Pointy Heights is out now!
Image: Brandon Bowen.
Genre-defying singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Fousheé has unveiled her hotly-anticipated sophomore album, Pointy Heights. We caught up with the singer two years on from our first interview to go behind-the album, the influence of her family and heritage, trace the evolution of her artistry and so much more.
When we last spoke in Sydney, you were starting to wrap up your last album cycle. How do you think kind your artistry and approach to your creativity has evolved since then into what you are presenting on this new body of work, Pointy Heights?
I think when you're expelling that much energy, like throughout the tour performing Soft Core, most of it is punk and high energy. Afterwards I felt a need for a shift. I felt like I wasn't angry anymore and I just wanted to kind of go inward. I always say that in the search of my life, of just searching for meaning and understanding outward, and I find that you find more inward. I kind of just sat with myself and I realised that a big part of that conversation was to connect with family. So that's what I did. I'd been meaning to go back to Jamaica. As an American, a child of Jamaican mum, black dad from America, born and raised in Jersey, I'd only been there when I was a kid and I still had those memories. I always wanted to go back and I knew it would be an experience that would be life changing. So I went back for a family reunion and just like a light bulb turned on for me about so many things. It was just so much clearer, the sacrifices that my mum made to get here, and I got to see the route it took for her to get here and how difficult that must have been. I got to reconnect with people I hadn't seen since those really early memories of them, and then I found out so much about my family that I understood more about myself. Like why I am the type of artist that I am, and it's because of the groundwork and the foundation that my mum laid out for me. So I knew that's what I had to write about, more in the influence of the instruments.
That sounds like such a wonderful experience, and a beautiful path to head down. I was going to say, you really have expanded your sonic palette her. Obviously the last record leaned more into punk and grunge, but with this one I feel like it's kind of a bit more of a rhythmic and melodic indie-meets-reggae infused realm. You just briefly mentioned how Jamaica influenced the sound, so how did you craft the overall sonic realm that this album exists within?
I went back to find the overlap and in that discovery I found that it was the music that I was connecting to overlapped. Like people were already overlapping for years. So the reason that Ska even existed to begin with was because Jamaicans were replicating Western Soul and then that created Ska, and then Ska later on in the second wave, because of the influence it had in Britain from a lot of people immigrating there from Jamaica. It began to infuse with punk for the second wave of Ska. Originally when I was thinking about how different the music was from that I wanted to make and from what I used to make, I found that it was really connected, more connected than I knew.
Shifting to the lyrical side, can you unpack the themes and concepts explored across the album and the importance to you with documenting them within your music?
There's many themes. I wouldn't say there's a central theme at all. Just the lessons that I've learned over that period of time of creating the album. So I deal with acceptance, acceptance and love and accepting what isn't for me. Certain songs went into my experience with new love. In the process I went into a new relationship with the love of my life. And what else? There's nostalgia among friends, and then there's some fun ones.
When it came to writing the album, like you said, you are touching on like a few different topics. Some fun ones, some more deep ones. Did you find that you had like a distinct way of approaching each theme and topic?
Any time I try to force myself into a topic, it feels unnatural. So I try to work the other way around and work from how I already feel or what I'm struggling with. I mean, not to say that it never happens, it's just an easier process like going with the stream upstream.
Watch our interview with Fousheé above.
You always nail the visuals in your album rollouts and this time is no different. I've just seen the visual for Feels Like Home and it's such a beautiful, beautiful clip. Particularly looking at that one, how did you kind conceptualise and bring the visual side of the album to life? And in broader terms, how important are the visuals to you in terms of representing the music and the world of Pointy Heights?
That's my favourite part of the whole process. Like even when I'm writing, imagining what the video will look like. I'm just a very visual person, so that helps connect it all for me. I was excited, especially since my family had such a big impact on where I went in the direction of the record to portray that visually. So you'll see, like I said earlier, I went down for a family reunion and that's what the visual story is also telling, like me getting the initial call from my uncle and the people that were involved in the journey there. So you'll see a lot of my actual family [laughs]. My boyfriend is in there, so it's really personal, but I feel like I couldn't tell the story without involving the family. And then of course, the cycle of me just giving back to what paved the way for me to be here and put a spotlight on my family as to preserve the family tree and our stories.
That's such a beautiful sentiment. I'm presuming they would've heard the album by now and seen the visuals. What has their reaction been to it all?
Oh, they're so happy. My mum is the most excited, but I have to say the family group chat is on fire. My uncle who was like the centre point of one of the main characters in all of the visuals, he's a teacher and his students are just sending him voice notes. So every day I'm getting different voice notes from the students. He is the one that keeps me up to date about everything in Pointy Heights [the community]. He kind of was telling me about the impact it had on the community, that he would go to the store and people were talking about it at the store. We were able to have a local crew who worked on the visual., It was like a few days worth of shooting and just to be able to provide jobs in our little town and provide a platform for our history is cool. I'm getting new updates every day.
That's so heartwarming. On the flip side, how has that made you feel knowing that you are making such an impact on the younger generation in your hometown, and immortalising your mother's family as well?
I feel like I'm taking on the responsibility of the family tree and the legacy, which is a big role to take on. But it makes me think about this quote from “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” So these are my roots and it was better late than never to discover it and preserve it. It wasn't even something that I wanted to do, it was something I felt like I had to do.
Again, such a lovely sentiment. Shifting back to the songs. If you had to pick three songs from Pointy Heights to play to someone who had never heard your music, that you think would make them an instant fan - like they are going to come to multiple shows, they are going to have all the merch, all the vinyls, everything - which three songs would you play for them?
I gotta pick probably the singles. Definitely Feel Like Home. Definitely Still Around because that's still one I have on repeat. And Hundred Bucks. I love all of them, so I don't know.
Everyone should listen to the entire album, top to bottom. Now, I'm sure at some point you will take the album out on the road, hopefully you'll come back to Australia. I'm not quite sure how deep you are into tour mode and planning, but how do you think you'll be bringing the world of Pointy Heights into a live context? Because I saw you in Sydney and your show was so sick. I'm curious what this next iteration for you as a live act will be.
I'm curious about that too [laughs] expect to see things that we did in some of the visuals, or some of the artwork. Definitely gonna have the same style. Expect to see blonde hair, maybe an afro sometimes, and a lot of leather. A lot of leather. And then just sonically, that's the process of figuring out how to add dynamic to it, but also give you that experience that you heard when you listen to the album for the first time. So I'm figuring that part out now. It's trial and error and this will be my first tour, so it's scary but fun [laughs].
Pointy Heights is out now!
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