no recourse or transparency for artists engaged in any kind of stoush with Triple J, both behind the scenes and in public. The place is as mysterious and impenetrable as a secret society. And my point is that the people who edited, approved and posted this clip, who are earning a wage, will not be pressed for comment or ridiculed online, and will continue on their career path as before. Artists sit outside the bounds of every structure built to defend the rights of so many people working alongside and because of them, but we are often not afforded any of those same protections.

And guys… social media. Ugh. When can we throw it in the bin.

Couple of thoughts to finish:

• Normalise artists having an open, complex relationship with Triple J, and just be real about where the true power imbalances lie, and how narratives like this are created.

• Also thinking about how many big artists and international acts would go into LAVs and triple J with their publicists, who then get approval and control of the output. And also how you can record your LAV musical performance a few times to get it right - why wouldn’t the same grace be afforded to the interview?

• Triple J: be a more musical, culturally intelligent broadcaster that is sympathetic to artist’s real identities and not a place where we feel we have to twist and contort ourselves into ironic, viral shapes in order to have a shot.

• It’s time for LAV to become a less calculated opportunity for an act to express themselves, honour their influences, dig into songwriting from all walks of life, and just do what they think is cool.

• I understand that people working for Triple J may feel defensive about the criticisms levelled at it/them, but a reminder: these are not personal attacks, but criticisms of an institution and publicly funded entity that I care about. In reality, when personal attacks happen, it’s towards artists, who are often young people of questionable emotional maturity and aptitude for such situations, with little financial stability, and who rely on Triple J for their work to continue.

I’m sure the band will come out with a statement apologising soon. It’s all they can do. But will any statement come from Triple J? Hmmm.

Thoughts? Prayers for me as Triple J discontinues playing my music forevermore? Open to disagreements here!

Iz

I know when the algorithm has taken over on Spotify.

I feel like it’s obvious to anyone with good ears. When it happens, I make the same kind of concerned face (nose alert, eyebrows up like a meerkat) I do when I’m worried something might be burning.

The fact that it’s not bad music is half the point. A verb-drenched guitar jangles, while a singer goes on about whatever over a cool-groove-instrumental-thing. Or maybe I listened to a 60s song by The Hollies and now it’s giving me groundbreaking recommendations like The Beatles. It’s fine. The problem is that a vacuum of taste has opened up in the room like a black hole. The whatever-ness of it is palpable; the ways in which it mimics ‘the vibe’ of what has just been on, yet floats debris-like on its own flat, contextless ocean, is enough to ruin the atmosphere. I find it embarrassing even if I’m alone.

Spotify’s algorithm is trained to give me what I want1. I can even train it! But with all the improvements to its algorithms and my willingness to love new music, I just don’t care about what it’s giving me. Now, why would that be?

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A musician and a technologist get married.

As large language models (LLMs) and recommendation algorithms have become part of our daily lives, I’m intrigued by their usefulness and amused by their obvious limitations, but I’ve never seen them as an existential threat to my job as an artist. Even back in 2019 when my husband Rupert, a creative technologist then working at Google Creative Lab in Sydney, played me the first iterations of what would become Udio, I wasn’t freaked out artistically. I thought that AI would probably come to be its own identifiable style, like Y2K or Pixel UI, and this style would become fashionable for a while, an option and a tool we assimilate and traverse stylistically, and eventually even become nostalgic for.

Hearing these early models generate songs ‘in the style of Michael Hutchence singing a christmas carol’ sounded to me like the most cringe co-writer in the room throwing shit at the wall more than the future of music, though Rupes was emphatic about how quickly they would improve. What we both recognised though was the threat these models posed to ownership and copyright for songwriters and recording artists. We may have been among the first to understand this in Australia, and took our concerns to the heads of APRA AMCOS (I’ve been an Apra Ambassador for almost a decade) in 2020 about the implications for its thousands of members, songwriters like me.

Since 2024 we’ve been living in San Francisco while Rupes works on the next generation of personal computing. I’ve been an eager adopter of new technology whilst also being sceptical of the tech industry’s assuredness that users want everything about our digital experience to be ‘optimised’ by AI, when what we’ve seen it deliver so far for ordinary people is more of a “mid revolution of mid tasks”2.

I believe the threat AI poses is a structural one for the musical ecosystem: as companies like Spotify and Suno apply a plantation-style extractive model to music, a medium where its actual value is at odds with convenience, music is being turned into a utility and musicians and artists its low paid workforce. The consequences of this shift are revealing themselves, as new artists struggle to cut through and slopwave infiltrates, and pretty much every artist I know is not jazzed about it.

It’s not perfect but it’s ours

Whether you love a piece of music instantly or grow to love it over time has nothing to do with how similar it is to something else you like. That undeniable “who is this?!” feeling owes everything to an intoxicating mix of factors: where you were, what you heard it through, and who wanted - or didn’t want - you to listen. We understand instinctively that the transference of taste is an act of kinship. An algorithm can’t force me to listen to Bette Midler like my 90s babysitter Caroline could, but eight-year-old me knew that blasting The Rose at full volume was her way of saying: this matters to me, and so do you.

An algorithm doesn’t have a direct relationship with me, no matter how much deep personalisation it offers. The algorithm isn’t trying to flirt with me, befriend me, provoke, impress or dazzle me. It isn’t trying to be part of my community or make shared memories with me. It isn’t trying to make money to survive, like a band playing a gig or a record store. It isn’t even trying to sell me something with the swagger of a label. It has no taste of its own to impart, and no emotional stake in the outcome of mine. There is no why.3 And the why matters a lot, turns out.

Even if people are listening, and listening more, doesn’t mean the current streaming model isn’t unsustainable when the two concepts – the value of music & optimising value extraction – are inherently at odds. Jimmy Lovine said recently that music streaming is “minutes away from being obsolete,” because of the lack of true connection between artist and listeners. It’s hard to fathom something as big as Spotify not lasting, but I agree it will ultimately disintegrate as he says:

“The artist wanna communicate with their fans, period. That’s what they want,” he explained. “They wanna communicate, they wanna market themselves, and the streaming services are still saying, ‘We’ll put you on our list, if you’re nice to us, or if you like us.’ That’s bullshit.”

Others like Ted Gioia and Liz Pelly have spoken about this at length. Gioia has gloomy predictions about what he says is the flawed economics of streaming, and Pelly has been writing about streaming for close to a decade. There’s one quote from her reporting that haunts her, she said:4

“There’s this former employee who I interviewed who told me that the whole goal of the Spotify recommendation apparatus is to help reduce the cognitive work that someone has to do when they open this app. And when I hear the phrase, ‘reduce cognitive work,’ it just sounds like saying, ‘help people think less about music.’”

She continued, “It seems like at some point there was some sort of convention where a lot of these music tech start-up guys decided that deciding what music you want to listen to is the worst thing you could possibly ever do.”

But, Pelly said, “I actually think it’s really important to listen to music that you don’t immediately like; to hear something and be like, I’m not sure if I like this. And then think, Well, why don’t I like this? What about it? It can teach you things about your own music taste but also just about music in general.”

Sometimes I wish my algorithm would talk to me like the mean girls in Muriel’s Wedding.

Music Discovery, Now with Real Human

Earlier this year, the Australian music scene was awash with paid promotion for Spotify's new AI-prompted playlist feature, where basically you tell Spotify what you want to hear in a chat and it generates a playlist for you. Influencers declared it had "changed the game,”5 and Spotify’s own press release read "We believe that technology is only as good as the humans behind it. That’s why we created Prompted Playlist." It’s unclear whether the irony was intentional in offering this as a selling point for a playlist assembled by algorithms, but what it revealed, perhaps accidentally, is that Spotify knows that human curation is the gold standard - and is using this to sell us a simulation.

