Sally Seltmann: ‘I Never Sound Tough’

Newly relocated overseas, Sally Seltmann reflects on her second album since retiring her New Buffalo guise. Interview by DOUG WALLEN.

“I have no choice but to follow my heart,” sings Sally Seltmann on ‘Needle in the Hay’, one of her most recent singles. That line neatly sums up Seltmann’s story to date: from two acclaimed albums as New Buffalo to two more under own name, ranging from stark piano ballads to girl-group-style pop anthems to lush orchestral swooning, she has always simply done what her heart has told her to. That includes teaming up with peers Sarah Blasko and Holly Throsby for 2011’s runaway-success side project Seeker Lover Keeper, co-writing Feist’s 2007 hit ‘1 2 3 4’ and moving to Los Angeles with her family late last year.

That undisguised sincerity is part of what makes Seltmann’s songs so special. Even when they’re riddled with doubt, they never sound cynical. Coupled with her airy sigh of a singing voice and her jaunty, effortless way with melodies, her songwriting has a freshness and innocence that seems undisturbed by the outside world. That said, her new album Hey Daydreamer gets darker and potentially meaner with the flute-led ‘I Will Not Wear Your Wedding Ring’, while ‘Seed of Doubt’ reflects on confusion (“I don’t know whether we are breaking up, breaking down or losing touch”) and the LA-inspired ‘Holly Drive’ sounds happy on the surface yet tackles a “heavy heart” and “withered soul.” ‘Catch of the Day’ conjures snakes and spiders gathering around where she’s fallen, before she announces: “I’m not going to live my life being told who I’m supposed to be.”

Resilience and melancholy are inseparable in Seltmann’s songs, which on Hey Daydreamer enlist up to 10 collaborators at a time on a variety of instruments – including her husband Darren (ex-Avalanches), who co-produced it with her in their attic in Sydney before relocating to the US. Although Seltmann says below that she wanted to make an album very different from 2010’s Heart That’s Beating, her follow-up goes to new places without losing the thread that has wound through all her work: brave, exacting pop music.

How are you settling into LA?
I really love it. I’ve still got a little bit to go with setting up my little studio/music room but, yeah, it’s really great.

And you recorded this record in your attic in Sydney?
Yeah, in Sydney.

Is that just where you had set up the studio?
My two New Buffalo albums I made at home, and I just liked the freedom and non-time-pressure of working from home. So I just thought I wanted to make another home album.

And having Darren produce it was part of that?
Yeah. We co-produced it together, so it made it good for us to have [between us]. We could set up in the attic and come and go and feel creative. [Laughs]

How long did it take to do it that way?
Well, basically about a year and a half. But that was just through choice, because I’ve got a daughter who’s five and I wanted to just be around a bit more for her. Because I’d been so busy in the years leading up to that with doing my own solo album and the Seeker Lover Keeper album. So yeah, I thought I’d try and get an album done in a year, but it took a year and a half.

And you played the piano in your lounge room for the album?
Yep. Darren wired up all these mic leads that ran from the lounge room right up the stairs into the attic, and I just recorded.

What’s the history of that piano? What kind is it and how long have you had it?
It’s just an old wooden upright piano that I got. I lived in Melbourne for a long time and then I moved back to Sydney about four years, so I bought the piano soon after I moved, just from a guy. I think it was his family piano and his mother had just passed away. I just really liked the tone of it and the feel of it, so I decided to use that piano for the album.

“It’s a mix of programmed and synthed and real instruments.”

It seems like you played a long list of other instruments on the album. Was that just to make it easier [rather than enlisting other people], or did you just hear everything in your head and could knock it out that way?
The way we made the album, I wrote the songs and then Darren and I talked a lot about the sort of album we wanted to make in terms of production. And then I just started roughly recording the songs and did lots of programming using orchestral sounds and things like that. Then we got real players in, like violin, trumpet, saxophone and harp, and Bree van Reyk did heaps of percussion and drums. So it’s a mix of programmed and synthed and real instruments.

How are you planning to do it live?
Live it’s gonna be different, because I’m not gonna tour with a 15-piece band. [Laughs] So I’ve got a keyboard and Bree’s going to play drums and then I might have a couple of other players, but it’s going to be quite stripped-back compared to the album.

Do you feel like this is the direction you’re heading in, with all these orchestral elements?
I think it was a direction I went for intentionally with Hey Daydreamer. My response to that now is that I kind of feel like I just want to make a solo piano album or something. [Laughs] So I just change all the time.

