Holly Throsby does not enjoy having her photo taken. There\u2019s even a song on her new album about it. But you wouldn\u2019t know it to see her gamely bush-bashing off the beaten track to pose in a cluster of supersized lomandra for the perfect portrait. After all, this is her happy place.<\/p>\n
Walking along various bush tracks is a daily ritual for Throsby. A sense of nature gently pervades her seventh album, Normal Magic. It is in the imagery of sparkling water and swims; gardens and birds; bushfires and wind and rain on the roof. The album itself feels like the breaking of a drought: her first solo record in nine years. In the intervening time, she moved to the New South Wales south coast, had her second child, wrote her third novel, and recorded and toured a second album with Seeker Lover Keeper, her collaborative project with Sarah Blasko and Sally Seltmann. She has hardly been idle.<\/p>\n
And yet, at 47, she says \u201cthere are a lot of things, particularly if you have children, that take you away from the work. I sometimes forget that I\u2019m an artist altogether \u2013 for long periods, years. I forget that I\u2019m a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a startling statement from someone who picked up a guitar at the age of eight. \u201cWhen I was a teenager, I would get home from school and write songs all afternoon, every afternoon, obsessively,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s been nice to reconnect with that side of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I sometimes forget that I\u2019m an artist altogether\u2019: Holly Throsby. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
We detour off the track to a rocky perch overlooking the Illawarra escarpment and the vast stretch of coast on either side. It\u2019s a breathtaking, improbably wide perspective.<\/p>\n
The new album was spurred by a conversation about moments of everyday magic, where the difference between something utterly normal and utterly wonderful is a matter of perspective shift. This everyday joy is what has been sustaining her in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a very necessary way to live life in general at any age, but I think it becomes a bit more apparent as you age and as your responsibilities grow in various directions,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Nature has been a massive part of this everyday magic \u2013 and the reason she moved away from Sydney. \u201cI like to be in nature by myself a lot, I find it very restorative,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
I, battling a recent broken shoulder, am finding it less restorative, and we agree to head back along the track, shielded from the intense mid-morning sun by a dense canopy of eucalypts, and brushing past banksias and ferns.<\/p>\n
Throsby has called on the sustaining powers of nature more so in the past two years, in the aftermath of a \u201cvery difficult\u201d breakup with the co-parent of her children; navigating \u201ca tremendous amount of grief and hurt\u201d while also \u201cgetting my head around single parenting and getting my head around a new way of relating to the other parent of my kids\u201d.<\/p>\n
The breakup also led her back to music. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain freedom in it for me, and a remembering of who I was before [the relationship] that was really important to come back to,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve had new experiences [since the separation] and that was really inspiring. Things can be really beautiful \u2013 like making new connections in ways that you wouldn\u2019t have previously, and even the way you relate to your friends is quite different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holly Throsby\u2019s breakup led her back to music. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
It explains why Normal Magic feels like an album of endings and beginnings: melancholic about what\u2019s happened, and hopeful about new tendrils of experience, connections, romance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was proud to not make a breakup album \u2026 there\u2019s not really any songs about the separation specifically,\u201d Throsby says. \u201cI think it was very helpful to direct my creative energies towards different types of expression, and to process that separation in real life with my friends and loved ones and on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n
The album was recorded on the south coast, with some old collaborators and friends, and many new ones. \u201cI really wanted the sonic palette to be fresh for me, because I was a bit sick of myself,\u201d Throsby says of the album\u2019s synths-heavy sound, laced with banjo and unexpected sax. \u201cThe collaboration of music is really lovely, especially as a novelist, which is very solitary.\u201d<\/p>\n
We arrive back at the start of the track and perch at a picnic table in too-bright sun, surrounded by bird song. Throsby is a warm but reserved conversationalist; you get the impression she\u2019d rather be making art than talking about it. It\u2019s not surprising to learn that the stage is not her comfort zone; she\u2019s always preferred writing songs to performing them, and has experienced panic attacks on stage that left her \u201cquite spooked\u201d.<\/p>\n
Holly Throsby collaborates with Sarah Blasko and Sally Seltmann under the name Seeker Lover Keeper. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
She pivoted to writing novels around 13 years ago, during a period of extended burnout from touring. \u201cI hit a wall and didn\u2019t really feel like I had any songs left, and wanted to start writing something different,\u201d she says. She wrote the first draft of her debut, Goodwood<\/a>, while pregnant with her first child. Published in 2016, it was well received by readers and critics, and shortlisted for Indie, Abia and Ned Kelly awards. Two<\/a> more<\/a> novels set in the same set of fictional regional towns followed, to similar acclaim.<\/p>\n Throsby is close to finishing the first draft of her fourth novel, set in the \u201creal world\u201d and inspired by her years working in an arthouse video store in Balmain, where she grew up with her mother, the pioneering broadcaster Margaret Throsby. Like her previous three novels, the next will be set in the 90s \u2013 pre-internet and smartphones. It\u2019s handy for plotting crime novels but she\u2019s also \u201cvery nostalgic\u201d for that era and \u201cold technologies\u201d. She has used ChatGPT a handful of times \u2013 questions like \u201cWill I die from drinking tainted water?\u201d she says, laughing at herself \u2013 and, like most artists, is worried about AI.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a terrifying time to be an artist or a creative person in any field,\u201d she says, \u201cand it feels like the avalanche has started and it can\u2019t be stopped. Much like when streaming services came in, and people stopped buying music.\u201d<\/p>\n With more than two decades in the music industry, Throsby has seen many threats to her artistic existence.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t believe how lucky we were,\u201d she says, thinking back to her early days as a musician. \u201cYou could play a show and then sell someone a CD for $30 cash; if you [played] a really good show, you could sell 20 CDs \u2013 you felt incredibly rich. And there was this direct relationship between your performance and seeing an economic benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n The economics of making music now are \u201can absolute disaster\u201d, she says. \u201cMy upcoming tour had more shows pencilled in, and I pulled the plug; I realised I actually can\u2019t afford to go to this many places.\u201d<\/p>\n Throsby describes the economics of making music now as \u2018an absolute disaster\u2019. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Are the economics of being an author any easier? A decade in, the jury is out. \u201cBook-writing is very demanding, it takes a long time \u2026 Songs can be started and finished within a day,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been really lucky with my books in terms of how they\u2019ve sold, and being able to survive [financially] has been a combination of my solo music, Seeker Lover Keeper, writing novels, and the children\u2019s album, which weirdly was quite financially successful.\u201d<\/p>\n With children of her own now, would she do another children\u2019s album? \u201cI honestly don\u2019t think I could do a kids\u2019 album better than that,\u201d she says, shrugging into the sun. \u201cSo I\u2019ll leave it at that.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s an easy confidence in this response that suggests Throsby has reached a clear sense, at this stage of life, of where she wants to spend her time and energy.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a sign that I\u2019ve written and stuck above my bed that says \u2018What matters most\u2019,\u201d she tells me. \u201cBecause I think it is very easy to coast along and become distracted, and feel dissatisfied, and wonder why \u2026 but if you\u2019re not doing a meaningful activity on a daily basis, you\u2019re probably going to regret that when you get to the end of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n Normal Magic by Holly Throsby is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holly Throsby does not enjoy having her photo taken. 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