Lucie Thorne (Australia)

Lucie Thorne has earned her place as one of the most striking lyricists and voices of Australian contemporary song. Her latest release, Black Across The Field, has garnered extraordinary attention from the country’s leading critics, including being awarded ‘Best Roots Album of 2009’ in The Sydney Morning Herald, and being Short Listed for the prestigious Australian Music Prize.

Lauded for her unique voice, poetic lyricism and tender-to-gutsy electric guitar playing, Lucie Thorne has toured constantly since the album’s release in March last year – throughout Australia and Europe, taking her festival and concert audiences, and critics alike, by storm. With a final selection of shows across Australia coming up in June/July, in August she heads back in to the studio to record her next album (though we’ll have to wait till 2011 till it hits the shelves) and then from September she returns to Europe for another extensive tour.

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Aged 33, Lucie Thorne grew up in Northern Tasmania, the daughter of a poet father and music-loving mother. She spent her childhood and teen years vacillating between wanting to be Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell and the next member of AC/DC. After relocating to Melbourne for several years, she’s now based in the tiny locality of Bimbaya (population: 4) on the edge of the emerald Bega Valley on the far south coast of NSW. It’s here in an old wooden cottage by the Tantawangalo Creek that Lucie writes and records, and tends a garden, when she’s not on tour.

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CZB: What is it like growing up in Tasmania?

Lucie Thorne: Tasmania is certainly a very beautiful place. I grew in Launceston which is the second biggest city on the island. But it’s not very big – maybe 70,000 people? The whole population of Tasmania is less that 500,000 – and yet the island is about the same size as Sri Lanka – so we’re certainly spoiled for space. Culturally though, it has its challenges, – there is of course some great stuff happening down there – but there isn’t for example much of an original live music scene. And its still very common for young people to leave Tasmania for the bigger cities of Melbourne or Sydney, which is what I did when I left school…

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CZB: What do you consider is a MUST SEE as a tourist going to Tasmania?

Lucie Thorne: The beaches of the east coast and the mountains and ancient wild forests of the south west.

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CZB: You have five albums posted on your personal website but I read somewhere that you have released seven in all… what stage were you going through your first two albums and why don’t they represent you as an artist anymore?

Lucie Thorne: Black Across The Field is my fifth full-length CD, but I’ve also released a couple of  EPs – so I guess that’s where the ’7′ came from. These EPs are no longer in print (although there are versions of those songs on my other albums) – and my first album – which I made in 1998, is no longer in print either. The other four are all still in circulation – although I rarely play any of the material from the earlier ones.

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CZB: Have you played ALL OVER Australia? Which large city do you consider the friendliest and what small town would you most enjoy going back to?

Lucie Thorne: Well I can’t say I’ve played everywhere in Australia, – it’s a bloody big country! – but I’ve certainly played in every state and territory… and done a lot of touring to some very remote small towns and regional centres… Broadly speaking, the live music scene across Australia is pretty

healthy – but Melbourne is definitely the city with the best reputation for live music. There are live music venues of all shapes and sizes all over the city, and a really great community of people making all sorts of music. I lived in Melbourne for about ten years before I moved to the countryside, and it still feels like my second home, partly because of this I think. And as far as small towns go, it’s impossible to pick a favourite – but the small towns of the Bega Valley (near my adopted new home of Bimbaya) are particularly sweet – and there are lots of beautiful old country halls to play around there – as there are in lots of places around the country…

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CZB: Between Australia and Europe, have you done any gigs in Japan, South Africa or North America?

Lucie Thorne: I’ve done a couple of tours across Canada and North America, although I haven’t been back there for a few years now – so I feel kinda overdue to tour there again. Apart from that, I’ve only toured across Europe and Australia… (with the exception of a couple of shows in Sri Lanka a few years ago…)

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CZB: Is this your first time to Eastern Europe? How does the multicultural patchwork on a plot of land the size of Australia strike you?

Lucie Throne: When I toured Europe last year – I was mostly playing shows in Germany, but also a few shows in France, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. And then through some contacts made through friends of friends I was also able to line up a couple of shows in Bucharest and Istanbul, Which was an amazing experience for me. And so when the opportunity came up to come and play some more shows in Romania at the end of this year’s two month Euro tour - well, of course I was keen to come back! I don’t know if it’s ever a case of ‘culture shock’ as such, though there are of course many differences across many of the places I play – but I’ve sure been overwhelmed by the friendliness and openness and enthusiasm and generosity of the people I’ve met here in Romania, so I’m really happy to be here again…

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CZB: What does the Family Tree look like? How did the Thorne family arrive in Australia?

Lucie Thorne: My family heritage is English and Welsh, but both my mother and my father’s families have been in Australia for several generations, so we feel very ‘Australian’…

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CZB: Your father, Tim Thorne, is a very well known and regarded poet who for many years directed the Tasmanian Poetry Festival … how has your childhood around him and the family library influenced your songwriting?

