Annie Hamilton wants you to ‘Stop and Smell the Lightning’

Annie Hamilton’s new album ‘Stop and Smell the Lightning’ sees her grow from her indie rock roots into an electric and eclectic sonic world, keeping her storytelling prowess intact. Out November first, the genesis of the album idea was a house party fresh out of lockdown, and it was refined over the course of two and a half years. Flying in and out to Jake Webb’s (Methyl Ethel) studio in Freemantle, the record she has produced is tight and varied, moving swiftly from dancey, high-production dark pop to interludes that speak to her indie roots. She sat down with Ramona to talk about creative evolution, the beauty of the album as an art form and the specific things that this years-long creative process contributed to the album that emerged.

RAMONA: The new album is sick, it’s really cool. It’s definitely an evolution of your sound, but you can see all the roots from what you were doing before. When you’re going into making a new record, do you go in with a sound that you’re chasing? Or does it emerge in the studio as you make it?

ANNIE: Almost half and half. I love that you said it’s an evolution from my previous work because that’s exactly what I wanted, I’ve never wanted to make something I’ve already made. I was also really trying to push my production skills and explore some new sonic territory. I made a lot of this album with Jake [Webb] from Methyl Ethel, and that’s why I wanted to work with him; I knew I wanted this album to be more dancey, and have really interesting, electronic, weird sonic elements that are a bit unlike anything else. I really went in with that intention, but then in saying that, so much of it did evolve in the studio. Songs started one way and then we stumbled across things in the studio and just thought “this is sick”. So a bit of both.

RAMONA: You’ve sort of answered this there but I’m interested then, what does songwriting look like for you now? I know you come from a folky background; do you still write on guitar and then bring the song in?

ANNIE: I try to! I love to. I always write by myself, it’s a very private thing for me. I’ve written all the songs on the album, and everything I’ve released so far, myself. I usually demo as I’m writing, mainly on guitar or piano or something, but then I’ll start recording over the demo as I go and that’s where some of those elements can, and usually do, shape what the song starts becoming. Usually I’ll get a little bit further with that, and then usually I have to step back and put away the computer, go back to the piano or guitar and make sure that the song still actually stands up. So I kind of go back and forth between building it up on my laptop and stepping away, checking with the guitar that the melody, the chords and the lyrics all stand up on their own and then going back into production land.

RAMONA: I feel like that makes sense, listening to the album, because you can hear that each song has its own emotional evolution as well, in where you’ve placed the songs. Something about ‘crush song’ into ‘slut era’ is really fantastic and adds a richness to both of those songs. Did you know where they were going to sit early on? 

ANNIE: Yes! I’m so glad that you appreciate that because I am such an album person, I’m all about the body of work and the collection. Every song is saying something but together they’re more than the sum of their parts, I put so much thought and energy into the sequencing. When I wrote ‘crush song’ I was like… this needs to go straight into ‘slut era’. When I think of this album as a whole I think of it as a walk home after a night out, it’s a zig zag of highs and lows. There’s these big hyper-produced moments that are huge energy and then they’re balanced out, in between, with all these delicate, fragile little interludes where you can stop and take a breath and then launch back into the next up, you know? I think as I was making the album, because I made it over such a long period of time, conceptually it all just happened as I was writing. But the more I wrote stuff that felt like it fitted into a perfect little moment, the more the concept came together, and the more I started seeing the zig zag and the tracklist with everything flowing into each other.

RAMONA: One of the other moments where that story arc of the dancefloor and then the walk home really sings, is ‘DYNAMITE’ into the ‘Without you prelude’, and then how different ‘Without You’ the full song is. You feel that zig zag on an emotional level. You’ve said you were looking for new sounds, more electronic things; I feel like I can hear IDLES in there, and some Bowie-esque harmonies in ‘Streetlights’. How long did it take to make?

ANNIE: About two and a half years.

RAMONA: So asking what you were listening to while you were making it feels kind of pointless, but do you have any memorable moments of what you were listening to?

