Australian songwriter Indigo Sparke brings her deeply personal lived experiences to her music, highlighting the spaces between the polarity of softness and grit. Drawing on themes of addiction, of healing, of queerness, of heartbreak, of joy, of connection, her music conjures up a myriad of feelings that are undeniably potent. Although the album will release digitally next week via Sacred Bones, the physical album will only be available here in Germany from 21 May. Additionally, Indigo Sparke has just been announced for the SXSW Online Music Festival.
FACTS:
1: Dreams are real.
2: Time isn’t.
3: Everything is connected.
QUESTIONS:
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Feeling feelings. Allowing life and love and dreams to move through me no matter how violent that feels in some cycles. Nature. Being in wild places.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I used to play the piano when I was really little and sing really loudly with my dad to Harry Nilsson songs. It wasn’t until later maybe I was about 23 when I started doing it more seriously. My dad gave me a guitar and I started teaching myself how to play and just started writing songs.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
This answer probably changes depending on how I am feeling. Today it would be:
Visions of the Country – Robbie Basho
All Melody – Nils Frahm
Court and Spark – Joni Mitchell
Time (The Revelator) – Gillian Welch
So Tonight That I Might See – Mazzy Star
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Bikes. A Cemetery. Dancing in a ramshackle warehouse party on the weekend of some LGBTQ celebrations one July with a woman I love.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
The ocean.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Cry. And garden and cook and dance and drive.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
Björk – Debut
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Thom Yorke. Terrence Malick.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
I’m not sure actually.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Hmm. I guess it informs it sometimes, but not really. Not that important at all, thank god.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I think they feel supportive, excited, cautious.
Photo © Adrianne Lenker
