18 year old Lisa Mitchell's EP 'Welcome to the Afternoon' was a sweet surprise when it landed on our desks. Showcasing a folk-based maturity beyond her years balanced with an intimate, organic approach, it lies in stark contrast to the image suggested by her being squeezed through the machine of Australian Idol. Currently on tour, we caught up with Lisa on her way from a gig suburban Melbourne to a home base in the city, and talked of songwriting smarts being taken seriously, the bizarreness of recording her album alone for 6 months in London and the drunks of Geelong, Victoria.

You played the Barwon Club [infamous rock outpost in Geelong, VIC] last night?

Yeah we did. Everyone was absolutely smashed.

The last time I was at the Barwon Club I saw a punk band set up on the floor in front of the stage and everyone just ran into them. That was their set.

(Laughs) Wow. Yeah it gets pretty messy down there.

So when I saw you were playing there I was wondering what the reaction might be like.

They were really good actually. Even though they were really quite marinated. It was good though, they all joined in on 'Neopolitan Dreams'. Seriously, they were all dancing and singing along so yeah. Really fun.

When I first heard your EP Welcome to the Afternoon I didin't realise that you were on Australian Idol. To be honest I think I would've been a bit prejudiced and not listened to it, had I known about the Idol past.

The sad thing I guess with being on Idol is, as you said, if you knew about it maybe you wouldn't listen to it. After it [Idol] I think it got harder to win people over.

Were you feeling very positive after the Idol experience?

Yeah. I got in contact with Scorpio who are a management team after being on the show. And so I've been working with them to you know, continue making music and helping with my EPs. They've been helping me get on support tours and for the last couple of years I've been inspired by that support base I've built. So that people can know more about my EPs and my music rather than just being the girl from a TV show.

It seems that one of the things with that show - from what I read - was that you were really prevented from going much further because the format didn't work for you. Were you annoyed at not being seen as your own artist?

I think it's hard to take it professionally if you know you write your own stuff. You know I don't mind singing covers if you really connect to that song. You're going to want to sing it. But doing covers all the time is not really what music is to me. So yeah that was a compromise I suppose.

What is music to you then, in terms of what you want to say with it? And how you think you're saying it?

Well songwriting is a massive fraction of why I do it. I think songwriting is, for me, about trying to capture a feeling that can't be captured in a diary entry, or a journal or a picture. I guess it needs more of a human element to it, to record it properly.

It feels like your lyrics are often about viewing the world from the outside. Almost fantastical element to them.

Yeah that's true. I guess I come from novels and fairy tales and there's a simplicity to them and something that's very pure. Something like 'Neopolitan Dreams' is something that's quite fragile. It has a very intimate kind of energy to the chorus and I guess I was trying to capture that kind of simplicity.

Is that the same approach to the album that's coming out next year?

There's definitely elements of that simplicity in the album and there are some fragile tracks on it. I guess it's natural for my songwriting to evolve the more I write and the older I become. So there is a slightly new direction on some of the tracks. It's hard for me to look at it from someone else's perspective because I've been stuck in it. 'Neopolitan Dreams' is on the album, but I think it's been a natural progression for me. And I had Anthony Whiting who was the producer, he wrote some tracks on it as well so there's some influence there. I wanted to put in a new foreign element.

You recorded the album in London over the last six months and I read on your blog that you said it makes you "feel much older".

True.

Is that part of being a musician in a foreign place for a while?

I guess being being away and outside of your comfort zone, away from family and friends and in unusual surroundings...I felt very detached. In some ways that's really nice and can be really, really good creatively. Just to not have a close influence all the time, you know, someone else there. I mean I got pretty lonely. Not because I was alone, but just because you don't realise how much you depend on people til they're not there. It was hard but fun, I think. I always wanted to be there and being in London it was such an amazing place. And so good to live in for a while.

Do you think there was time for it to influence the album?

Yeah undoubtedly it will have some influence on the tracks and the way it was recorded. It was kind've at an odd time for me cause I was living by myself and making this record and it was quite...bizarre.

How do you mean?

Well just to be in this space that you've never been before and trying to make this thing that's incredibly important to me and affects my health and wellbeing...permanently. Without all the people that I'm usually around. I found it quite...incredibly indulgent. Your mind is free to go completely crazy and you kind of need to hang on to your ankles as you're floating up. And at the same time it's incredibly scary cause you are so on the edge and without all that support.

I imagine there's a duality because you can float into the ether if you like but you're also incredibly responsible for it.

I had to wrestle with that the whole time. It was a weird experience but I liked it and think it...altered my view.

It sounds exciting.

It really was.

And is the record finished?

Well it's being mixed at the moment. So i just have Anthony emailing mixes back and forth. The plan is to have it out around February?

I think March 9th is what the label is saying.

Oh really? Thanks. (Laughs) Great.

So there's not a tracklist set in stone?

No not really. I'm still listening to mixes and figuring it out.

I wanted to ask you about the fact that you've done some writing with Kevin Mitchell and Clare Bowditch and Ben Lee.

Yeah.

Are they responsible for some of the stuff on the record?

No I don't actually have any of the co-writes that I did with them on the album. But yeah, it was amazing. An absolutely amazing experience to work with them all. I find them very inspirational as people as well as songwriters. So to get to meet them and work with them was great. Another guy from the UK I wrote the song called 'Stevie' with, his name's Ed Harcourt. We had such a good time writing this song. You should see his house! I mean it's just this little terrace house but full of...it's like a weird, old vintage instrument shop. Weird, weird stuff everywhere. So we had a really good time writing the songs and he's a brilliant piano player. So he did that and he's done some great back up singing and stuff like that. So I'm really excited to have him in involved.

Did he turn into a bit of a sounding board in the absence of other friends?

Totally. He's such a beautiful guy and someone I can talk to about stuff, y'know about how things should sound. Mic sounds and all these instruments and...on one of the days in Westpoint, this big studio we were in, he got this big old band in and they feature in a bunch of songs.

One of the things I like about the EP is that the production is really not what I expected from a major label pop singer songwriter.

Well we put the EPs out as really a one of with Warners. But Dan Hume from Evermore produced them. We just recorded them in his little house in Melbourne. It wasn't incredibly polished. But the sound we got really suited the songs I thought.

Will that organic aesthetic continue through the album?

It is in some ways, there's a few tracks on the new album where we just set up a couple of mics in a big room and I played this song 'Love Letter' live and recorded it in one take. So there's a lot of real energy in the album because a lot of it is from live takes. Not cut up, not cut and paste and things like that.

That kind've stuff can kill a record.

It can totally kill a song.

(Sound of footsteps in a hall and doors closing)

It sounds like you are somewhere now.

Yeah I'm at my Mums.

Well I'll let you go.

Ok thanks for talking to me.



Lisa Mitchell - 'See You When You Get Here'