With her new track ‘Still’, unveiled in a stripped-down B side version, ethereal Australian singer-songwriter Erin displays a look into the gentler side of her songwriting.
The unguarded lullaby displays her words’ lyricism, which drives a smooth yet sophisticated musical structure carried by her unusual airy voice over chords that are faintly suggestive of her jazz background. The song, produced by Ken Allars, is quickly thrusting the listener into Erin’s dreamscape sound, for contemplation of silence that naturally blossomed into a sorrowful love story.
Erin is located in Sydney and debuted her debut single, ‘Come With Me,’ in 2017. The self-released music caught the attention of Triple J broadcasters, Sony 301, and MTV Australia, who invited her to play for Amy Shark at Australia’s inaugural MTV unplugged 2018. Her second single, ‘I Wonder,’ was a soft release and creative excursion produced by Nick Herrera (Hiatus Kaiyote), and it helped distinguish her as a multifaceted songwriter with a literary mind.
“I wrote ‘Still’ on the 15th of October 2019, a few days after I had returned home from Vietnam. I know the date because I still have the iPhone voice memo. My guitarist played this pretty little French sounding guitar line. He was just improvising a little to himself but I immediately heard the rest of the guitar melody in my head. I sang it back to him to copy me and he put some beautiful chords to it. I sang Still over the stop, the words and melody coming all at once and it’s the only song that’s ever written itself that way for me, so seamlessly”, she remembers.
‘Still’ – B side allows Erin to offer her audience both sides of her creative nature, allowing them to gravitate towards what naturally speaks to them musically and emotionally: whether it’s the darker or lighter side of her songs. These two starkly opposed ideas of light and dark coalesce in her music, leaving the listener unable to choose between the dark but earthly pull or the existential brightness. Erin’s music allows the listener to sit in both and simply be “still.”
Photography by Anna Zrnic