Gabriella Cilmi

Gabriella Cilmi enjoyed phenomenal success at an incredibly young age. Still a teen when breakout single ‘Sweet About Me’ conquered the globe, the Australian artist was thrust into the glare of the spotlight, enjoying chart success after chart success.

Yet the more she travelled, the further away from her roots she became. “It was a bit of an odd time for me, because it was a big departure from why I got into music in the first place. All of a sudden I’m onstage dancing in a sexy robot costume,” she laughs. “It left me in a place where I felt like I had really lost my way from why I wanted to do this in the first place.”

So she went back to the source. Living in London for the past decade, her 2013 album ‘The Sting’ was a “shedding of the skin moment”, with Gabriella grappling with independence for the first time. “It felt like I didn’t know who I was, so I was figuring that out,” she recalls. “It was all about stripping things back and going back to the complete basics of writing a song; to go back to the roots of why I loved music in the first place.”

A pivotal moment was watching The Band’s iconic performance in The Last Waltz. Friends onstage making music together, their fusion of country, soul, blues, and Americana lit up Gabriella’s imagination. Working with her brother Joseph as co-songwriter and Eliot James as producer, the three stripped her music to the core, and her new EP is the bravest, most explicitly honest thing Gabriella Cilmi has ever done.

Lead single ‘Ruins’ is a beautiful piece of gilded country-soul, her husky voice set against that graceful acoustic guitar. If it feels incredibly natural then that’s because it is – this is her voice, her vision, and her life. “I make it because I love it,” she comments. It’s just something that I think I have to do.”

Recorded in short bursts of creativity, Gabriella wanted to use as much analogue equipment as possible, resulting in an organic, inviting sound. She explains: “It has to feel loose, and it has to feel as though you’re in the room as much as possible.”

‘Forgiveness’ is a meditation on the bond between family, while ‘Safe From Harm’ - “I’m a sucker for a sad waltz!” - is incredibly personal, dealing with guilt, absolution, and mental health. “I went to a Catholic girl’s school and we always started the day with a hymn,” she recalls. “My brother always jokes, that I’ve got this massive cross to bear! I’m a really loyal person but I also have this thing where I do have this guilt and that’s what I deal with in my songs, and in my music.”

Working quickly, Gabriella managed to get her feelings down on tape. Musically, it’s honeyed, Autumnal tones are crisp, refreshing, recalling everyone from greats such as Van Morrison and Janis Joplin through to contemporaries such as The Staves or First Aid Kit. But lyrically the EP is a process of exoneration, of letting go.

“A lot of the time you won’t know what a song means until you write it down,” she says. “The best things tend to come really quickly. If I spend too much time on something, if it’s too laborious, then it’s normally because it’s not good.”

The process of making the EP has been both cathartic and transformative, with the scorching autobiography of the songwriting aiding her own life. “I’m one of those people who takes things to heart, and holds on to things. Keeps it in locked inside. But everything about this record – instead of internalising everything it’s just letting it breathe. It’s all about capturing the moment.”

Gabriella Cilmi has found her path, and she intends to see where it leads.