‘Prompted Playlist’ and other AI features like it work well insofar as they can act as a kind of discovery-lube, creating frictionless pathways for listeners to find music they like. But there is also a great case for friction6 in music discovery, because when there are no emotional stakes in how music reaches you, it erodes the meaning of what arrives. And it turns out people who like music really like the process of trawling, crate-searching, and that point of connection in discovery. This is the conundrum at the heart of Spotify's model: the automation and convenience playbook that makes Waymo, Amazon and Uber more valuable genuinely does improve those services, because the friction in transport and delivery is just inefficiency. But friction in music, in both its discovery and creation, is actually a great part of its function, and the mechanism by which it means anything at all. And you can't automate the thing that makes the thing matter without devaluing it.

you can’t stop progress, the slogan of every genuinely good guy who definitely doesn’t leave his wife for his secretary.

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Inevitability is not demand.

My neighbour here in SF works in user research at Adobe, and one of the things she says constantly is that users - across the board - dislike the AI features Adobe has introduced over the last 18 months, both in practice and principle. In study after study, she gets the same feedback, but management doesn’t want to know about it. Companies feel pressure to introduce AI to appear innovative to investors, but it remains that this seems pretty disconnected from how unpopular it is with regular people.

Interestingly, Spotify understands that AI expansion correlates to listeners caring less about music. As the automated submission system began to take hold in 2023-24, its editors grew more anonymous and less associated with particular playlists. In an internal handbook, Spotify asked editors not to claim ownership of any one playlist, before laying off members of teams involved in playlists as part of its various cuts in early 2024. Pretty soon, different major labels began reporting their artists’ streams from flagship Spotify playlists had dropped anywhere from 30% to 60%7. And when the editorial team posted their song of the summer predictions in 2024, commenters kept asking: "Is this artificial intelligence?" until global head of editorial Sulinna Ong chimed in to confirm they weren't AI. The collective reaction was one of relief.8

The data on listener behaviour is starting to back this up. There is growing evidence that younger listeners are reaching a breaking point with streaming oversaturation (‘discovery fatigue’), and that the demand for niche programming, tastemakers and expert curation are all on the up. 9 Other platforms are doubling down on human curation, like Bandcamp with the release of Bandcamp Clubs.

Spotify has taken note, because in January 2026 their Head of Music announced plans to "bring more of the human voice behind that curation into the listening experience," including having editors share on video why a song resonated with them. But at the same time, behind the scenes, the company has been working to launch new AI-powered remixing platforms, and ‘artist-first’ AI tools alongside the majors, especially UMG who remains a 3.3% shareholder in the company (though this could soon change). But is this move based on what actual fans and artists really want?

Diagram from Hubspot/MIDIA “The Music Industry wants solutions. But do Listeners see problems?” by Tatiana Cirisano, April 2025

AI is here to stay in the music business, but I want the conversation to move from one of inevitability and monopoly to one of consumer-rights and choice. As a consumer, I should be able to opt out of AI features the way I can opt out of processed ingredients at the supermarket. That would be real personalisation. Currently, Spotify has a monopoly over the industry which makes any kind of competition or meaningful critique moot, and this means artists are discouraged from airing any grievances with the platform, even though we are both creators and consumers. And I think this speaks to something the platform would be unwise to dismiss: there are cracks forming in Spotify’s understory of listeners and artists - not a mass exodus, but a resolute, accumulating disillusionment from people who care the most.

Music is a Forest.

In Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott tells the story of how in 18th-century Prussia and Saxony, the state wanted to know how much revenue its forests could generate, so it developed scientific forestry and the concept of Normalbaum (standard or normal tree) that reimagined the forest purely as a timber-producing resource. They measured trees by how much usable wood they contained, calculated sustainable yields, and then began replanting forests accordingly: neat rows of single-species trees (usually Norway spruce, their version of SlopTree I guess), evenly spaced, easy to measure and harvest. The chaotic old-growth forest was replaced with something that looked, from above, like a ledger.

And it worked, spectacularly, for about one generation. Yields were up, harvests were predictable, the state could finally calculate its resources. But by the second and third generation, the monoculture plantations began to collapse. The Germans even coined a word for this: Waldsterben - forest death - because without the biodiversity of the original forest (the undergrowth, fungi, insects, and symbiotic root networks) the soil degraded, pest populations exploded, and the trees themselves grew weaker. The forest had become optimised for extraction but it was no longer alive. Scott’s term for what was lost is “mētis” - the practical, local, informal knowledge embedded in complex systems that can’t be seen or measured from above but is essential to their functioning.

“This was also of course detrimental to the humans living near and off the forest, now deprived of valuable - and renewable - sources of food, kindling for their fire, foliage for their roofs, herbs for their medicine, sap for their resin… because no one asked them: what is the value of the forest for you? Why does the forest matter to you and your community?

The questions we ask, the measurements we use, are not neutral. They shape our world.”

- Seeing Like a State

Right now, Spotify and others like it, who are themselves not music companies, are ripping up the old forests of music and replacing them with plantation crops, cultivating redwood artists and ignoring undergrowth acts who don’t clock over 1000 streams. This may work for the moment, but longterm it won’t be sustainable financially or culturally.

Distribution monopolies in music specifically have never lasted: sheet music gave way to radio, radio to records, records to cassettes, cassettes to CDs, CDs to downloads, downloads to streaming. Each format created a new power structure that the previous incumbents tried to control and eventually couldn't. And culturally, monocultures in popular music reliably generate their own opposition.

Music has always been an ecosystem, a forest, of which the music industry is only one facet, and far more dependent than it would care to admit on all the other raggedly unmonetisable things that keep it alive: the understory of amateur obsessives, the barely traceable transmission of taste through rich networks of local scenes and unpopular subcultures, and the multilayered strata of various musicians and workers. These aren’t inefficiencies to be optimised away in the name of progress, they’re the whole root systems upon which everything depends.

AI is now part of this system, an introduced species in a complex web, but while recommendation algorithms may suggest what we want is a kind of plantation-style drift toward monoculture, what we really crave is what the algorithms cannot model: the conditions of enriching messiness from which music, art and culture actually evolve.

More to come,

Iz

Images taken from Muriel’s Wedding, one of my favourite Australian films, about two friends who bond over their shared love of ABBA during the cold and heartless 1990s.

Two years ago, I set out to reform the band, pay off the debt we owed, get our businesses back in the black, and put on a successful tour. With no manager at the helm, I took on that role. And fuck, it’s given me a lot of appreciation for the endless thankless task of being a band manager. Although I brought on How Good to handle top-level stuff, and a promoter for the tour, I’ve gained a lot of confidence in my own ability to direct a creative business and produce the kind of work I want to.

To be in charge of ourselves again and directing that energy has felt good, like back in the day before we ever had any fame or success. Ultimately I find it more compelling to make my own mistakes than to be beholden to someone else’s. I like this quote by Grace Sands:

I do believe people can feel when that directive energy is radiating outwards from the artist. That said, managing the band is not something I want to do longterm. I’m not cut out for the world of the sharks at that level. I’d rather be a slinky fish, swimming in my own little world, with my rainbow scales intact.

Since getting back from Australia I’ve been settling back into life in San Francisco and reflecting on a very busy time: The Preatures finished our reformation tour with some festivals and a final headline show in Melbourne, released a live record (Blue Planet Eyes…Live!), put on a retrospective exhibition, and then spent 7 weeks recording our new album.

Launching the Blue Planet Eyes…Live! Record in Sydney in December.

I’ve had a surreal feeling of calm since coming back. Some of the songs we just recorded have been camped out in me for 7 years. I feel the peace of having them off my chest. The outcome - whatever that might be - has in many ways already been achieved really, and whatever comes of it feels like a bonus. I know I need to figure out how I’m gonna make a living this year, but I’ve been putting my attention into teaching Mina how to read, taking care of the house, watering my plants, watching a bit of TV (Love Story), ticking off all the bits of life I’ve neglected, and walking. I’m trying to do 10,000 steps a day and get up the hill at Bernal Peak every morning after I drop Mina at school. We’ll see how that goes. It’s hard to walk that much in America. But my legs need to be strong for whatever the next steps I’ll be taking might be.

Voice memo of me and my friend Holiday working on the topline for a new song at The Music Farm.

