Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - Natalie Imbruglia has a sister...

Interesting review on her

Laura Imbruglia
by Jake Stone

Twenty-three-year-old singer/songwriter Laura Imbruglia is an interesting contradiction. On record, she’s a wordy student of pop with a contrasting melancholic, comedic edge. In person, she’s stubborn and wary, but it’s understandable; she’s probably sick of the media constantly comparing her to her sister, Natalie. The irony is that Laura is the more talented and interesting of the two.

Her self-titled debut LP takes an ambitious swipe at her favourite artists, names like Brian Wilson and The Carpenters, and mixes them with indie pop and country balladry, delivered with an oddly black grin. It’s a hell of a task, and Laura tackles it with surprising confidence. When asked about her process, she characteristically criticises herself.

”It’s a harrowing process; I’ve never been prolific. I think about the audience a lot, and wonder what they must take from all of this…”

On songs like Surly, Laura strikes a nice balance between her wry, confessional style, and the widescreen pop she’s capable of at her best, but it’s an imbalanced listen, ambitious and flawed. The point is Imbruglia is setting the bar pretty high for herself, and that’s important. When she shines, she ties disparate styles with contradicting mood; revealing an innocent gift for pop, an individual wit, and surprising sadness.

”I think it just slips out,” she considers. “It gets dealt with through music. I guess I just have that kind of humour; black humour.”

She’s not chatty on the phone, hesitant and a bit vulnerable. ”I just second guess myself all the time, but you have to go out on a limb if you are going to do anything good,” she eventually offers.

Disguising a consistent bleakness with a flood of lyrical quirk, Imbruglia juggles lines like ‘It’s not a haunted house, it’s a haunted home…SO WIPE YOUR FEET!’ placing them alongside some unsettling, dreamlike imagery. It’s an interesting contradiction for Laura, whose previous work has been pretty plainspoken, if fantastical. ”A lot of the newer songs are stream-of-consciousness. The guy that did the artwork said ‘Urgh, those lyrics are really depressing’,” she considers ruefully. ”That’s just what I’m like; it’s constant turmoil in my brain.”

A persistent sense of dissatisfaction runs throughout the album, and is probably the primary theme tying everything together. On record, she’s upfront about her frustration at her anxious, self-conscious nature, her outsider status in the independent music scene, and her troubles with friends and lovers. In person, she’s seems offended by my broaching the subject, but answers nonetheless.

“It’s expressing dissatisfaction with a whole bunch of things,” she clarifies. ”The first verse is about a relationship, and then half is about not being accepted in music, and the other half is being unhappy with where I was living. You can follow the line somewhere through it…”

She approaches an almost apocalyptic outlook toward the end of the album, crediting a lover with distracting her from her ever-present fear of terrorism. ”There is just that sense of doom. It’s the time that we’re living in, it makes you anxious. At least, I feel like it does.”

Laura is a talented, stubborn character in an interesting position. In her own words, she’s “a miserable clown”, but blessed with the ability to write herself out of a hole for at least a little while. ”I’m writing about whatever is bothering me at the time,” she admits. “Sometimes I start a song, and have shifted perspectives entirely by the end of it.”

Having said that, her mood still dominates the background of almost every song on the record except the effusive pop of My Dream Of A Magical Washing Machine and Mad Scientist. On both songs, Imbruglia totally bursts out of her depressive funk to create fantastic, illusionary worlds for herself, bolting The Carpenters’ interstellar weirdness from Calling Interplanetary Craft onto pure, infectious pop melody. When asked about the dramatic shift in tone on both tunes, she characteristically downplays the question. ”Well, I can’t have been in that mindset for the whole period of time…” she offers, before pretty much clamming up for the remainder of our conversation. Oh well.

Adventurous and indulgent, her debut album occasionally flashes her potential. Though she’s ultimately unwieldy, Imbruglia’s a lot more gutsy and talented than she gives herself credit for, and you sense she’ll fill out because she’s willing to do difficult things.

“Each batch of recording I’ve done I’ve become more adept”, she finally enthuses. “I feel like it’s just starting.”