Artist: Montaigne
Interview by Tiani Worrall
Photos & Styling by She is Aphrodite

Eurovision 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID 19 Pandemic; you wrote about striving to make the best of the situation creatively. What creative projects have you been working on? 

I have to say I haven’t been working on many creative projects up until this week. I mostly committed myself to getting better at gardening and playing video games (laughs). Um, I kinda let any creative practice fall for like basically the entire pandemic so far.  Then when I did my first live performance in a while on Sunday, it reinvigorated me and I now have gotten back into, like song writing and singing regularly and networking I guess, and listening to new music and stuff like that. I think I was very much in my comfort zone in a long while there where I was just listening to music I already knew well and knew I loved and not writing and not doing anything too challenging. So… I guess it was kind of a lie (laughs) but I don’t know. Things are turning around now, which is good. I think it’s gone a little longer than I would hope for but I guess that’s why I’m now trying to make my own work and find things to do. 

The single ‘Ready’ was synced to the AFL women’s advertisement- how did it feel to be the chosen voice backing the AFL women athletes? 

Cool! I am not often excited or passionate about sync's except in that they pay me, but this one I generally felt quite excited about ‘cause it feels like that was what the song meant to be the background to or maybe the foreground, I don’t know. I don’t want to say the song comes before the women’s AFL players but I was stoked. The only thing that slightly untenanted my stoked-ness was that I would have hoped that the women’s soccer football league would have picked it up.

‘Don’t Break Me’ is your most recent release for 2020. It discusses themes of romance and heartbreak, yet the music itself is still uplifting and not at all married to the lyrical content. Why do you choose to write music this way? 

That’s interesting- I have never thought about the sound of ‘Don’t Break Me’ being uplifting but I suppose it is, it is not a total downer so (laughs) I guess it is true. I don’t think ‘Don’t Break Me’ is vulnerable because after, all it’s like (for me) because it isn’t entirely autobiographical and it still is a pop song I guess that is dressed up as a pop song, like, the mixing sounds like a pop song; the vocal treatment is a pop treatment. I think the very engineering aesthetic of pop music is like, not vulnerable, and I feel detached from that kind of aesthetic; it just allows me to present it as a confection of music that is engineered to be popular but I think that is how I live my life right! Like lots of shit’s going down in my life and a lot has gone down, and I have always dealt with it by either seeing the positive in it or trying to draw from wells of resilience or trying to make light of it, or trying to counter-balance it with great amounts of energy ‘cause often those feelings make me quite paralysed and make me not want to leave the bed but if I can put it into an empowering song then that gets me out of bed (laughs), do you know?!

Costuming has always been a big part of your live performance. What has been your favourite outfit you have worn on stage and why? 

Hmmm. I still remember very fondly this sort of technicolour pink/orange suit that I wore at one of the ‘Day On the Green’ shows that Michelle (She is Aphrodite) shot. It was the Cindy Lauper/ Blondie gigs. And I wore this like… I have to find a picture! But it is my favourite just because it was so fuckin’ comfortable and it looked great and I could be barefoot, I just loved it. It also felt like a good blend between feminine and masculine. It was so lightweight, it feels a bit Willy Wonka-esque and I think that may be my aesthetic, I am realising just now as I am saying it! 

You recently got rid of your iconic blue hair during isolation, what inspired the fresh cut and colour? 

Ah, I think I have been thinking about it for a long time anyway, like just changing my hair and taking it all off and making it streamline and easy like that and quite Spartan but also, my friend had just died so it was one of those things where it was a similar reaction one would have when you break up or something where you like to cut your hair, change your hair or whatever kind of like a stress response I think, wanting to feel like I was in control of something and what I could be in control of was cutting my hair and making it look different and changing things. 

I noticed you watch Avatar the last air bender! What element are you and why? 

I feel like I would be Air, the temple monk. I think that would be me, I feel like Pat my partner said something different. I feel like he said Earth or something but I reckon I would be Air. It is so interesting because I feel like I know my partner quite well right? And he knows me quite well! But we also know ourselves in ways each other couldn’t ever understand so it’s like diagnosing different selves, like the perceived self and the external perceived self than the self-perceived self kind of thing. I think both of them are true. 

Montaigne wears Cooper by Trelise Cooper yellow blouse, her own jeans and vintage shoes// Kaliver white embellished tshirt and pink pants// Kaliver maroon oversize jumper// Anna Cordell blue velvet matching suit, her own vintage white boots. Jess wears her own accessories throughout.