Kimbra: ‘I Didn’t Want To Study Music; I Wanted To Play It’

More than just Gotye’s foil in ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’, Kimbra Johnson is a rising star in her own right. She chats to MATT SHEA about her early years in New Zealand, moving to Melbourne and taking her time in the studio.

At this stage of the game, Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ seems a shoo-in for first place on triple j’s 2011 ‘Hottest 100’ list. With the song having notched up several consecutive weeks at the top of the Australian charts and more than 10 million YouTube hits – not to mention seven ARIA Award nominations – you’d be brave to bet against it.

For many, it was their first introduction to Kimbra Johnson, who appears out of nowhere in the song’s third act, but those with keen ears will have already come across the New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based singer – even if they don’t quite realise it.

There was ‘Settle Down’, her sassy, sashaying single of July last year, followed just a month later by the Miami Horror collaboration, ‘I Look To You’. Drip-fed into the equation in April was ‘Cameo Lover’ (which, ironically, beat ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ to first place in this year’s Vanda & Young songwriting competition). And now there’s her eagerly anticipated debut album, Vows, which a few months ago would have barely registered on most people’s radars.

If it all seems like the timing’s a little too impeccable then you’re perhaps right. Ever since she left New Zealand as a 17-year-old, Kimbra’s been able to call upon the seasoned management of industry vet Mark Richardson, and in June she signed a worldwide deal with Warner Bros Records. But to imply that everything’s been laid out for her would be disingenuous. She wrote the vast majority of Vows herself, and co-produced the record with Franc Tetaz and M-Phazes – very impressive stuff for an artist who not long ago celebrated her 21st birthday.

It’s fair to say that you’ve come out of nowhere for a lot of people, and a lot of people maybe don’t know your story. You’re from Hamilton originally, right?
Yeah, a small city in New Zealand.

Your father’s a doctor and your mother’s a nurse?
Yeah!

So where did the music come from for you?
I’m not sure, really. It was just a very natural inclination from a young age for me. I don’t know how I got into it. I guess I liked musical theatre when I was young, and I started being in shows when I was a kid, and then at school I joined a jazz choir. My parents were playing music when I was growing up, but it felt quite natural for me to express myself through songwriting and singing from an early age. It just came naturally.

What kind of artists were feeding into your love of music as a kid?
I can’t remember exactly what my parents would play. I just remember what I myself got into from an early age. It would have been the classical musical theatre stuff, but also a lot of jazz from my first high school scat choir, which was a jazz group that did Frank Sinatra medleys and Ella Fitzgerald songs, and [George] Gershwin. We used to sing little jazz songs in our choir and I guess that gave me an ear for jazz. Once I picked up the guitar I was into learning jazz chords myself, and different things in that genre. So yeah, that’s probably what I first got into. But at the same time I was listening to a lot of pop. I loved Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson from a young age as well. [Laughs]

That jazz influence seems to remain in your music too.
Yeah. I think something about the colour in that kind of music and the soul in a lot of that singing probably stuck with me, for sure.

I understand the move to Melbourne was facilitated by Mark Richardson, is that right?
Yeah, he’s my manager. At the time, he flew over to Auckland to see me play a show there and then offered me a chance to move to Melbourne and start making an album with financial support. So it was up to me to make the decision and I decided, “Yeah, I’m keen!”

He offered that financial support to go to Melbourne, but was a move to Australia always in the back of your head? Or were you thinking somewhere else, perhaps: Auckland, Wellington or Sydney?
Well, I was going to go and study in Auckland – that was the intention. But in the back of my head I always hoped that maybe I’d go to Europe or something like that and do music. I never imagined Australia, but I had visited Melbourne once and I did think, “Wow. This is a great city.” Now that I live here, I’m just glad that I made the move because it’s a fantastic city.

What were you planning on studying in Auckland?
I think I was just going to do language, because I love French and I spoke it. I was interested in philosophy papers, and I wanted to do a Hebrew paper. [Laughs] So I just wanted to learn, really. I didn’t want to study music; I just wanted to play it.

I spoke to Barnaby Weir recently – of the Black Seeds – and he made an interesting comment that sometimes artists lose something when they move away from their home. Did that ever concern you?
I think it was pretty inevitable that I would change, going from the age of 16 or 17 to 21. Whether or not I moved or stayed in New Zealand, I think I would have changed a lot anyway, because they’re such defining years. I’m a person who adapts quite quickly to different surroundings, but I think that’s something that I actually wanted. I did want to expand my sound – I didn’t have the desire to keep it exactly the same. I did want to change it, whereas The Black Seeds: if they wanted to keep that distinctive sound, perhaps he’s right that moving countries would take something away from that original vibe. I guess it’s just different for every artist.