I’ve been thinking a lot about having another baby. This decision seems harder than the first. I’m 39 this October, and though technically I could wait a few years when we’re more settled and the band is established with our next record, I feel anxious. Will that magic year ever come? What if I miss my window? I’ve always been the kind of person that if I want to do something, I do it. But something in me is resisting right now, and I’m respecting that too. I love my career and I want to work, but also, like I said, I feel I have nothing to prove right now either.

I feel a bit like this in my favourite meme about 2026 (that references The Never Ending Story):

&…

• I can’t believe we’re at war with fucking Iran. What the actual fuck. A distinction for us on a temporary US Visa is that it does not entitle you to free speech. That is a right reserved for American Citizens. Implications here are for attending protests, posting on social media, and generally being a pain in the arse the way I would usually. I feel blindsided and numbed by this war as I try and keep up with the influx of information as well as figure out what I am supposed to do about it.

• My dear friend Emma Louise has released the first single off an album she’s been sitting on for 7 years, called God Between Us. Emma and I became friends as she was making this album. Since then she’s gotten married, had a baby, and gotten divorced. This song is sublime, and the video by Kristofski is the best I’ve seen in ages.

• I’m excited to read this book NO TAGS, or at least - I’m excited to have the option to read this book. I’m excited to have this book look at me from the shelf for a period of time hopefully being months and not extending into years. I really hope I do read this book because it looks great and right up my alley. It’s always such a gamble with books. Buying them feels like I am basically in a Casino. But I find comfort in having the right sorts of the books laying around - because I know if I were actually reading and not doing things like googling The Kennedy Curse and which Kennedy drove off a bridge and killed the passenger before bed, it’s books like these I would be reading. And that makes me feel good

  

  .Until soon, Izzi.

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Before I had my daughter, I thought about writing in terms of chunks of uninterrupted time, and this helped me to carve out space. I would gee myself up with ultimatums like the next few days I’m going underground to write or tonight I’ll stay up until this song is done. I thought about cycles of creation in this way, like waves to be ridden into shore, and then a period of paddling out, pushing against the current, raw-dogging it.

When we moved to San Francisco at the beginning of 2024 and I went into full-time housewife mode, I knew the cadences of uninterrupted time were over. I didn’t even have an instrument with me, so my relationship with writing - my whole persona of being a writer - would have to buck up and adapt to my new circumstances, and not the other way around.

I started experimenting with half-working on songs in tiny bursts: in the clutches of time between things, like on the way back from dropping my daughter off to school, or cooking dinner, or in the shower/bath/onthetoilethaha. The catch was, compiling all these half-ideas felt a lot like not working, like I was pretending to do the thing I should be doing. It felt lazy. But hey, with so much responsibility in my day-to-day, I decided a bit of lazy was what I needed in my life.

And this has been really working. Over a year and a half of approaching songs this way, I have found verses and choruses appear as I do the laundry, or whole verses fall into place as I drive from the dentist to the grocery store. Sometimes it’s just a little game to write a small song as I drive from A to B, or jot down some lines of a conversation I had. I’ve worked this way in the past, the difference being I would often launch into writing the entire song as the image or idea appeared. Nowadays, songs are worked on over much longer periods of time.

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Earlier this year I had a cute conversation with my friend Stella Mozgawa, legendary Aus producer and drummer for artists like Courtney Barnett, Warpaint, Cate Le Bon and Kurt Vile. Stella played drums on my first solo single Jealousy and we’ve been chipping away at some new stuff together. She called me on the phone from LA asking “What is happening with your new solo album?” to which I said, fucked if I know.

“I don’t have a label,” I told her. “I don’t have any idea what I want to do, and whatever it is I don’t think I can tour it, or promote it.”

“Great” she said. “I’d like to be involved any way I can.”

After Stella listened to my long list of complaints (CHILD! SCHOOL! LAUNDRY! MEAL PLANS! NO LABEL! MANAGING A BAND! APPROACHING 40!) she said, “It sounds like you have a lot on your plate, and there are legitimate things you have to do. So what if your solo music was just low stakes, low stress, maximum fun?”

I couldn't believe what she was saying was possible but it felt great.

I like to have a plan about the work I’m going to do. The plan will often appear as a distinct image and sound in my head, and once I have that vision of what I want, I put a lot of energy into making it happen. I guess in that sense I prefer having an outline I can colour in. Without a clear plan I can struggle to feel motivated, and often openness can make me feel paralysed, like I’m standing in front of a blank canvas. The idea that my music could or would be anything less than something I would control and devote myself entirely to, seemed kinda cahrazay. Stella was essentially saying I’d love to have a party where we drink wine and throw shit on the canvas and have a great time, and you know what, we’ll probably make something pretty cool. While I wanted to be able to hand out neat colouring-in sheets to everyone with a pre-vetted assignment to which I already knew the answers: This is where I want the blue, this is where I see orange, please see me after for a sticker because you’ve been very good! Of course it will turn out great if you do exactly as I say.

To be honest, the first option has been how I’ve always done it and what’s worked for me (I mean, I guess it has?), so I’m hesitant to relinquish this way of working. But what if I did embrace MAXIMUM FUN? LOW STAKES? (What?!) LOW STRESSSS.

It’s like a little door in my brain popped open at Stella’s suggestion and released my ragged writer-self into a field where cool shit happens. Artists ultimately need to believe that anything is possible. I need to feel and believe I can keep creating, even if it’s not the throne-bearer of my ego. And yes, even if I can’t see a plan for it yet.

Here are a few things I’m up to at the moment in the spirit of LS, LS, MF:

1. I’m listening to Jeff Tweedy’s How To Write One Song a Day audiobook. Such an easy listen and so many good tips that instantly inspired me.

2. I keep my voice memo app close by all the time and record anything: little song ideas as I’m driving/doing drop offs and picks up. I tend to stockpile words and sentences I like that end up in lyrics down the line. And often songs will begin to compound as I go about my day focusing on other things, and I’ll chip away at them. Sometimes the bridge lyrics for a song will suddenly come to me weeks or months after a song idea was started. I also record conversations (which is a bit naughty but whatever you gotta do what you gotta do).

3. I get some magazines and books and just highlight words I like. This takes the pressure off reading which can often feel like one more thing on the to-do list.

4. Love this episode of The Money Trench Podcast, an interview with The 1975 Manager Jamie Oborne about Dirty Hits Independent Record Label in the UK and keeping the spirit of independence alive. I never really got the 1975 but I love the ethos behind their story.

5. I keep asking, how can I make this super easy on myself?

[ABOVE] Me in 2021, in my studio at home in Redfern, Sydney. Pregnant with Mina. I wrote and produced the score for the movie ‘Plan B’ and finished my solo record izzi here within a six month period.

[BELOW] Me today in the bones of my new studio in SF, everything found either on the street or marketplace. Who knows what I’m gonna make here!

Today we’re moving into part 2 of Fishing for Gems, the exercise I introduced early on in The Artist’s Almanac section of my Substack.

Today we’re going deeper to that dark part of the psyche where our disgust and dislike hang out like creepy fish.

A real photo of my feelings about Ed Sheeran’s music being captured for the first time in public.

Yes yes I know, it’s hard to really lean into this for some people. There are many great artists I’ve rarely heard say a bad word about anyone, who are so busy engrossed in their work they don’t even have time to neg on others. But I’d argue that’s because emotional equanimity is already operating inherently in what they’re doing.

A quick aside before we get started: I have an apology to make. I’ve been so deep in organising this Preatures tour that I’ve neglected the offerings I promised paid subscribers.

So I’ve decided to open up a few Monday Afternoons to 30 minute 1:1 chats, during the time I’ll be in Australia for The Preatures Tour, June - August 2025, for all subscribers only for a short time. I remember my experience coming up as a new artist and not knowing who to turn to for advice, and I’m passionate about offering support that is free and accessible when I have capacity to balance it with, you know, my life.

More info on that below.

All of this sympathy is just a knife.

