Foto-© Angela Ricciardi

Seit letzter Woche ist Indigo Sparkes Album Hysteria unser aller. Während ihre Debüt-LP Echo noch ganz sanft gezupfte Gitarrenklänge mit Sparkes melancholischen Vocals verbindet, ist in Zusammenarbeit mit The Nationals Aaron Dessner als Produzent ein wirklich intensives Werk entstanden. Das übergreifende Thema des Albums ist in gewisser Weise Versöhnung, beschreibt sie. Versöhnung von Hysterie, Versöhnung von Trauer und Versöhnung von Trauma und Zeit. Gänsehautmomente sind beim Hören garantiert..

How do the songs feel to you now they’re held together on one record? What comes to mind when you reflect on the process of starting to write the first lines to holding the completed piece in your hands?
I feel relieved that they’re all together. For a period of time, and that’s probably a similar experience for a lot of artists, there’s a period of time where it feels like you’re kind of just existing in the night sky. Where you’re in a regular constellation, trying to piece things together like a little star cluster. Everything is spread out and you’re trying to work out which parts are coming in. It feels great when it all comes together, when you found the sequence in the songs and they belong together and it just feels really good.

What a beautiful way to look at the process. You wrote and recorded in Australia and then in New York – can you talk about how the spaces you were in informed the sound of the album?
I wrote these songs all over the place. Some in the middle of quarantine in the hinterland Byron Bay in northern New South Wales in Australia. I wrote some in downtown Minneapolis in the Midwest, when I was living there and I wrote some in Taos in New Mexico. I wrote some of them in New York, and then we recorded in upstate New York, in Hudson at Aaron’s studio Long Pond.

So I guess it was like a constellation, because I was drawing from all these different places and different feelings and environments and spaces. Not just my physical environment surrounding me, but my emotional kind of landscape and environment too.

You just mentioned Aaron Dessner. I understand that you’ve reconnected on a phone call years after first meeting. What made you feel it was meant for the two of you to create together?
I just had this really strong intuitive feeling that this was who I was supposed to make the album with. I just knew randomly that it was Aaron who was supposed to do this with me.

Your previous release, Echo, feels much gentler, maybe even timid. Would you agree? How would you compare Hysteria to Echo?
I do, I would agree. I think Hysteria is much more spirit forward. I guess it’s much more fuelled by a sense of self and the fullness of expression of parts of myself that I hadn’t been comfortable inhabiting. My sense of rage and longing and things that felt really uncomfortable in my body. I got to a point where I felt like I’m a woman now and these things exist inside of me and they’re beautiful things and I don’t want to hide them anymore. And I’m going to create from that place. It definitely has a lot more edge to it, I think. And it’s a lot more present in some ways. Less etheric and more grounded, that’s how it feels in my body anyway.

I’ve experienced listening to the album feeling such power and fierceness and softness all at once and there’s something in your voice that sounds like deep freedom. Like you might have stepped into your power creating Hysteria..?
Yeah, definitely. I felt a lot more fierceness and freedom in myself, for sure. But I don’t necessarily feel attached to that because I think that creatively as humans, we go through ebbs and flows. It’s not like you get into a space of confidence or strength or power or whatever it is and feel like, oh my god, I’ve got it. Great, I’m set. It’s like as soon as you get it, it changes and you’re like, oh, it’s gone again or it’s changing shape again. But I think I found a new space to inhabit inside of myself, which felt much more strong and liberated.

Is there a song on the album, that is particularly meaningful to you?
There’s a few on there that I feel particularly attached to or moved by. I really love Real and Golden Ribbons and Time Gets Eaten and.. I mean I love all of them so much. Definitely, some resonate more than others depending on my mood during a day. Or in a day sometimes I’m loving one and another day I’m feeling another one more deeply, you know?

So do you actually go back and listen to the album yourself then?
I have been in the last few months, but mainly because I’m listening to it as a reference point for band rehearsals. Other times I’ll leave it for a week or two and then I’m like, hang on a second, this thing is coming out soon and I’ll go back and listen to it top to bottom after some space and dive back into the world of it. And that’s really cool because I can rediscover how much I actually love it. I’m always nervous to listen to it and nervous that I might not resonate with something. But as a body of work, going back and listening to it makes me feel really proud.