ANNIE: There was a mix of stuff that I was listening to, but most of it was 80’s. So much Madonna. I think it was because the baseline intention of the record came from when I went to one of my friends’ house parties about two and a half years ago. It was just post lockdown and it felt like we’d forgotten how to dance, or about the joy of dancing. I’d also been through a massive breakup, so it was a point in my life where I was out the other side, recalibrating to life and rediscovering joy. I went to this house party, and it was one of those amazing dance floors where you dance til six AM, and everyone’s singing along, and it’s 80’s disco into early 2000’s RnB, just totally random music. I was like, damn, I want to make a song that you could sing and dance to at a house party. At first I was thinking that I’d have to make a side project, because my Annie Hamilton music is angsty, indie rock, sadgirl, guitar music. Then I realised, wait a second… I can do anything I want. If my music is me and a reflection of me, this is following that.

RAMONA: Right on.

ANNIE: Jake and I had a rule in the studio; a no-reference rule. Often it’s totally normal to pull up some references and use that as a starting point to get sounds. It means that if you have a song, say ‘Ray of Light’ by Madonna, and you pull it up in the studio and try to emulate that, usually you’d start with the chord progression, or the beat and you’d directly copy those elements as a starting point, which can be a totally great way to do it. If you can’t listen to it though, but you go “I want it to feel like ‘Ray of Light’”, then that’s a more interesting task because you have to figure out what it is about that song that you want. So you go “I want it to feel soaring” or “expansive” and you work backwards and start from there, and go “How do we make something that’s soaring and upbeat?”. I think it’s then that you come up with stuff that’s way more original, when you come up with stuff without indulging the ease of actually listening to it and copying it.

RAMONA: That’s so real. I feel like a lot of people want to make dancey tunes that also have real heartbreak in them go straight to ‘Dancing On My Own’ by Robyn, and decide to just make their own version of that. I love the idea of running at the feeling rather than directly swiping the sonic palette.

ANNIE: It’s a really good challenge because… Robyn’s such a good example (that was another reference honestly) for the dance away the sadness vibes. But then if you were on a desert island and couldn’t listen, then how would you try and catch that? You’re actually just pulling from your own unique interpretation of it and you’re spitting out your own unique interpretation.

RAMONA: I love that. Are you always thinking about the live show as you make the record? Or does that evolve after you’ve made it?

ANNIE: I think about it, but I have always believed that you shouldn’t let the “How is this going to work live?” question get in the way of creating. It’s always the song coming first, and pushing the boat out as far as you can, doing the craziest shit, even if at the time you’re like “how the fuck would I do this live?”. Cross that bridge when you come to it. I think if you’re thinking about how you’re going to do it live, you’re automatically shrinking your ideas down. But now I’m at the point of trying to figure it out… I’m at that bridge and I have to cross it haha.

RAMONA: Good luck haha. ‘Seven storeys up’ is freshly out, just a few days ago, and the album title lyric arrives in this surprising, beautiful way in one of the quieter moments of the record. Did you know when you wrote the song that that line was going to be the title of the record? 

ANNIE: No I didn’t! I started writing it walking down the street. I had the melodies and some of the lyrics and got home and figured it out on the piano, then it became this work in progress over the two years. I just kept adding new verses, tweaking lyrics, pulling away verses. I had a demo that was like a hyperpop, Grimes-esque demo, and then it evolved so much in the studio. I wrote the “stop and smell the lightning” lyric at the beginning of last year, and put it into the song, but I actually had another working title for the album for the whole time I was making it. I recorded a lot of the album in Freo in Western Australia because that’s where Jake’s studio is, but once the album was done, on my last flight home, I was just like “This has to be the album title”. So I scrapped my working title of two years and was like “this is it”. This encapsulates everything about the album that I want to say.

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‘Stop And Smell The Lightning’ is out now, and you can catch Annie in a city near you as she crosses that bridge, taking her new sound on the road.

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