STACK Issue 151 May 2017

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We caught up with Amy Shark ahead of the release
of her brand new EP, Night Thinker.
How did you go about perfecting your
sound?
AMY SHARK: It’s definitely taken the
longest for me to work out, just ‘cause I
was really lazy for a long time. I probably
didn’t put the effort into the production.
Production is such a big thing, and I know
that now, whereas for so long I was
just like ‘I just write things and acoustic
songs and I don’t need to worry about it
or pour that much money into it.’ I was
just also trying to find my place and my
sound, what I wanted to do, what would
complement my voice and my writing.
To be honest, putting acoustically-written
songs with these big like hip-hop beats
behind them just doesn’t really work, you
know, or make sense. No-one’s gonna buy
into that. It randomly happened with one
of my first songs, I had a guy that was
really great with percussion, and I was
just like ‘this is working.’ We did it again
with another song which had a lot more
electronic drops in it. I just felt really good
about it - I thought it had a really cool
sound. I was working with the lyrics and
eventually I got there.
Is it true that it only took you 10
minutes to put the finishing touches on
Adore and Weekends ?
It is actually. I don’t even mean to
sound like a dick when I say that, but it’s
pretty accurate because I’m either on or
I’m not. If I ever have to push anything,
I’ll generally just not - I won’t push it. If
it doesn’t come out easily and fluidly -
usually when I get the melody on point
everything connects and it just becomes
executed really well. That’s kind of what
I’m addicted to.
Where did the Shark in Amy Shark come
from? (ps – her full name is Amy Billings).
Well I didn’t wanna use a family
name, and my favourite movie of all
time is Jaws. I used to have really heavy
nightmares about sharks when I was
younger, and my parents banned me from
watching Jaws. I was pretty young. Then
I moved onto like Jaws 2, Jaws 3, Jaws
Revenge; anything with a shark in it I was
just addicted to. Basically that’s where
it sorta comes from - being addicted to
watching docos, reading about them.
(And before you ask, she’s seen ‘about 30
seconds’ of Sharknado.)
What kind of stuff did you listen to
growing up?
So much music. I listened to a lot of
punk growing up, I sort of moved into
listening to a lot of, you know, your Bjorks
and your Jezabels, and your Tegan and
Sara, really lyric-heavy stuff, Bright Eyes.
Even that took me a while - I was for
STACK
MUSIC
Words Alesha Kolbe