Was it hard going when you first landed in Melbourne, both artistically and personally? But also, was it hard wrapping your head around the industry here?
I think I was pretty blessed to have a manager already who was in touch with the industry. I moved over here and straight away met heaps of bands from Wellington that I did [New Zealand annual music competition] Rockquest with. Although it was hard for the first few weeks, once I started going on to gigs and started playing gigs myself – in bars and that sort of thing in Fitzroy – I had people come up and say, “Oh, hey. Want to go for a drink? Let’s have a jam.” It’s all very inclusive and so I found myself making friends quite quickly. But the purpose wasn’t to move over and make friends, it was to move over and make an album, so I think that was always my focus.

Talking about the album, Vows is out in 10 days. It’s taken three and a half years. How do you feel?
It’s great. It’s really cathartic. I feel like I can finally detach myself from this child that I’ve been nurturing in my musical womb for three and a half years. [Laughs] I can actually let it go now, and I guess it does feel like a freeing feeling and I’m excited to let it be somebody else’s experience now.

Three and a half years is a long time. Why such a long gestation?
There were a lot of people pushing me to take my time, when usually it’s people pushing you to get it out quickly. I had managers and producers saying, “Please take your time to develop your sound,” which could be frustrating, because sometimes I just wanted to say, “I’m done. Let’s put it out.” But they would say, “Look, you’re 18. Take your time, wait until it’s right.” I went through different producers – I didn’t stay with one person the whole time – and there was time taken off between changing. I did writing trips to America and things like that, so there were a lot of different reasons that it took this long, but the main reason was that I wanted it to be the best piece of work that I could put out as a debut.

Was it always your intention to release an album first rather than an EP? I know the Cameo Lover release was listed as an EP, but it was more of a single in the traditional sense.
It was always the intention to do an album. I think my concept of an album is that it’s a story, and an EP seems like only half of that. It wouldn’t be quite the same experience.

We’ve already touched on this, that change that people go through between 16 and 21: do you feel like a totally different person compared to when you started this process?
In ways, yeah, and then in other ways I don’t. The intention to write music is still the same. When I was a kid and writing I wanted to make really honest music. I have the same intentions now that I did then, but I think I just have more experiences and a wider knowledge of genres and musical influences to draw from. I think I have a more clarified vision of what I want to be as an artist now, whereas it’s hard to have it all sorted when you’re younger. Not that I have it all sorted now. [Laughs] I definitely don’t mean to say that, because I think it’s a constant journey of working out what you’re going to be. Yeah, I think I feel a lot more confident in what I say as an artist now.

You talked about it being cathartic. There’s a lot of love, loss and regret floating around in the album. Is there a sense of washing your system of this stuff?
Yeah, definitely. I think for a lot of people music is a form of therapy. That’s not meant to sound too deep, [Laughs] but that’s how I get things off my chest: write a song about it. To let them go now is to part with them and to move on from them, and start looking ahead to the next album, which will be the next journey or whatever of my life.

You’re listed as having self-produced the album and written and recorded some of it in your bedroom. But then you’ve got M-Phazes and Franc Tetaz onboard too to help with production – when and how did they get involved in the process?
I knew of Franc’s work because of the Gotye record [Like Drawing Blood], which I’m a really big fan of. I said to my manager, “Look, I’d really like to work with this guy,” and within a week we were together and starting work. Then I guess later in the process I wanted to get a different perspective onboard, and I’d come across some of M-Phazes work. He was the guy who actually put the drumbeat on ‘Settle Down’ – he almost remixed it and put that drumbeat down. I was like, “Man, this has really lifted the song.” It gave it a bit of a punch. Then I got him to look at a whole other bunch of tracks off the album and I found that he was great for the finishing touches. I think it’s kind of cool to have two different perspectives on the album: they’re completely different producers, but I think that’s what gives the album it’s diversity.

It’s interesting that you talk about wanting to get involved with Franc because of his previous work with Gotye, because I know he suggested to Wally De Backer to get you involved on ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’. It was probably the first time a lot of people had heard of you – it splashed onto YouTube and created some phenomenal buzz – have you felt that blowing back to you?
Yeah, of course. It seems like the perfect timing to be putting out my album, because of the duet we did. I just did two nights at the Sydney Opera House with Wally, and people were screaming for that song – it’s crazy. [Laughs] It’s really great; it’s really positive.

