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The indie pop queen with the silkiest soccer skills we have ever seen has bestowed upon her legion of followers a spectacular second album, Complex, ahead of a National tour which will see her take the stage in Perth in November.
We, of course, are talking about the ever-eloquent and glorious Montaigne, who revealed a snapshot of things to come with her anthemic single Ready in June.
The powerful track is a call to arms born from a place of frustration, which was originally intended for Montaigne’s writing partner, Melbourne songstress Eliott.
“I was writing with Eliott and I was thinking about how excessively talented she is and how she ought to be touring to huge audiences and is not quite there yet,” Montaigne said.
“Why? Opportunities are hard to come by in the music industry, there are a lot of people trying to crack the market and Australia has a very low ceiling.
“And being a woman too, in any industry, it’s still hard to be taken seriously. I don’t think the song is just about or for women though.
“I definitely wanted and want to highlight how much harder women have it in aspirational territory, but systematic oppression and disadvantage also applies greatly to people of colour, disabled people, anyone in a medium to low income bracket, queer people, etc. and even more to the people at the intersection of some of these variables.”
The sophomore album follows 2016 debut Glorious Heights, during which time she has grown as an artist.
“I think I’m more mature now, which is an obvious thing to say since time and what happens in it hopefully teaches maturity, but there are some things I had to learn very quickly in my personal life which show up on this record in their transitional stages,” she said.
“I also went through some pretty serious burnout during the record which appears as a theme on a few of the songs.
“Also the resources and collaborators I had access to were much broader this time. I spent a lot of time in Los Angeles making things with people.”
Montaigne succinctly sums up the album as “sad bangers you can bop and/or cry to simultaneously”, but the self-reflective album touches upon a collection of themes, including loneliness, distorted love narratives, a confused sense of self and the desire to escape.
Despite the melancholic motif and the arduous journey which birthed the themes of the record, Montaigne views the entire process as a kind of metamorphosis.
“Having to figure this album and my life out in simultaneity was the best possible collision of events I could have endured,” she said.
“There’s no way to quantify it, but I think going through the whole thing rescued me from a bunch of possible futures which would have been unpleasant and dark. It’s just this sense I have.
“I hope that listening to this album bequeaths the sense of anticipation and tension and tortuous disappointment that precedes your life and mind and body being totally reshaped and redefined, hopefully for the better.”
Montaigne has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket goes to support Bush Heritage Australia a national non-profit organisation conserving biodiversity in Australia.
Get your tickets to catch Montaigne on November 8 at Badlands Bar here.
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