Emily-Rose and The Wild things hail from Sydney, Australia. The band is indie, quirky and down-right unique. They make music you can relate to, whilst also uplifting their listeners. We sit down with the front-woman Emily-Rose and get to know the band and the artist a little bit more ahead of their upcoming album release ‘Upon these Open Skins’, slated for release in July 2021.
Tell us about your latest release and what inspired it?
So the latest release is ‘Complete as One’, which is actually the first release with this project so I’m pretty excited about it. I actually wrote the song originally with two completely different time feels, but with the same theme in mind. I think we all feel it…the faster, the more convenient, the more high tech the world becomes – the more we expect of each other and of ourselves and gee it becomes tiring! I often feel like it would be so nice to just be happy and content in ones’ self without all the constant anxieties of modern day life. I then realised that the two different feels actually worked so well in conveying that theme – dropping from the high energy drum n bass to an indie ballad kind of thing for the choruses. I have had such an awesome amount of fun making the video for it too – it was a great opportunity to shine a light on all the band members and their talents and kookiness.
What is one of your guilty pleasures?
So I put this to the whole band and I think my favourite answer was from Chris Stone our violinist (and mixer of the album). He says ‘breaking scotch fingers in half the wrong way – it just feels so naughty’.
How did you first start in the music industry?
Does performing musical theatre numbers when I was 8 with my mum at charity events count? I’ve always been a performer, but my main focus for many years was classical piano. I studied it hardcore at the Conservatorium in Sydney, but whilst there I became interested in other areas of music. I had always loved jazz and composition (I even became a composition degree before, and spent all my extra credits on jazz subjects). One main area of music I discovered was folk and world music though – I decided to learn the accordion and then discovered folk festivals and simply found my people there. That’s where Chris and I met and it’s where I played with a host of different people and discovered so much richness in all the different kinds of music being explored there.
When I finished university I naturally fell into managing all the projects that I put together, and also spent a large portion of time studying and playing tango music as a specialist area. I would say that this latest project with Emily-Rose and the Wild Things feels like an exploration into AGAIN new areas of the music industry – so it’s nice to feel young again haha!
What are you working on next?
Always working on multiple things, but the focus at the moment is bringing out some more singles from the album and then releasing the full album. In April I’m planning to release a tune called Golden Light and am making a video for that as well, then after that will come a pretty epic track called Nightbirds. The full album ‘Upon these Open Skins’ is planned for release in July which will mark a year since heading into my home studio to record it.
Somewhere in there we’ll be working on a garage conversion for a second room at our home studio and a garden redesign so I can grow even more veggies and fruit (it’s pretty extensive already but I always want more!).
What advice would you give others?
Touch your left knee whenever brushing your teeth to ensure eternal happiness. Also, be sure to communicate clearly with friends as equally as with enemies. Lastly, learn where your food comes from.
If you could collaborate with anyone who would it be?
Ok so we collectively have a few answers on this – at the moment I’m thinking Knower (Louis Cole and Genevieve Artardi). Everything they do is just so good. Nick Henderson (bass player, recording engineer on the album and my partner) would love to collaborate with Blake Mills. Abby Constable (drums) thinks that collaborating with Domi would be sick (the young french keys player breaking the internet at the moment with J.D. Beck).
What’s your favourite studio snack?
Our guitarist Luke Chapman earned the nickname ‘half-cup snackman’ through the recording process as he simply loves snacks and has a habit of drinking only half of his beverages. So I’ll take one from him when he says ‘everything and anything!’. I would say that I do take pleasure in having snacks that I grew in the garden though. For a while we had heaps of these delicious little berries called Cape Gooseberries that look like tiny yellow globes inside paper lanterns. Then lately we’ve harvested a bunch of blue popcorn. Yes – it’s a type of corn that is small and slate blue in colour, specific for popping. It does pop white in colour though to the disappointment of some haha! Nick has put a bid in for dark chocolate covered almonds which I’ll also second.