This exercise is not about feeding comparison, envy and hatred but rather creating space for them in genuine ways that leave room in your work for complexity to thrive, and reveal more about what you are trying to do.

After completing the first five questions of the Fishing for Gems exercise, the questions follow on:

6. List at least 3 things you are actively working toward, and 3 things you would do if there were no barriers.

7. Think about the people, fictional or real, living or dead, who inspire you. Who are your heroes, artistic or otherwise? List them and a brief sentence about each. What qualities do they embody?

8. Now think about the people, fictional or real, living or dead, that irritate, challenge or trigger you. Don’t worry about appearing ‘nice.’ List them here and a brief sentence about why each of them give you the ick.

I think about Charlie XCX’s song Sympathy is a Knife, where she not only sings about comparison and its corrosive effect on her, but also her inability to reckon with the position of another woman in the industry (very Nemesis-Coded). In the process of naming the things (and person, we all know!) she is comparing herself to, she both frees herself from its power over her and embeds herself within her own mythology.

'Cause I couldn't even be her if I tried
I'm opposite, I'm on the other side
I feel all these feelings I can't control
Oh no, don't know why
All this sympathy is just a knife
Why I can't even grit my teeth and lie?
I feel all these feelings I can't control (oh no)

Considering your answer to what you’d do if there were no barriers, is anyone on your hate list doing something similar, or embodying something you’d like to be expressing/doing/feeling but aren’t?

Now consider the list you have before you, including all your answers to the Fishing for Gems exercise, and begin to tease out words that correspond to what you’ve written down, and write it all out on a big piece of paper / board.

It’s really powerful considering who you look up to, and who you don’t, and why.

Here’s a photo of my friend Eliza who was my first victim of this process way back in 2020. Big stuff has shifted for everyone I’ve done this with.

Wine and cheese optional.

1:1 Chat now open to all Subscribers for a limited time.

I’ve been so deep in organising this tour that I’ve neglected the paid offerings on substack. I’m sorry but also not sorry as the tour announcement has been going well and there’s been a lot to do!

So I’ve decided to open up a few Monday Afternoons to 30 minute chats, during the time I’ll be in Australia for The Preatures Tour, June - August 2025, for all subscribers only for a short time.

Are you curious about doing the Fishing for Gems process 1:1, or maybe just wanna talk about a project?

You can book in here.

Izzi

I grew up half-Italian and feel like complaining about stuff is about 70% of the Italian mindset.

Most of my childhood was spent hanging around my dad’s family as they complained. Nothing is too small or unimportant to be complained about for Italians. Intimate subjects can be more guarded, but the general rule seems to be that whatever is most loved and valued is also the most criticised. Food and Family being the obvious targets.

Have you ever listened to somebody complain about Mandarins being too dry for over an hour? I have. And you better believe the complaint contained a history of the mandarin’s origin as part of the citrus family (or something, I admit I was not fully listening), which were bred from China (I think), and an explanation of why this particular hybrid variant of Mandarin, that I bought on a whim, should never have been sold at that time of year, because they are never good at this time of year, complete with a scathing takedown of my gullibility for having bought them for too much. All this to arrive at the fundamental truth: that the grocer selling the mandarins had been going downhill for a while now. Oh, the disappointment.

The thing is, complaining usually comes from a place of caring about the thing and wanting it to be better. Holding something small, like a mandarin, to a high standard, is a way to say you hold all of life to a high standard, like saying I want this to be as good as I know it can be. Lately I’ve come back around to complaining as my cultural inheritance after a few years of framing it as toxic, ‘negative vibes’ and so on. I now see it as one groove of a record, a way of being in the world that’s as legitimate as the more altruistic codes I once compared it to.

I grew up in Australia where Be-Nice culture was ingrained. The maxim when I was a kid was “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I mean, that’s fine. There are moments where it’s strategic to say nothing. But I want to point out that if Italians followed this, Italy would be a very quiet place and probably not the vibrant cultural touchstone we know it as. Abiding by stoic good manners can keep you from expression altogether. Why be pent up when you can just be real?

I really liked this video that Ben Lee did recently about how being a hater is actually good for artists:

I reckon he’s touching a nerve here for Aussie musicians. It’s drummed into us to be down to earth, which also has some implied jingoistic expectations (you’re either with us or against us), and an aversion to criticism from the inside (it’s like the backsplash for tall-poppy syndrome). It’s a small industry and a small market so the approach is you can’t afford to make any enemies. And it stops us from saying how we really feel about lots of stuff.

Ben is talking more broadly about the art of complaining and hating as keys to your work, which of course doesn’t have to be about people, or music, it could be about anything. And it doesn’t have to be about elevating disgust, it’s more about folding it into the emotional mixture of your work in the right amounts.

In therapy speak: it’s about equanimity.

I remember when The Preatures started breaking internationally back in 2013 and our manager had us over to his place for a heart-to-heart dinner. His one piece of advice? Don’t become arseholes who diss other bands. I mean, he had been Jet’s manager, so I get it, he’d seen what success could do to people. But it seemed an odd thing to level at a bunch of twentysomethingyearolds who needed real support and encouragement as their lives were about to change in ways they weren’t prepared for. Tonally it was different from guiding us to be professional and respectful. It felt like I was getting ready to run a marathon and he was there at the sidelines yelling “REMEMBER TO BE NICE!!!”

But beyond that isn’t the whole point of making stuff to have a point of view and present it? And sometimes that involves going against something else?

The Preatures have always been negs, and actually at times we are insufferable music snobs. It’s one of the things that bonded all of us in the first place (except for Luke, he’s an angel). So I guess what I’m saying is, I wish we had leaned in to that side of ourselves, instead of allowing it to be exiled in the name of niceness.

I’d rather be an honest, authentic arsehole than a nice phoney with nothing to say.

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Beauty of the Beef.

I really love band beefs. I think they are so fun and entertaining for the public, and that part of it is celebrity working as it’s meant to. At that top level, it’s not even personal (although it’s often framed as though it is). It’s performance art.

Do we have any legitimate band or Artist beefs in Australia? I can’t think of any. I wish we did. Everyone is just too damn nice.

Which brings me to the topic of nemeses.

I think every self-respecting artist has a nemesis. Some have too many to count.

And yes I have one. It’s my little secret. He’s someone I’ve known for a long time, he’s in a very successful Australian band who won lots of awards, and he’s also a really nice guy, which make it’s all so much worse that I can’t stand him or his music. I remember watching his band perform early on in their (quick) ascent and thinking wow, they are really good and wow, I fucking hate this.

A nemesis inspires. They provoke intense feelings, passion, dislike, opposition. And why? It’s usually because they have some cross-overs or similarities with you, something crucial that serves as an irritating hook, maybe because they’re doing something you want to be doing, or in a way you want to be, but with blaring differences. In this way they become a key for exploration of your work and what’s important to you.

A nemesis has to be worthy, because you give them power when you acknowledge they are, in fact, your nemesis.

I’ll post the nemesis piece up in the Artist’s Almanac next week and until then, I invite you to make a list of things you hate. It’s really great fun.

x Izzi

Here’s mine:

1. Portals. Why does my dentist need me to sign up to their portal? Why can’t I just book an appointment on the phone?

2. 2 factor authentication. Why does the portal for my dentist need to be secured by 2 factor authentication? Are they worried someone is going to hack in and then… book a dentist appointment on my behalf?

3. Internet Music sounding like an endless slop-loop of emo diary entries over whateverness (Gracie Abrams)

4. Influencer lunches where everyone wears white.

5. Waiters who crouch (more on that later).

6. Everyone is wearing too many belts. I like belts but I’m finding the trend of it all overwhelming. Also should I be wearing belts on tour?! So confused.

7. Katy Perry going to space because feminism.

8. Katy Perry announcing the setlist of her tour that isn’t selling well in space. HAVE SOME DIGNITY KATY.

9. Coaches selling me online courses with marketing that is based on their ability to sell online courses. Even I don’t understand what I’m talking about but it’s real.

I have this oven mitt. It’s cute.

I’m hosting a live chat on Saturday, April 12 at 4pm PST / Sunday April 13 11am AEST.