Was country music an influence? I noticed steel guitar on a few of the songs.
That was Darren’s idea to get pedal steel on a couple songs. I don’t know – I don’t think we intentionally wanted the songs to sound like country songs. We just wanted it to have this circus-y kind of orchestral flavour, and that was just one of the instruments we chose to put in the mix.

“That was me trying to be tougher than I sound. Because I never sound tough.”

The last album had that song ‘Dream About Changing’, and on this album ‘I Will Not Wear Your Wedding Ring’ starts with you recounting a dream. Do you think that’s a theme that has carried over?
No really. I mean, for me they feel like really different songs. I feel like, for my Hey Daydreamer album, I didn’t want to have songs like ‘Dream About Changing’. [Laughs] I guess I am quite interested in dreams and the dream state and daydreaming, but with ‘I Will Not Wear Your Wedding Ring’ I more just wanted to have a darker song that was, I don’t know, me trying to be tougher than I sound. Because I never sound tough. [Laughs]

When you say didn’t want to have songs like ‘Dream About Changing’, what do you mean?
Well, that feels like a real pop song to me, and I always felt kind of embarrassed by the lyric “I’m a little bit shy.” It’s just weird that that song became one of the main singles for the album. I mean, I love that album that I made and I loved working with [producer] Franc Tetaz, who’s a good friend of mine. But I really felt like I wanted to make a different-sounding album when I made Hey Daydreamer.

What does you living in LA mean for Seeker Lover Keeper? Have you talked about doing a second album yet?
It’s funny because someone else was just asking me that too. I think we all just went into that and made the album, and no one really knows what we’ll do next. Which is kind of the beauty of the project. We could always make another album in the future, but I’m not sure.

“We all thought [Seeker Lover Keeper] was just going to be this little side project.”

Were you surprised by success of that record?
Yeah, I was. I think we all thought it was just going to be this little side project. So yeah, it was a bit crazy that it did so well.

It seems like the song ‘Holly Drive’ references LA, but if it was written before you moved there I could be wrong.
Guess what? You are exactly right. I wrote that song when we were staying in LA and we stayed in a house that was on a street called ‘Holly Drive’. It’s good that you picked up on that.

What was your relationship to LA prior to moving there?
Well, I’d played some shows here but the last three years I’ve come over [annually] to co-write songs with other people.

Could you give some examples?
Yeah, I wrote a song with this girl Greta [Morgan] with a project called Springtime Carnivore. A couple of years I did a song with a girl called Lucy Schwartz, and the song [‘Feeling of Being’] we wrote got in that film What Maisie Knew with Julianne Moore. All different people.

What’s the benefit of that for you, creatively?
Well, I guess I’ve written a lot of songs on my own and done a few records, so it still feels kind of new and different for me to collaborate with other people. It’s like when you learn a cover of a song: you learn stuff and it shapes the way you write your next song. I guess writing songs with other people can do that as well.

Was it hard to make that decision to move overseas, taking the whole family into account?
Yeah, kind of. We came over in April last year, for a month, and Darren just really, really, really likes it here. So it was kind of up to me to say, “Okay, I want to move over.” So it was hard but I’m really glad that we did it. I’ve never lived in another country before.

Is Darren going to be able to do his music stuff as well?
Yeah, Darren’s always working on stuff, and he also does a bit of art now as well.

I know there’s talk every few months of a new Avalanches album, which he must think is pretty funny.
Yeah. He’s actually not involved with The Avalanches anymore, which a lot of people don’t know about.

Then I’m sure he wants to work on new stuff and make a name for himself outside of that.
Yeah.

Has that [same thing] been hard for you? Do you think people have finally cottoned on to your name versus New Buffalo?
No, I actually don’t think they do, because I sometimes meet people, or friends tell me they meet people, and they know New Buffalo but they don’t know Sally Seltmann. So yeah, it was a funny decision for me to make, but I just went with it. [Laughs]

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‘Hey Daydreamer’ is out now through Caroline. Read Anthony Carew’s review. Launch tour dates below, all with Wintercoats.

Thurs, April 3 – Lizottes, Kincumber, NSW
Fri, April 4 – The Vanguard, Sydney, NSW
Sat, April 5 – The Clarendon Hotel, Katoomba, NSW
Thurs, April 10 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD
Fri, April 11 – Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh, Melbourne, VIC
Sun, April 13 – Kelvin Club, Melbourne, VIC