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Perth-born (but-fled-to-Melbourne) singer Jess McAvoy released her third full-length album ‘As the Sun Falls’ to a hometown crowd at the Hyde Park Hotel on July 19.
‘Of course, it’s another f*ckin’ break up album,’ McAvoy told OUTinPerth, speaking from a Melbourne cafe a few weeks before the launch.
However, that’s not to say album #3 is the same-old, same-old for McAvoy. She has stepped up the quality and complements her strong-as-ever voice with clever lyrics and more compelling (and less acoustic guitar dependent) arrangements.
‘I wrote about 50 songs for this record, and so narrowing it down meant there was a very strong contingent that wound up being left over, whereas the other [albums] I wrote sixteen and went down to 11 or 12,’ said McAvoy.
Ironically for a breakup album, the first single ‘Matter of Opinion’ (on which Clare Bowditch sings backup – Bowditch’s husband Marty Brown produced the album) is not about broken hearts and unfaithful lovers, but about McAvoy’s experience in the music industry, where the opinion of so few people has mattered so much when it comes to whose songs get heard.
In the digital age of downloads, however, McAvoy believes the music industry is ‘crumbling’ as it fails to shift promotion from products to performance. As an artist who has been paying her own way since she first started singing in Perth’s pubs at age 16, McAvoy believes that in the digital age of downloads, an album is just one more tool to get punters to pubs. And be it live or recorded, for Jess McAvoy the bottom line is simple.
‘I’m just going to keep making really quality stuff and trying to tell as many people as possible.’
For tour dates, albums, merch and the like, check out www.jessmcavoy.com or www.myspace.com/jesmaq.