I’m off to see Amyl and The Sniffers that night at the Fox Theatre in Oakland so perfect day to convene with my music fam.

We’re going to be talking about why having a NEMESIS has its benefits.

I’ve been working on a piece for The Artist’s Almanac about disgust being a galvanising force for writers, and kicking it off with you guys would help me get a sense of who is triggered and who is fired up by the talk of nemeses.

Maybe you’re nemesis-curious.

A nemesis inspires. They provoke intense feelings, passion, dislike, opposition. And why? That’s the juice: they become a key for exploration of your work and what’s important to you.

And yes I have one. It’s my little secret. He’s someone I’ve known for a long time, he’s in a very successful Australian band, and I can’t fucking stand him or his music. But you know, he’s also a really nice guy. Which is super annoying.

It’s usually someone who is bound to your greatest fears and wildest dreams. A mirror, like Magneto to Professor X.

Wellness and self-improvement culture has dulled the fundamental joys of being a hater. Most of my friends who are artists enjoy getting together and having total bitchfests about what we like and don’t like. We are impassioned and changeable, but being opinionated is the point. We’re human beings and we write often to process flawed and politically incorrect feelings. My favourite artists were railing against and reacting to something they disagreed with, if not all-out hated. But they weren’t driven by hatred. It’s not about elevating disgust, it’s about folding it into the emotional mixture of your work in just the right amount. In therapy speak: it’s about equanimity.

So make sure you’re signed up and ready to go for the chat! Reminder I’ve opened it to everyone for a few months while we kick this off.

Got a project? Let’s chat!

My 1:1 for May is open to paid subscribers. You can reply to this email or message me and apply for the 30 minute spot by telling me a little about your music project. Learn more about the 1:1 here. Support me by sharing this with any musicians you feel like would be into it.

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Toury Toury biz biz

The Preatures have announced a Brisbane Show and next week will reveal some more dates. Sign up to the band’s mailing list for presale access.

That’s it for now, a bit of paywall content coming next week, up your tier if you feel it but if not plenty to come that’s free!

Ciao

x

I am OK, but it was pretty scary. In the middle of the night I woke up, walked to the bathroom and passed out, unable to get back up again. Rups called an ambulance, the paramedics arrived (there were about 8 in the house at one point), and a neighbour came over to watch our daughter, who thankfully slept through the whole thing.

It’s taken me a few weeks to recover and process it all. And then we got the hospital bill. $4,500. We have good insurance, so I guess we’re lucky it’s not $45,000?

America.

In the month before the pass out I had been working long hours at home, not going out to save money (no coffees, no dining out), socialising very little, cooking all our meals three times a day, and solo parenting a lot as Rups travelled for work. When I got to hospital I was dehydrated and run down, and they had to pump a few litres of fluid into me. With the help of the nurse and doctor - who in a cute coincidence, were both called Nicole - I began coming around to some realities; first, that I was going to be OK (no cancer, no life-threatening anythings) and second, that I had been minimising my own needs and burnout, and this had probably help land me here. My body was fighting a stomach bug, and I passed out because I was dehydrated and had low blood pressure. I was released around 7 the next morning, bleary-eyed but grateful in Rups’ dressing gown and slippers.

It’s strange how easy it is for me to go stealth with my needs. It’s almost an ego trip: how good can I be? How much suffering can I take? In some ways I imagine I’m adding to an invisible ledger of goodness that will someday come back to me - or maybe more honestly - I can hold over others. But in hospital I experienced the same splitting-of-self that happened when I gave birth in 2021. I observed different selves inside of me, clear and delineated, like looking through a prism and seeing rays of coloured light refracted. And they were all over the place.

One was embarrassed, in denial, thoroughly ashamed of the whole thing. She hated the wires, the cold, the out-of-controlness of it all. She minimised and said things like “I think it’s fine” when it was clearly not. Another was deeply afraid and couldn’t stop bursting into tears, what if I die, that kind of thing. She was making various bargains with god the universe about what she was willing to give up if she made it out unscathed. And then there was another part, secretly gleeful and enjoying all the special attention and drama of it all: people helping me up and out of bed, Rupert sleeping on the floor (chivalry! romance!), Nicole coming in to brief me on what I needed (not having to ascertain for myself), pumping me with fluid (you mean I don’t have to pour myself a glass of water, you just pump it straight in? Excellent).

In the days after this I realised just how useful having a hospital photo is. A single shot of me, thumbs up looking wary in a bunch of serious looking wires would’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for me.

It took me a week to recover physically, let alone the feeling tearful and sorry for myself, with Rups picking up all house duties. At some point I realised I hadn’t told my mum or my friends back home what had happened, and that I needed to reach out, one by one, not only to the community around me, but back home. Which began to feel like a lot more work than sticking a photo up on the internet.

So what’s been the outcome of the visit aside from the bill?

Read more

But seriously, this seems to be the question I get most now from other musicians (ok yeah they’re all women).

Keeping connected to yourself, your work, your partner, and your children is messy when you become a parent, and I don’t pretend to have the one big answer for that. It’s a revolving clusterfuck, honestly. But I do feel like through mutual trial and error, Rupert and I have developed a pretty decent system for running our family life as a team.

Our method sparks a lot of interest in my mum-friends when I talk about it, which makes me suspect it’s not the norm. We do fall off the wagon of course, and when one of us travels and the other is solo parenting it gets harder. But this is all to be expected with kids and life. The point is we have a system to fall back on, and it works.

Our approach is based on a few key agreements:

1. Our household and family life, like a business or organisation, doesn’t just happen, it needs to be run. The running of it is a many-faceted and time-heavy workload, and cannot be shouldered by one person. We share the load as a team, and where we absolutely need and can afford to, we outsource help.

2. Every week, we have a Family Admin meeting, with an agenda (more about that later). If one of us is travelling, we meet on Zoom. In the beginning, these meetings started as ‘Admin dates’, on nights we could get a babysitter, but they’ve evolved to be daytime lunch meetings during the week now that we’re both working from home.

3. If we skip Family Admin meetings, balls get dropped, and we fight.

4. We go out for a date or some 1:1 time at minimum once a month.

5. 50-50 is an illusion. Aim to be equitable and consistent. And kind! And generous!

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The relentlessness of domestic life is what I struggle with the most. There is no down time, no “I think I’ll just take a bath and watch Netflix tonight” and hardest of all, little impulsivity to ride the waves of inspiration when they come (thanks gosh for voice memos).

Becoming a parent has cost me that way of working. In its place it’s offered me structure, purpose and parameters, great for Isabella the person and mother, and enriching to the quality of my work, but like chalk screeching down the blackboard for the writer in me. My writer hates doing things for other people - unless they’re glamourous. She wants to slop around and take a bath for hours listening to Nina Simone, begin work at 4pm and write until 2 in the morning, sleep in, and have a lazy, late breakfast the next day, savouring each bite, unbothered and unhurried. My writer wants a den with a lockable door where no child or husband can enter, a desk covered in organised mess, my mess, sovereign and untouched. I’m basically a man from the 1800s on the inside. Don’t disturb daddy he’s above all this shit.

To achieve this level of aloofness as a mother though, you would need a wife and a patriarchal system to uphold your disconnection from community, duties, and guilt. Ha.

At the least, the need for artistic solitude requires a partner who is willing to go toe-to-toe on all the gritty details of what must be upheld while you enact a soft collapse into the arms of your work [The apology for ever having neglected the work in the first place can take sometimes a few hours for me just on its own.]

For that reason, time must now be carved. Which is kinda sexy in of itself. Me and my writer set clandestine dates away from my family. We meet in rooms, sometimes hotels, sometimes cafes, sometimes in other cities. But mostly I’m on the couch in my dressing gown, and that’s great.

I am fortunate that my husband is the number one protector and upholder of the solitude and space required for me to pursue an ongoing romance with my work. And in spirit he always has been, since the day we met. But in practice he needed a roadmap to explain where we were going, and frankly, so did I.

In the Before-Time.

