A Melbourne-based singer-songwriter with a dynamic indie-pop energy adorned with blues sentimentality, Louise Gaul began to bring her piano-centric sounds and intricately-crafted lyricism to live audiences around Melbourne in 2016, creating intimate and emotive spaces with an organic and stripped-back performance style.
Supporting artists at venues such as The Tote Hotel, Grace Darling and The Melbourne Recital Centre, the young songwriter's eclectic style centres itself on themes of dark Western religiosity entwined with youthful love and heartbreak, all of which is featured in her upcoming debut release.
When and how did you get involved with music?
I’d been watching my brother practice Heart and Soul on our old beaten-up, wildly out-of-tune upright piano before my hands were big enough to play. I was five when my fingers could just manage copy a melody without solely relying on my pointer fingers, and I began to learn piano and violin.
What does your creative process look like?
I sit at a piano and improvise lots. Once I begin to flesh a song out, I start writing lyrics straight away, which usually involves going back and forth from the piano, to the floor, to the piano again. Then I improvise some more to explore what other DNA a song has.
Who are your musical influences?
Damien Rice changed my relationship with songwriting completely. His candid introspections were so new to 16-year-old me, and alongside Bjork, Bon Iver and Amy Winehouse, he was the artist who made me realise that making music was something I wanted to do over everything else.
What’s it like coming up as an artist from the west of Melbourne? What makes it different?
My family has been based in the west for several generations, so I feel a certain familial connection to this part of Melbourne. Apart from that connection however, I think there’s a certain isolation about living in the West specific to the industrialised environment around us. I don’t mind that isolation, I’ve always enjoyed the contrast between catching gigs in the lively city or surrounding suburbs and then coming home to somewhere quite different. Keeps life interesting.