Lucie Thorne: I feel pretty lucky to have had the childhood I had – mum and dad were (are) both really supportive of our creative adventures – and we were always surrounded by books and music, and writers and artists. And so I’m sure that – and that Dad is a writer – contributed in some formative way to my love of words, and my song-writing life. I’ve always loved to sing, and I certainly love performing but just as much if not more than any of that I feel very drawn to write – and the text is always very important to me in the craft. I love the story-telling element of song, and the very condensed nature of song text – the challenge to draw your listener in, while leaving enough space or ambiguity for them to bring their own experiences or feelings to it, so that hopefully you create something that then really resonates with your audience somehow…

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CZB: You are on the brink of finishing material for a brand new album. What team will you work with in the studio?

Lucie Thorne: I have most of the material together for the next album, and have started work on some preliminary recordings, and arrangement ideas, etc, but it is still in that amorphous not-quite-sure-what-kind-of-record-we’re-gonna make-yet stage… which I love. I’ll certainly be working with some of the same crew who worked with me on the last album though, and it looks like we’ll be going back to that same great studio in Sydney to record the main band bed-tracks live to 2 inch tape, and then, as ever, I’ll be spending a bunch of time by myself in my studio pottering around with it and shaping it all up… which is one of my favourite parts of the whole process…

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CZB: The European Tour was a solo adventure … what does the band look like when you normally promote your albums at home?

Lucie Thorne: I’ve toured Australia a lot with a full band (drums, bass, and second guitar) – which I love – and they’re all such great players. But over the last year or so I’ve also been been playing a lot of duo shows with the drummer – just electric guitar and drums – and in some ways I think it’s my favourite combination. You get all the energy of a band show, with the drums, but still have all the space – melodically, and harmonically – and ease with which to stretch the songs around, and be more spontaneous and playful with the material, as is the case with solo shows.

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CZB: Why did you move to the Bega Valley – why did you feel the need to get away from it all?

Lucie Thorne: I moved to Bimbaya quite specifically to make an album – (which turned in to Where Night Birds Call) thinking that I’d be there for six months at the most, write and record the songs, live by myself in the quiet countryside for a while, and then move back to Melbourne. That was at the start of 2006. And, ah, well, I never moved back …which took me by surprise in some ways I suppose. I

hadn’t ever imagined I’d be so a home in such an isolated place. But I do love it there. I’m also hardly ever there – (I’ve toured about nine or ten months of the year for the past couple of years) – so it’s sort of the perfect retreat from the busy super-social life of the road…

www.luciethorne.com

www.myspace.com/luciethornemusic

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Discography

• Little Secret Rockstars (1998)
• Window Seat (EP, 2000)
• Reels & Roads (EP, 2002)
• Botticelli Blue Eyes (2002)
• The Bud (2004)
• The Upfield Line (2006)
• Where Night Birds Call (2007)
• Black Across the Field (2009)

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LUCIE THORNE’s album BLACK ACROSS THE FIELD

Nominated 2009 Australian Music Prize

Awarded Best Roots Album of 2009 – Sydney Morning Herald

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[Courier Mail]

“Australia’s PJ Harvey… possessing the punch of Cat Power, and the wise words of Joni Mitchell”

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[Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald]

“This gentle chanteuse has delivered quiet perfection. There is such an intensity of feeling here …moody folk, country noir… a collection of stories that speaks small but resonates much bigger. One of the finer albums of the year so far…Thorne marks out her space with some fabulous sensuality.”

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[Andy Hazel, Inpress]

“Thorne cuts her own niche from the acoustic masses by specialising in gently percolating nocturnes that could be penned by PJ Harvey after waking in a Tasmanian poppy field. A bright star rising, and one worth all the attention she receives.”

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[Ian Cuthbertson, ****, The Australian]

“The production of the voice is a giant close-up of delicate emotional expression; every murmur, tongue flick and gentle pulse is significant. Thorne also has a gift for melody and, for the complete trifecta, writes thoughtful, intelligent lyrics that, as with Joni Mitchell, leave you pondering shades of meaning. Thorne’s electric guitars paint gorgeous swaths in the stereo field… this is an album that deserves to be widely heard.”
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BLACK ACROSS THE FIELD out now in Australia through VITAMIN RECORDS

www.vitamin.net.au

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Like the best writers, Lucie Thorne uses her songs to distil the poetic from the everyday, and each new song opens onto an unlikely world of characters and emotions. From the dark childhood visions of Alice underpinned by swelling rock guitars, the hopeful girl-in-the-crowd dreaminess of When The Lights Go Down, through to the melodic pop defiance of The Basic Rules, Lucie Thorne’s songs are compelling in their intimacy. It’s this breadth and depth of writing that makes Black Across The Field feel a little like a favourite book: the moment you finish, you want to read it again from the beginning. After demo-ing many of the songs at home, Lucie was introduced to legendary drummer Hamish Stuart, and that’s when things started to shift. Stuart and Thorne then joined forces with bass player Dave Symes (Sarah Blasko, Missy Higgins, Sleepy Jackson) and with the three of them deciding to co-produce the album, the chemistry of Black Across The Field was born. Inspired to continue expanding her horizons, Lucie invited some of her other favourite musicians to guest on the record. To her delight, they were as keen as Stuart and Symes to be involved – resulting in stunning cameo performances by Chris Abrahams on piano, and Stephen Magnusson on guitars.

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