In the last few months before I had my daughter in 2021, I had taken on a project scoring an American indie film called Plan B directed by the wonderful Natalie Morales. As a fan of my band The Preatures she’d asked for me to do it (or maybe she wanted the band and got me? I don’t remember.) It was significant in that I’d never composed and produced music for film before, and actually, I didn’t even know how to use Ableton or ProTools. But I loved the project, and propelled by the delusions of grandeur and invincibility induced by my first pregnancy, I took it on.

I remember spending those 15-hour work days in my home studio, bouncing away blissfully on my fit ball, totally immersed in my work. Every now and again a thought like How am I going to be able to work like this once the baby is actually outside of me? would cross my mind, and another part of me would answer, don’t think about it. I knew I was crossing a threshold but when the pressures of the work became too stressful or I hit a wall, I’d run myself a long, hot bath (I know I know, don’t come for me pregnancy warriors, I took scalding hot baths up until the end) and soak my worries away, ready to start fresh in the morning.

Words like fresh, ready and morning are like mini-grenades tossed into the sea of disappointment now that I’m a mum of an almost-four-year-old. But I’d like to admit that before I became a parent I loved writing things down in notebooks and giving myself shiny star stickers when I completed tasks.

Fuck, I really miss that old me. So many notebooks. So much clarity. Time for stickers (MY stickers). Everything I wrote down stayed in my mind more or less. But over the next few years, after lockdown with a newborn, moving house three times, moving country, and breastfeeding through all of it while trying to launch a solo career as a musician during a pandemic, I couldn't even locate a notebook, let alone write in it or keep up a habit of referring to it.

At this point my husband and I were unmarried, living together, and both freelance, ‘professional creatives’ (I hate the label for completely irrational reasons) and shit was not good. We regularly couldn't make rent, created plans and budgets we didn’t stick to because we were too tired and busy to communicate, and our mutual, volatile careers relied heavily on a wide support network of nannies, cleaners, family and friends to babysit and supplement care for our complex and every-changing schedules. $$$$$$$$.

The tipping point came in 2023 when Rupert’s behaviour became pronounced in ways that unnerved me. He would stand in front of the fridge holding the door open and ask where’s the milk? Where’s the tomato sauce? When he did bath time, he’d leave the dirty clothes, towels and diapers on the ground, and the bath undrained. If I was trying to grab a few moments alone to write, a barrage of questions would fly from the other room: Have you seen Mina’s bottle? Where are her pyjamas (in the drawers?!), on and on like this. He seemed to need me to explain and organise, from the top down, every single thing that needed to happen in our life. I had become a secretary.

I knew this was not a dynamic I could survive in. But also… wtf was going on and how could I talk to him about it??

Fair Play.

It was at this point I did some googling and found the Fair Play System, a method developed by Eve Rodsky to divvy up the myriad of responsibilities inherent in running a household and a family (although you don’t have to have kids to use it).

There is some criticism to be had for it having a somewhat matronising tone about it, and like much of what we’re talking about, is born of a system that intrinsically benefits men over women, the patriarchy, yada yada (see Marilyn talk about this below).

But I can’t talk about our system without owing a great deal to Fair Play. I listened to the audio book, and it gave me real tools that transformed the way I thought about my own time. Plus it provided me with a framework to have a conversation with Rups, a conversation in which the stakes for both of us were different.

For him, an honest conversation about our roles in the household may have opened up the possibility of him feeling criticised, of not being enough. This is a big deal for the masculine, where being able to provide and action things is paramount.

For me, it was about not succumbing to a dynamic that would initially wear me down, then subjugate me, and finally swallow me up: music, body, soul and all. For him, it was a matter of pride. For me it felt like the difference between marriage being a prison or a partnership, between living and dying. It sounds dramatic because fuck, it really is.

Much has been written about Fair Play so I won’t go into super detail, but basically tasks are divvied into a deck of cards that you ‘deal’ every week. Both partners’ time is equally valued, regardless of who is earning what. There are special cards for life events, and daily grind cards, reflecting the greater workloads inherent in certain tasks or stages of life. In that way, you begin to get an understanding and respect for what each other is actually doing, rather than focussing on ideas of transactional equality, as men tend to be obsessed with. Being responsible for breastfeeding, middle of the night comfort, the weekly meal plan, grocery shopping and cooking, for example, is not equivalent to say, taking the trash out and getting gas once a week, and taking the car for a service every few months.

Building on the same systems of accountability Rodsky observed in the corporate world, the same system is applied the (often invisible) work that goes into conceiving something needs to be done, planning to do something about it, then executing or delegating it.

While the system itself is not for everyone, we used it as the foundation to create our own, and it’s been a game-changer.

We stuck the cards up on the wall in the first few months because we’re visual people.

Family Admin Meetings.

So, we meet once a week, every week. These meetings are usually 1-2 hours long (I know!!!). The shortest we’ve managed is 45 minutes. But investing the time means everything runs smoother. My husband loves systems, so he drew up this Weekly Brief for us, and we make it through as much of it as we can.

Please note, it’s dense because we run two households in two countries, and have been upping our capacity for admin over the last few years. We started off a lot simpler.

Please excuse the pink line - the printer was running out of ink.

We always start with an emotional check in. Either a version of the week’s wins and losses, something we’re grateful for, something we appreciate about ourselves, whatever.

Doing this opens the floor to talk bout how the week before actually was, raise any issues, and connect with each other before we get down to business. The intimacy this creates helps immensely with decision making too.

Rups writes up our agenda for the next week as we chat through the agenda. An example for the week looks like:

This was a finance-heavy week because it’s coming up to tax time here in the US.

Rups makes 3 copies of this, one for me, one for him, and one for the fridge.

And then we go over roles, which are always changing:

It’s A LOT.

But I look forward to our weekly time together, meeting like colleagues for an important project we’re working on.

At the moment it’s lunchtimes so I cook us lunch and we have a chat, followed by dreary stuff like the budget, which Rups brings to the meeting.

We’ve sometimes had these meetings in the car while our daughter naps.

From these meetings, we’ve been able to prepare for things like me doing a national tour in Australia, writing trips to LA, Rupert’s business trips, actual FUN and LEISURE. Plus, we know it’s within our means.

I’m sure it’ll continue to evolve as neither of us can stay in one mode for very long, but it’s working for now!

Interested to hear if any of you have your own systems?

Iz x

I already have a few questions people have sent in, but realistically think it’ll go for more like half an hour rather than an hour.

It’s grant season in Australia right now, and I’m spending the day at my friend Courtney and Stella’s house in LA working on three of them for the Tuesday deadline.

Thought i’d talk a little a bit about that in the chat, because you know what they say, behind every great artist is a lot of paperwork.

Ciao,

Izzi.

Influences aren’t everything when creating, but as someone who grew up between Cassette Tapes and CDs, Napster and Myspace, and the rise of a globalised internet culture, pinpointing my influences often felt like drawing names from a bottomless hat.

With the exception of poor Bryan Ferry who I put in the ‘Americana’ category (he’s about as English as you can get), I instinctively grouped acts together according to the movements, genres or eras they belonged to. What I’d left out was as revealing as what I’d included. If I’d done the same map for The Preatures, there would be more British Soul and Manchurian influence, and late 70s-early 80s New York Punk, whereas solo I was more focussed on singer-songwriters and alt-country.

What I loved about this process was that it offered up specific and unexpected combinations from the cauldron of my taste - like the synths and fretless bass on Joni Mitchell’s Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm and the chimes on Brandy’s Never Say Never, which I combined in Birthday Wish.

Even simply seeing two artists’ names next to each other, like XTC and Santo & Johnny, sent off a chain of sparks in my brain.

It was this map that led me to phrases like “Prince producing Bonnie Raitt” and “Bruce Springsteen if he was in an all-girl UK pop group in the 90s” to explain the sound I was chasing for my first record. And making connections between sounds, albums, songs and artists was useful when I stepped into the studio with producers, engineers and musicians.

Not to say there are deeper ways to develop this language, but I recommend this as an easy initial exercise for any of the artists I mentor.