What did you think when you first heard ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’? It has an immediacy to it as a listener – a real ‘holy fuck!’ factor – was it the same for you?
Yeah, totally. I guess I thought of it as a song similar to [Gotye’s 2007 single] ‘Heart’s A Mess’ in terms of being a real song that would connect with people, and I could feel just from hearing the demo that it was really strong and that it was going to be a great moment. I committed myself to making my vocal the best it could be and I really wanted to do the song justice, because I was such a fan of Gotye.

These collaborations – ‘I Look To You’ with Miami Horror and then ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ – do you think they’re handy in offsetting that very particular sound of Vows, almost as a display of your versatility?
Yeah. It’s not like I have synthy dance tracks on the album like Miami Horror. Vows is a collection of songs, but it’s not everything that I do. I think that’s why it’s handy to have other collaborations that are completely unrelated to the album. The album exists as an entity and those collaborations are offshoots of fun moments for me to not have an attachment lyrically to anything, but to lend my voice. I think they are really handy for giving people a more extensive glimpse into your sound.

And then you had Splendour a few weeks ago. A lot of people have talked about the crowd you had for that – almost like a flash mob –
Yeah. [Laughs]

I wasn’t sure if things were building or maybe people were losing interest...so when I came out onstage and saw all those people I was like, “Damn! This is really cool.”

Was that a bit of an eye-opening experience?
It was. We’d played the Corner Hotel in Melbourne maybe four or five months before that and that was a sell-out show, but we hadn’t played since then. So I wasn’t sure if things were building or maybe people were losing interest – I didn’t know because we hadn’t played. So when I came out onstage and saw all those people I was like, “Damn! This is really cool.” Word had obviously been spreading while I’d been in America for a month, and I hadn’t been sure about what the vibe was like.

You’ve mentioned America a couple of times, and that you were doing some writing trips. What else were you getting up to? Did you play any shows?
Not this time. I signed to Warner Bros. in America on a worldwide deal, so I was over there meeting with all of the Warners team. But I was also working on new songs, because they have an idea in mind to possibly add a couple of tracks to the American release of the album, so it was really just an experimental trip to see if I could come up with some new tracks. I wrote a lot of stuff over there, so it will either be stuff that will appear as bonus material, or it will be the second album. Either way, it’s a good thing.

Those tracks that you’ve been working on: have you already noticed a bit of a difference when compared to the material on Vows?
Yeah, I have actually. That’s why I’m kinda hoping that they’ll just be second album stuff, because I already feel like my head’s in a different place and that I’m starting to venture into a new territory for the second album, but I guess there are still common threads.

Talking of touring: you’ve got the five dates lined up from a week after the release. Are you looking forward to finally knuckling down and doing a series of shows to illustrate the songs to people?
Absolutely. I think that what will make the difference is that people will know the songs. Up until this point there’s been only a couple [of songs] that people have known, but I figure that people will have the record and that’s really great that I can share the songs with them and have them familiar with the album.

What are the plans for the shows. Who are you taking with you?
We’ve got Husky and Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! – two great bands. We’ve got a few little surprises in store for the Melbourne and Sydney shows, which is great, but I’m going to keep them on the down low. We’ll throw a couple of covers in there too.

But you’ll be playing with your full band, though?
Yeah, totally. There will be the full band that we had at Splendour – they’re my boys!

Vows has got some involved production. Is that something you’re thinking hard about how to translate to the live environment?
Yeah. We treat the songs very differently live. I’m not sure how that goes down with everyone. The response I seem to be getting at the moment is that people like it, but I think that it’s probably polarising because some people will come to the show and want to hear something’s that exactly the same, and that’s not what they’re going to get. I feel like they exist in one form on the album and in quite another in the live setting. When you put guitars and heavy drum kits to everything, it’s obviously going to feel a little different. Of course we incorporate the horns and the strings, and try to use as much sampling as possible, but for the most part they have a fresh take. Vocal work is still really big in the live performance – a lot of looping and sampling – so people will still feel something a little similar to the album.

What are the plans for the rest of the year?
Well, the tour is first and foremost. We’re playing New Zealand next week. We have Parklife Festival coming up, and then I go to America for a couple of months in October, just to complete the work that I started. And then we’ve got Homebake and Queenscliff and Falls Festival. [Laughs] So Just a lot of shows, I guess and touring.

And will it take three and a half years for the next album?
[Laughs] No! It definitely will not. I promise. I don’t think I could put myself through that again.

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‘Vows’ is out now through Warner Bros.