Deborah Conway: The Herald Sun - Conway On The Move
Conway on the move
By Nui Te KohaHerald Sun September 11th 1997
The day she arrived on the other side of the world - in an apparent mission to start from scratch - is etched deep in her mind."I arrived in London on June 28, 1995," Deborah Conway says breezily. "It was a significant day."
Significant for reasons other than the obvious.
Conway - one of the first women in Australia to rock, on her own terms, either in a band (the long-gone Do Re Mi) or through 2 1/2 albums (String Of Pearl, Bitch Epic and a collaboration called Ultrasound) - shoved off to England to launch a pan-European career via Bitch Epic.
However, the logistics of the move, and associated traumas, don't figure in Conway's memory of a defining moment.
"The significance of that day was my daughter laughing, for the first time, in the taxi ride back from Heathrow," Conway says. "It was so loud and definite. She was so happy."
By rights, Conway should be laughing too. She is about to deliver her third solo album, a gritty, unconventional, atmospheric doozie titled, in true Conway fashion, My Third Husband.
She considers each album a romance - hence the title of the new record - though this latest affair attracts, seduces and conquers with a confidence that suggests Conway has found Mr Right.
Fired by loops, squally guitars, vocal experimentation and a keen sense of adventure, My Third Husband takes Conway's and partner/collaborator Will Zygier's candid and dramatic writing style and throws them into a blender of modern, urban grooves.
"Some artists start their lives being one thing, but they know, at the end of the day, everybody is going to catch up with them eventually," Conway says. "Some waltz through the tides of fashion, oblivious to trends, doing exactly what they want to do.
"I do things differently, I guess. Maybe because I'm so terribly immature," she grins. "I don't like to make the same record I made last time, not because of any perverse feeling about the audience, but simply because I get bored, or maybe I'm just restless and haven't found the right style."
What does restlessness do to the creative process? "It depends on what you want out of it. If you are listening to the demands of people around you, then you'll be swayed. It becomes a burden."
What demands were there for My Third Husband ? "Not much, actually.'Make a cheap record,"Conway laughs, "and don't bother us'."
Initially, My Third Husband came out of adversity. Conway's relocation to the UK coincided with a slump for the London arm of her record company, Mushroom. Peter Andre, Ash and Garbage have since turned that situation around, but Conway says she found inspiration amid the confusion.
"What doesn't kill you," she says, "makes you stronger. It became quite clear that I was there to write a new record and make music. And it became a much more exciting project because the safety factor was taken away."
Conway, Zygier and daughter Syd Dolores set up camp in Maida Vale, writing chunks of the album on a computer.
"For the first few months, it was like a totally different language. I've never worked that way before. When we got the hang of it I just thought 'this gob-smacking technology is awesome'."
"We were just moving these colored blocks of sound around. There was no band, so everything we generated had to be stolen."
Thematically, My Third Husband is not a literal reflection of Conway's lot. No happy families here. Instead, the new songs touch on suicide (Only The Bones, an excellent Ultrasound track re-visited), hypochrondria (Feathers In My Mouth) and a journey, admittedly by sleepwalking (the album's defining track It's Only A Dream).
"I don't think having a child has changed my music or the way I approach it," Conway says. "Maybe it changes the mechanics, the times that I can write, times that I can't."
"I have always bee shy of writing terribly sentimental songs, or writing about motherhood. I'm very private in that way. And I find it a bit corny. There are some people who did that kind of thing very well, but," Conway shuffles, "I suppose I don't want to put myself on the line. Not in that way."
Conway will stay in Australia briefly to promote and tour but is keen to return to London to soak up its creativity.
"I couldn't have made a record like My Third Husband here," she says, "It's an outsider's record. I wouldn't say it owes itself directly to a British influence, but the fact that I have been unsettled and out of my home country: that's in there."
"I mean, normal people have babies and they settle down. They seek the familiar. They nest. But me, no. Once again, being the perverse creature that I am, I uproot, emigrate, and plunge into a place where I don't know many people."
She laughs at the mad logic of it all. On that significant day two years ago, her baby was probably chuckling over the exact same thing.
added Thursday, 11 September, 1997
