Contactless is out now!
Image: L: Vagabond Visions. R: Capucine Merlant.
Meanjin-based electro-pop act Miss Lucy has unveiled his new EP, Contactless. To celebrate the release, the musician sat down with singer, songwriter and producer Mirror Mirror to unpack their artistry and more!
“Contactless is a collection of songs that were mostly about a previous relationship that fell apart just before the pandemic,” Miss Lucy explains. “It felt extremely liberating to be able to put these emotions down on paper that I had been feeling during a time that I couldn’t express them to the actual person. And who knows, maybe they’ll never know about these songs.”
PART ONE: MIRROR MIRROR TO MISS LUCY
Mirror Mirror: How does the creative process start for you, what’s the moment you know it's happening?
Miss Lucy: That is definitely a long-winded question because it's always different every time. But there's a running theme of me hearing someone say something interesting that I haven't heard before and getting my phone out and writing it down. And then it'll just sit in my phone for months until I start playing on the piano or guitar. It's been a while since I've really been in the studio properly from when I was making the EP. There was just a time during COVID where I was just sitting at home, experimenting as much as I could, writing as many shitty songs as possible, waiting for something to come out of it. And then it's just a matter of having a structure and then just working on it until I hate the song. I think it's a good indication that something is good is when you start getting sick of it.
ML: What is your favourite musical memory?
MM: When I was way younger doing the whole Kiss cover band situation, I felt like there was some pretty special moments there because I knew I was going to be doing music for forever. After those moments, like a couple of those gigs, it was so much fun. I just felt like so enlightened and excited.
MM: At what point do you know you’ve made something special?
ML: I think it’s just like as soon as a song starts to become something that I would want to listen to. Like if I heard someone make this song, I'd be like, oh yeah, I really enjoy that.
MM: Who would you say is your favourite artist at the moment?
ML: I really like Michael Franks. It's really relaxing music, but really sophisticated at the same time, just really classy you know? It also just comes from the era of low budget records. I feel like when I listen to Michael’s stuff, it just sounds like it was made more for him, less for the people listening to it. Kind of self-serving in the nicest way possible, but so indulgent. So light-hearted and fun. I just feel like that energy is missing so much from music today. You can't write a song nowadays unless there's like something negative to write about, which is heavy. A lot of the stuff then was just fun and light and sounds like they were having fun recording it, too.
MM: What’s the best feeling you get from music? Whether you’re writing or performing.
ML: Favourite feeling? I love the feeling of moving a song from the studio to a live show. Like bringing that to life. That's my favourite part of the process. At the moment, we're starting to prepare for a show in June and it's going to be so cool playing these songs that I haven't touched in a while, since it was all made early last year. It’s so cool to start making it a new thing. I love that feeling, like when you're at a sound check and you finish it in a rehearsal space. It's different to when you're on stage when you finish the song and you're like, holy shit, this is going to be so much fun. And all the nerves go away and you just can't wait to bust it out. Yeah, I’d say that's probably it.
MM: Where do you think your songs truly come from?
ML: Man, I always like to think as if I'm making music for my own playlist or as if I’m making music for a radio station or something like that. A lot of my music wouldn’t make me feel like “Fuck, this is what I love listening to.” But I guess that's maybe a good thing, like it's an expression of what I'm capable of doing. Sometimes I've surprised myself. I didn't think I was going to write a song like that. The EP is kind of like an interlude, in a way. The ending of it is practically an electronic song. I was never thinking of making an electronic song.
PART TWO: MISS LUCY TO MIRROR MIRROR
ML: All right. So your new song talks about the frustration of time and love, which I'm sure a lot of us can relate to. Whose side are you on? Time or love?
MM: The song was from the perspective of person that waits around, someone that doesn't speak up. Yeah, I guess it's about speaking up, about how you're feeling. It ended up turning into this story about blaming, I guess, this other person chose to not speak up earlier. Yeah. I'm not sure how to tie that in with your question, but. Yeah, I reckon I’m definitely on the love side. Yeah, love for sure. I reckon I deviate between the two though. It depends on who it is, but. I don't keep things from people per se. I keep things close to the chest where I can, where and where it's necessary. But for, like, the people that I love, it's all open book.
ML: How would you go about the recording and production process the next time around?
MM: I’m still going to do it a lot myself, like, writing and recording. But lately the live members of the band are coming on board a lot, even in the writing process, which is not something that I would’ve loved in the past. But we did a jam session, or like a writing session a few weeks ago, and it started with one idea that I liked and then we added an idea to that, but then the next time round we got rid of the first idea, which was really cool. I've never done something like that before, where we did away with the original idea. I don't particularly want to do electronic drums at the moment. I'm very big on your style of drum recording, kind of dry, as well as getting into the Lo fi territory. Maybe not like hip hop Lo fi, but not using 808s or anything like that. I’m just loving rock now. I'm talking rock where it's not just straight guitars, but like, guitars that have emotion behind it. Like your David Bowies or Arctic Monkeys.
ML: Would you say you’d prefer to create EP’s or albums?
MM: How I felt about Contactless, it was like it lived in its own little universe, like a little pocket. An album versus an EP seems so daunting. It took a lot out of me to get these six songs going. I hope that I can work a lot faster to create an album, but it might be big task I don't know. I love albums so I'm probably going to say I'm on team album.
ML: How do you feel about live shows, do they excite you? Or do they stress you?
MM: Definitely both. I'll start with the stressful side. I don't know, I wouldn't call it stress. I'm keen to see how I'm going to feel representing, I guess, my own music in front of a crowd of people. I don't know if I'm going to be like a nervous wreck or if I'm gonna be really strong. I don't know, I guess that's the daunting part. I'm just so excited, as you said before at the start, to have a song finished and then to share it with a band which is not how it was created, to share it with another five humans and then to hear everyone's interpretation of it. Yeah, that's exciting. That's also daunting, but it's like an exciting venture.
Contactless is out now!
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