Draw a map, like the example above, of all the musical influences that define your practice right now. Artists, albums, genres, periods, singles, whatever. If you favour one artist’s period over another, write it down. Draw the weirdest, most unexpected combinations. Share yours here if you want. Discuss.

You can extend this into writing down lists of acts you’d love to tour with or support one day, artists you feel aligned with, or that you’d love to be friends with [beware! haha. I remember hearing somewhere that anything you write down multiplies itself by seven. When I did this I wrote down Marlon Williams, and ended up supporting him on tour less than a year later. I’m still waiting for the other six though.]

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New music update.

In two weeks I’ll know whether my label will pick up the option for my next recording term. Technically this should have happened over a year and a half ago, but for reasons mostly due to the move, it’s blown out a fair bit.

Whatever they decide, it’s a win-win. If they press go I’ll have budget to get started on whatever the next album is. I’d love to do something with Stella Mozgawa producing or finally record in-person with Jonathan Wilson - he recently produced Ramona by Grace Cummings and the new Father John Misty album. Jon has a beautiful studio in Topanga Canyon I visited in June 2019 when demoing for the izzi record, but never got to record in as he ended up co-producing the album remotely. I’ve got stuff I did with the Lemon Twigs and Jonathan Rado I’d like to finish up. And/Or, I could go for a tighter, Italo-disco thing and release a single, something Emma Louise and I wrote with Michael Di Francesco / Touch Sensitive in 2022 and picked up again last October with Stella. There are a few ways it could all go.

Above: Stella playing on ‘Sugar’ last October. This is the song I’d like to put out next.

Below: demoing ‘Venus in Paradise’ with Stella and Mikey. “I’m just a little bit out of it.”

Or, if they decide not to pick up the option, I’ll finally be out of the major label deal I signed when I was 24 and that has defined - and at times, seriously curtailed - my music for 13 years. I’ll be free to pursue new deals or release independently.

Either way - I’m excited to have a decision.

Chappell Roan at the Grammys

I’ve been thinking a lot about Chappell’s speech since the Grammys, which I watched live here in San Francisco. What it got me thinking about has turned into a bigger piece of writing that I’m not ready to share yet, but my main takeaway is that while we need to have more radically honest conversations about the label/artist power dynamic and employment structures, the worst thing that can happen to an artist is not to be dropped from a label. Maybe for your ego and ‘brand’, but actually in essence and practicality there is great freedom in being out of contract. The worst thing that can happen to you as a recording artist is to be ‘on the shelf’ in a contract: no attention paid to you, no ability to re-negotiate, and no way to make or release new music. Some artists spend years, even decades ‘on the shelf’ so to speak. In what other industry are independent contractors (the way artists are employed) held to this kind of ransom without compensation or recourse? I can’t think of any because the idea is so nutso and unethical. And I wonder when this larger conversation is going to happen as there are so many reasons artists are unable to speak about it, but I’m grateful to Chappell for at least opening the door. There’s already been some spicy movement on this with both Chappell and Charli XCX pledging to match 25k to dropped artists in response to a music exec’s op ed in The Hollywood Reporter. My problem with this is that the impetus should be on the companies that profit in the basquillions off of artists to cut them into the massive new deal of the music industry, not the other way around where artists’ have to financially support other artists. But yeah, it’s painfully obvious the op ed guy has never made an album in his life.

Chappell in her conical hennin forever emblazoned on my soul.

Preatures

The band and I are deep in organising a tour for this year. We’re waiting for a new route of dates that fits in all of our (now weirdly complex) schedules, but it should be done and announced by March, fingers and toes all crossed. We would love to record again, and reaching into the vault of songs we wrote between 2017-2019. There are so many great tracks that we were excited about. But we’ll start with the tour and see how that feels, one foot in front of the other.

Working on demo ‘Crushin’ (written in 2019) at Soundworks in Marrickville in late 2023.

Neil Gaiman’s take down.

I listened to the tortoise media podcast about Neil Gaiman and then drove out to buy a copy of New York Magazine’s cover story this past week. This story has really affected me, for reasons both personal and professional, and because so much of it also implicates his long-term partner, Amanda Palmer. I’ve not savvy with Amanda’s work and can’t say we have much in common, but I saw elements of my own story in hers, and it’s been confronting. I keep thinking about her and what deep shit she must be in right now, especially since he’s apparently bled her dry during their ongoing five year divorce, and wonder what gag order she herself may be under and what ramifications she believes there might be for making a statement. Or is she just… in denial? I also appreciated the reporting by both tortoise media and Lila Shapiro in this story for their willingness to explore the grey, the conflicting personal accounts, and to trace larger patterns and styles of abuse. That there was so much intolerable grey, in the end, became the clarifying indicator that abuse had taken place.

just a light read.

Ciao,

Izzi.

stickers have arrived!

It’s great to have a few hundred of you here already, how cool! Welcome.

Before this week’s post I thought I’d do some housekeeping as I’ve been rejigging the tiers and want to make it clear what being a paid subscriber actually means on here.

Part of what I want to do with izzi club is open up a space for other musicians. Now more than ever I feel we need circular, supportive structures for artists, because the structures we’ve known are burning. Fun.

What is The Artist’s Almanac?

The Artist’s Almanac is something I’m developing to share knowledge about the music industry, artist-to-artist. It’s not a how-to but more of a school of artful business mischief. This is a section within izzi club, and any subscriber can opt out if you prefer to only receive my general writing and music news. This is free for the first few months while I build it out.

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As Oscar Wilde said, “when bankers get together, they discuss art; when artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.” I like talking about money. It interests me how musicians and songwriters make it, how much they make, how they fund their work, if they hold other jobs down, and what their attitudes to money and business are. My hope is that by opening up the conversation about this taboo and frankly thrilling topic, there may be less stigma around money (or lack thereof) for artists, and broader awareness that artists have the same concerns and tasks as any small business.

[I also hold close to my chest that my chat club could one day start a revolution, one where artists share the details of their contracts and discuss money, deals and arrangements with candour free from legal ramifications. I can dream. ]

Are you a musician that would like some reference point for the biz of it all but don’t have the resources for a team or full time mentor? Are you based in Australia or between the US/AUS markets? I am building this for you.

A paid subscription gets you access to paid-only posts and affords you entry to this space for artists. The club-within-the-club.

I’ll be holding my first live Q&A for paid members on Saturday, March 1 at 3-4pm PST (That’s 10-11am Sunday, March 2 EST for Aussies).

We’ll discuss such incredible questions as, wtf is going on with Spotify? Why is my manager charging me when I’m not making any money? What do I do in a co-writing session to protect my songwriting credits? How much money do you make izzi, personally? WHATEVER U WANT TO TALK ABOUT. But make it bizz-full.

I am opening up this post to all subscribers, please comment or email me, I’d like to get a better sense of:

What do you feel like you don’t know?

What are the unanswerable questions you currently have about money and music?

What are you most pissed off about in the music industry?

There will also be a monthly draw for a chat with me. This is to open up the channel for those who feel they have a specific question about their work, a project, whatever. I’ll pick one paid subscriber per month and we’ll have a 30 minute chat about whatever you’re up to. This month’s chat has already been claimed! I’ll announce the next one at the beginning of march. To apply, DM me a bit about you and your work.

PLUS: Izzi club stickers arrived this week. These will be mailed out to Founding Members in your welcome packs at the end of Feb! And also up on the store in April. I made them holographic cause I love that shit.

Founding Members - Manfredi Spaghettis - get all of the above plus the primo-deal:

• You decide how much you want to pay above the annual amount.

• Access to exclusive presale concert tickets + merch.

• Join the community: special workshops, resources and live chats.

• Izzi Club Pack mailed to you (Stickers! Magnets!)

• My undying gratitude.

Subscribe now

Accessibility

If you’re a duo or band, I offer Group Subscriptions for a 15% discount.

