Emma Russack Shares ‘About The Girl’, The Title Track From Her Upcoming LP, Out August 23 Via Dinosaur City Records

[Naarm/Melbourne, Friday, June 14, 2024] Acclaimed folk-pop artist Emma Russack (she/her) today shares a new song from her forthcoming album About the Girl, out Friday, August 23 via Dinosaur City Records. 

The title track is a beguiling synth-pop song about the allure of the indestructible. Russack was thinking about Todd Field’s Tar, but also the brilliant and puzzling people in her own life who are full of persuasive charm (Russack perfectly verbalises that eternal predicament we often find ourselves in with friends: “go out for one drink, stay out for more”). For the song, Russack had imagined a wave of strings, but ended up doing the parts herself, modulating her voice to replicate orchestral movements. The results are hypnotic and sly.

When desire loses its direction – with no person or object to pin itself to – it has a strange tendency to turn us toward the past. We find ourselves surveying past infatuations and failed romances. Armed with the knowledge of hindsight, previous entanglements reconfigure and reveal themselves. Sometimes, we become privy to the true nature of our attraction, or learn the patterns that have played out across our romantic lives to which we have been blind. Nothing can be quite as bracing or mortifying.

Emma Russack would know. These reassessments and revelations stretch across About The Girl, her brilliant, searching sixth record, produced by Russack and long-time collaborator John Lee at Phaedra Studios. This is an album about longing’s impossible force, tackling how relationships both muddle and illuminate one’s sense of self. Russack says the record is partly inspired by the dissociations brought on by dating apps. “It’s about the funny experiences that happen when you’re untethered” she says, “I had these awful experiences and encounters, that made me also reflect on my past experiences with different people, romantic or otherwise.”

Often, Russack sings in a daze, trying to grasp the contours of memories that have blurred. But she hauls specificity back with hard-won vigour, pasting details together and creating new constellations of understanding. In the thrall of past experience, Russack’s songwriting reaches new heights; merging plain-spoken disclosures with mordant humour. History’s constant murmur is felt through the record’s spectral, spacious sound, full of elegant harmonies, heavily strummed guitar and ominous synths that reverberate and splutter.

Emma Russack was born in the coastal town of Narooma, NSW. She first gained traction as a teenager, belting out covers of Joy Division and Neil Young on her YouTube channel. Known and loved for beautifully spare, and oftentimes impish, records on loss and devotion, she has spent the past decade performing across Australia and Europe, performing at much-loved local festivals such as Meredith and Meadow, while scoring support slots alongside international touring acts including Julien Baker, Jens Lekman and Bonnie Prince Billy. Her five preceding records were nominated for the prestigious Australian Music Prize, and met with praise from media and radio across Australia, Europe and North America, including The Fader, Rolling Stone Magazine and FLOOD Magazine. She has also recorded several duet records with musician Lachlan Denton and plays in the group Snowy Band. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.

All songs written by Emma Russack. Recorded, mixed and mastered by John Lee at Phaedra Studios. Produced by John Lee and Emma Russack. Guitar, piano, singing: Emma Russack. Synths, drums, percussion: John Lee. Backing vocals (tracks 5,9,8,3): Nathalie Pavlovic. Front cover by Caity Moloney. © 2024 Dinosaur City Records.

© Scoop Media