Your music has a soothing effect, I think others would agree with that. What role does/ has music played in your life?
Ah thanks. We could probably all agree, music is like one of the most healing things on the planet. In a way it feels like too big of a question to answer. I think that telepathically, psychically, we can all just be like, yeah, you know, we all know on some level what role music plays for us as human beings on the planet. How do you put that esoteric experience into the human language? It’s so beyond that..

I hit a point in my life where I realised that this is my medium. This is how I can express myself and it feels like the closest and truest to my heart of all the things that I could possibly imagine doing.

You have done a beautiful interview and recording of a PJ Harvey song for ‘Sounds of Saving’. The whole piece is incredibly vulnerable – how do you navigate the process of sharing such intimacy with the world?
It felt really vulnerable for me to release that actually. I thought about it for a while and wondered if it was just too vulnerable. People seeing me in that way felt really naked and I didn’t know if I really felt comfortable with this. At the end of the day, I just felt like I have to keep being honest and speaking the truth, even if it’s not comfortable sometimes. I got to the point where I decided to just trust that this is going to resonate with who it’s meant to resonate with. But it felt scary.

Your music videos are so raw and timeless. What is your involvement in their creation?
All of them are my creative ideas, the creative direction and the conception of the idea. Then I get people in to do more of the direction and cinematography and stuff. The idea for Pressure In My Chest came from Madeline, the director. That was really beautiful, because I just really trusted her. I gave her the album to listen to and she came back with this idea and it felt really aligned with a concept or idea that I would have anyway. And I liked the simplicity. I’m very particular about my imagery and what kind of narratives I want to tell and how I want things to look. And shooting things on film – everything I do is analogue.. It just feels more me I guess.

What is it about the analogue medium that draws you in? I guess you could make your life so much easier by going digital.
I just have such a resistance to digital. It just feels synthetic to me. And I know that digital can look really beautiful. There are ideas that I’ve had for certain songs that I feel would be cool on digital because they need that crisp, hi-fi kind of technology, the kind of synthetic feeling to it. But I just haven’t arrived at that point yet. Everything felt like it needed to be analogue and the machinery of how things work with light and the alchemy of things and colour and exposure and grain and texture. I feel like digital lacks magic in some way – but I guess it has a different kind of magic. I just haven’t fully stepped into that world yet, I’m just old school.

Sounds like you’ve got plenty of ideas for the future. How do you see your artistry developing going forwards? Do you have a game plan?
Vaguely, I do. But right now I kind no idea and I’m trying not to think about it too much. I’m just giving it space right now. You know I think it’ll evolve on its own, without me staring at the space waiting for something to bloom. I think there’s something going on. I can feel something going on. I just don’t totally know what it is yet. So I’m just standing over here and not look at it too much.

You’ve just toured with The National – quite big venues. What role does performing play to you?
I think it’s just like ceremony and ritual. And being in a shared space where everyone can be in an emotional container together. Experiencing something fleeting and eternal at the same time. And that’s extremely precious to be involved in and to be a part of. Especially when the music that it’s coming from my heart is the thing that we’re all choosing to spend our time resonating in together, that’s pretty miraculous.

Going back to the beginning. You grew up in Australia but call New York your home these days. What does this place mean to you? Why did you choose that place? You’re speaking to a marginally Australia obsessed person over here..
Look, it’s so beautiful. I’ve been missing the ocean and I’ve been missing the nature. But I think for me and the kind of person that I am, it’s like I need engagement. I need human connection. I need to see the blood and guts and grit and beauty of the world just turning around me. And that makes me feel like I’m ok in the world, because I have all of that stuff turning inside of myself. If I can see it reflected externally, it helps me process my own experience you know? It also inspires me and challenges me. There’s nothing stagnant about it at all. I felt that being in Australia was really limiting. It was very small, very conservative and you can just kind of cruise by there and not have to do much. It’s a great lifestyle and it’s beautiful, but it wasn’t challenging me, it wasn’t igniting a fire inside of me. Ah, I don’t mind existing in the, you know, the dysfunction of the world. I think that that place is a comfortable place for me, and I can often feel deeply inspired in that place. So that’s kind of why I’m here in New York now.