Get 15% off a group subscription

Ciao for now

Izzi

For example, what did it mean to be the best band in the world? Did I mean commercially, irrefutably, number-1 around-the-world-best? Number-1 for weeks on end-best? Did I mean critically acclaimed, or culturally-beloved-best? Or always striving for the next creative milestone-best? I could have been valuing any number of things with these statements: mastery, quality, grit, artistry. But most likely I was placing a high value on money, power and prestige.

“I just want to do it and keep getting better,” was my way of saying I valued prolific artistry (the opposite of perfectionism), longevity and transformation. And making a living was about a certain level of dependability, freedom, and independence, which was really important to me, and grated against our signing to a major label.

This post is part of the Artist’s Almanac section of Izzi Club, free to all subscribers until April 2025. Subscribers can opt out of this section at any time.

The Preatures at St Kilda Fest, Melbourne, 2019.

As I write this, my husband Rupert is pacing our living room floor, making I’m frustrated please drop what you’re doing and talk to me noises.

He’s a few months deep into founding his own startup here in San Francisco - a company called Unternet. In a nutshell: he’s trying to save the internet from en-shitification. Good luck Rups! Last year he had a round of successful pre-seed funding and now he’s in the weeds of actually running a company: employing people, taking meetings with new investors, figuring out who to bring on to do his accounting, tax, design, engineering, operations, the list goes on. You know, all the shit that has nothing to do with the thing you are passionate about putting into the world but nevertheless must happen and happen well.

Rups is agitated because the new operations person he’s been excited about bringing on board has emailed him with a list of questions about the company; its vision, culture, what defines it, that sorta thing. “I don’t have time for this,” he says to me, beginning to make toast. “I just need someone who can jump right in and get to work.” He licks butter off his fingers and looks at me, and I totally get it. It feels counterintuitive to sit and fill out questionnaires and think about the big picture when there’s momentum and a million other things to get to. And frankly, as ‘the artist’ in the visionary role, it can be an annoying point of friction to have to explain yourself and your work. To pin it down feels like catching a cloud mid-air.

There are many good reasons why we resist defining ourselves and our work, especially in the early stages of an idea. I would say that protecting your right to evolve and surprise - even morph entirely - is the number one requirement of surviving as an artist, and the emphasis we have now on the ironically homogenous and cumbersome personal brand is the antithesis of this and so vomit I can’t even with it. But I bring up Rups’ situation because I see parallels in the way the startup world mirrors the signing of acts to labels, with some obvious differences that I’ll talk about another time. For right now I’m looking at it through the lens of my own experience with the band: there’s something people are excited about, an upswell of momentum, hype, investment, and expectation. In the startup world though, there is emphasis on culture building at the outset. I tell Rups that as annoying as it is, he can’t skip this step. I tell him he must hire OpsGuy, my new favourite person (he does). And I tell him I wish I’d had someone like that sit me down in 2013 amidst the crazy clamouring of a band on the brink of success and ask some basic questions like, what is really important to you?

In 2020 my friend and mentor Rachael shared a values exercise with me and I loved it so much I tried it on friends and ended up expanding on it and calling it Fishing for Gems1. Instead of thinking about what your values are, Fishing for Gems draws them out like jewels bubbling up from the deep. With all the artists I’ve mentored over the years, I always begin our time together with this exercise. It’s cool to see them go from puzzlement and slight annoyance at the repetition, to opening up in wonder as the process unfolds.

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I often warn my mentees that in doing this exercise, some proverbial walls may collapse. But ultimately, no matter what stage of your career you’re at, experience will draw some version of this process out of you whether you like it or not.

In classic stories there’s often a quest for a magical item like a chalice, gemstone or piece of gold hidden in a temple or guarded by a dragon. Once the hero finds the treasure and claims it, whether through stealth or cunning or strength, the cave, temple or even the ground beneath them begins to crumble and self-destruct. They have to make a quick escape.

Fishing for Gems is a series of questions like the ones I’ve listed below. There are about 10 questions all up, some I’ll talk about in later posts. I ask my mentees to write them out with pen and paper in a large A6 sketchpad. Do not use a computer or device. This is about being truthful about who they are and what they do, and it’s too easy to self-edit on a keypad. Be specific, I tell them. If you like reading gossip mags and smoking ciggies in the bath, put it down.

1. How do you fill your personal and creative space? What kind of objects, textures, colours and smells are present? What’s the atmosphere like? List as many things as you want.

2. How do you spend your time?

3. What do you devote your energy to?

4. How and on what do you spend your money?

5. When in conversation with others, what topics light you up the most?

From the answers they compile, we begin to draw out threads of things that group together and overlap and what they may represent. For example, if they have a living or work space filled with candles, incense, and flowers, question what it is about those items that they appreciate? Is it ritual? Or maybe it’s quality, beauty, or even scent (sensuality)? If they collect books about punk rock or some niche artistic movement, what is it in them that they align with? Artistry, irreverence, rebellion? Or maybe they devote their energy to moving around from place-to-place? What’s that about? In sessions I have spent sometimes hours with artists drawing maps and experimenting with different words until we arrive at what feels right. Words have flavours and associations that are unique to everyone so finding the right word for a value is important. The more I’ve done this exercise myself, the more refined the distillations become.

Here was my list in 2020. Doing it with a friend and glass of wine is pretty bloody good.

izzi x

This post is part of the Artist’s Almanac section of Izzi Club, free to all subscribers until April 2025. To opt out of this section, go to your account settings, navigate to izzi club, and then toggle off the notifications for The Artist’s Almanac. A gray toggle indicates you've opted out of that section.

Two years ago I had the idea for izzi club. I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be but I knew I wanted to create something for fans of my music that was more than just a fan club. I wanted it to feel like you were sitting with me and my friends at dinner, chatting about the latest label drama, or in a writing session trading stories. The amount of times I’ve yelled “Don’t Sign That!” at other artists seems to need it’s own place on the internet.

Since then I’ve moved from Sydney to San Francisco with my family so my husband can pursue his dream of saving the internet, The Preatures have reformed (you can follow the updates here), and I’m continuing to write, record, tour, and be a parent.

At my desk in SF.

Izzi club is the place I’ll explore the things I’m compelled by and obsessed with: artists’ business and the business of art, what does ‘making it’ even mean anyway, the specificity of place and landscape in music, criticism and complaining as a way of celebrating life (so Italian), and gossip. Really good gossip.

**a few updates since my original post as I’ve moved the tiers around a bit**

As a free subscriber you immediately have access to

• Public Posts.

• Music & Tour news.

• Access to The Artist’s Almanac for 3 months. The Almanac is something I’m developing as a central point for all my stories, resources, and advice about the business of being an Australian musician. It’s not a ‘music business how-to’ per se, more a bunch of info I want you to know, artist-to-artist. I don’t want to charge you for something that doesn’t exist yet, so as I build it out over the few months, it’s free for everyone!

As a paid subscriber, you’ll get:

• The Artist’s Almanac, in Deep Pieces + Chapters of the new book I’m working on.

• Monthly Live Q&As in the IzzI Club Chat.

• Enter the monthly draw for a chat with me. I’m still figuring out the best way to do this but basically… I want to talk to musicians who are working! At any stage! As an APRA Ambassador and general loudmouth I’ve mentored artists for (at least) the last five years, and I love it. Any paid subscribers, bands, artists, duos, songwriters, amateurs or professionals, you can DM me, reply to this email, or write about a bit about yourself in the club chat. I’ll pick one paid subscriber per month and we’ll have a 30 minute chat about whatever you’re up to.

Founding Members - Manfredi Spaghettis - get all of the above plus the primo-deal:

• You decide how much you want to pay above the annual amount.

• Access to exclusive presale concert tickets + merch.

• Join the community: special workshops, resources and live chats.

• Book in a chat. Founding members can book in for a free, quick chat with me (coming soon)

• Izzi Club Pack mailed to you (Stickers! Magnets!)

• My undying gratitude.

Accessibility

If you’re a duo or band, I offer Group Subscriptions for a 15% discount.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading izzi club!

A presto,

Izzi

Bernal Heights, San Francisco, January 2025.