A quick music update, Chappell Roan at the Grammys, and the 'Call Me Master' article.

The week I learned what a conical hennin is.

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.