Who was the first person that you showed your new album, Don’t Be Afraid, to? My partner at the time. We played a lot of music together and it was special for us to hear the stories about hard times and good times come together into something beautiful! It’s funny to hear years of stuff squished up into 40 minutes.

Who did you collaborate with on this album? I haven't really done a lot of true collaboration on my own songs in the past, but this album is definitely both Dan Carroll’s and my creation together. Dan has produced almost all of my music and usually respectfully takes a backseat. This has let me find my sound and tell my stories in my own way. But this time I told him, “Please make this record yours too”. I love the way he treats a song almost like a painting, adding textures and colourful sounds instead of thinking of the track as just a sum of parts.

What are you afraid of? So many small and momentary things, but when you break them all down, I think it comes back to whether or not I am a good person in the world. Constantly deliberating on whether I’ve done or said the right or the wrong thing in a situation, or if my net output is positive to the people around me. I want very much to live a good life and do good things. The album definitely covers a lot of that, trying to decode what makes someone kind. Otherwise, I’m quite afraid of heights.

What’s your favourite track on the album? People have been asking me this a lot, and I still don't have a great answer. I like different songs for different reasons: "Ashamed" or "Annabelle" I like because I’ve never made anything like them before. On this album I loved pushing myself in terms of skills and ideas. I think in terms of storytelling, my favourite is the first track "The Saddle". It describes special parts of my childhood, so hearing it takes me back there, which feels good.

 

 

 

 

 

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When was the last time you did something creative that wasn’t music-related? I love sewing and am always messing around making dumb costumes for parties. I also love roller skating, which I find really creative, kind of like exercise and dancing at the same time. Making music videos has also been interesting in the way that I am thinking about how I present on camera. I have a new respect for actors and the way they can create moments and emotion with just their bodies and movements.

When did you fall in love with an artist or album for the first time? There is plenty of music that has just always been around me that I can’t actually remember falling in love with, but I would say Mia Dyson’s album The Moment was absolutely huge for me. I saw her play when I was about 14, and she just blew me away. I’d never seen or heard anything like it. I had that album on my iPod and would listen to it on the bus and walking home from school and pretty much everywhere I went, just trying to understand how she made her voice sound so full and rich. I was absolutely in awe of the songwriting, too. My favourite track was always "To Fight Is To Lose", or "Tell Me". Or all of them actually.

Where did you grow up? I grew up in a town called Albany in south-west WA. It’s on the coast and is really beautiful. I can’t really imagine a better childhood, climbing trees and playing in the dirt. Being a teenager in a regional area was great too – you just made your own fun and spent a lot of time out in nature.

 

 

 

 

 

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Where is your favourite place to write music? In the car! There is something about constant movement and using the practical parts of your brain to drive that lets the other parts wander. It helps that I’m mostly alone while driving around so I’ve got space to be with my thoughts. Boredom is fertile ground for creativity. Phrases will always pop into my head. I tell Siri to make notes, then turn them into songs later.

Why is the album called Don’t Be Afraid? I was in Dublin at a Seamus Heaney exhibition. I’ve always enjoyed his poetry, but being immersed in his life really moved me. His writing throughout The Troubles wasn’t just to record and pay tribute to the unrest, violence and pain, but to bring people together and give them purpose by capturing their shared experience in something as beautiful as art.

What moved me the most were the latest parts of his work. They’re calm, accepting and mostly just observations on beauty and the world around him. It seemed to me that he had begun to be at peace with inevitable turmoil. “Noli timere” were the last words he texted to his wife before he died, which is Latin for ‘Don’t be afraid’. I thought that it sums up what I am trying to achieve through recording these emotions and stories about my own life. Just to accept and be at peace and to share that sentiment with others.

Why do you make music? I make music (and I mean the music itself, not the job part) because there is no reason to do it other than the fact that I feel like it. If there were no music, the world would go on spinning; it just wouldn’t be as beautiful.

You can listen to Carla Geneve's album Don't Be Afraid here.