The Australian singer-songwriter selects ‘Before and After’ tunes to align with her cathartic new labum.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Songs like Beggar and Medicine examine an unhealthy romantic desperation but delivered in gorgeously intimate vocal performances and understated arrangements \u2014 all swooning organ, muted rhythm section and swelling strings.<\/p>\n
Dust is a folksy rumination on mortality; The Absence of You laments feeling abandoned by the spirit of creativity amid fragile vibraphone and ghostly harmonies.<\/p>\n
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Taming the beast<\/p>\n
Growing up in Far North Queensland, Louise achieved success early on.<\/p>\n
She was 19 when she uploaded synthpop single Jungle to triple j Unearthed<\/a>.<\/p>\n It won the 2011 Song of the Year at the Queensland Music Awards and became a breakout hit at home and abroad, charting across Europe thanks to a remix by Berlin DJ Wankelmut<\/a>.<\/p>\n “My head is a jungle,” went the song’s hooky chorus. Fifteen years later, it feels like Louise has finally cut a path through the wilderness.<\/p>\n Emma Louise: When a studio trick turns into a whole album<\/a><\/p>\n “Most people would laugh, but I didn’t laugh, I was like woah. It affected me so much.”<\/p>\n Sunshine For Happiness follows Dumb, last year’s collaborative album with super-producer<\/a> (and Future Classic labelmate) Flume, on which Louise explored her autism and ADHD diagnoses over warped electronics.<\/p>\n However, Louise’s last solo album was 2018’s Lilac Everything, where she boldly pitched her vocals to a lower, unrecognisable register<\/a>.<\/p>\n The record was produced in Seattle with Louise’s then-husband, Canadian artist Tobias Jesso Jr.<\/p>\n “I never wanted to be a producer ’til I heard Emma’s demos,” the Grammy Award-winning songwriter to the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Adele, Dua Lipa and Harry Styles said at the time.<\/p>\n But the stylistic decision to alter her voice masked Louise’s deeper anxieties.<\/p>\n Living in Los Angeles, she became increasingly isolated and burnt out, measuring herself by other’s milestones and developing a harmful dependency on songwriting as the measure of self-worth.<\/p>\n “I feel I had this beast in me, and I don’t know where it came from, that basically whenever I wasn’t writing music or when I didn’t have something to show, I would just start burning up,” she explains.<\/p>\n If you or anyone you know needs help:Suicide Call Back Service<\/a> on 1300 659 467Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN<\/a>\u00a0on 13 92 76Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 551 800Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 224 636Headspace<\/a> on 1800 650 890ReachOut<\/a> at au.reachout.com<\/a>MensLine Australia<\/a> on 1300 789 978SANE<\/a>\u00a0on 1800 187 263<\/p>\n “I’d lock myself away, for weeks, trying to write. But I was suffering so much.<\/p>\n “It would get to this point where I wanted to not be here anymore \u2026 It was like, if I couldn’t do that, then what was the point of being alive?”<\/p>\n After experiencing a “complete mental breakdown”, Louise checked herself into a hospital, undergoing treatment and slowly re-evaluating her art and life.<\/p>\n A musical recovery<\/p>\n In the hospital’s lobby was a grand piano, where Louise sat one day and wrote a “prayer out to the universe”.<\/p>\n The result became All Beautiful Things, a tear-jerking ballad yearning for divinity and redemption.<\/p>\n “I just wanted to live and breathe in all of the beautiful things in life, to conquer my fear so I could have more of the love.<\/p>\n “Wishing for the end of suffering, the kind of suffering that led me to this massive shift I had. And I realised if I could do that, then living would be beautiful.”<\/p>\n More songs soon came, including Medicine, rendering the epiphany that true healing doesn’t come from anyone or anywhere else but within.<\/p>\n Loading SoundCloud content<\/p>\n When Louise eventually checked out, “everything was different \u2026 It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And then also my creativity just exploded”.<\/p>\n She started painting, sculpture, pottery, and more music came pouring out.<\/p>\n Capitalising on the inspiration, she decamped to Seattle’s idyllic Bear Creek studios in 2019, spending two weeks recording with a small band, with Jesso Jr producing alongside fellow Grammy winner Shawn Everett.<\/p>\n “Making this record in a vortex away from the world, magic happened and it was so good.”<\/p>\n “And I think that magic, it kind of stayed in the music.” “To alchemise the world, how it hurts and affects me, and bring it into creation \u2014 that’s redemption.” (Supplied: Sam Kristofski)<\/p>\n Half of Sunshine For Happiness features music written before or around Louise’s treatment, full of “suffering and pain”, the rest is “the other side”, defined by light, reconnection and recovery.<\/p>\n That context weighs upon the album’s heavier themes.<\/p>\n Trigger of a Gun is a grieving response to a 2018 shooting in an LA nightclub, while God Between Us is a heartbreaking account of a doomed romance, but seeks love amid both destruction and creation.<\/p>\n![\"White](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/a927c25f58d617a00ce67a06d1534aee.jpeg\")
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