Interview: Abbe May on her new album Design Desire

Interviews — 14 July 2011

Interview by Jade Lane

This week we sat down with one of Perth’s most exciting singer/songwriters, ABBEY MAY to talk about all things love, life and her new album, ‘Design Desire’.

Design Desire; what does that mean to you?

“It is about premeditated seduction and the type of measurements we use to assess potential lovers. I think it’s funny that underneath all of our clothing, when our identities are separated from our spirituality, material possessions and achievements, we are pretty much just a bunch of animals using perfume and cologne to try to inspire attraction in each other” May explains.

Following the success of your last 2 Albums, how hard was it for you to follow up with this noticeably different record?

“I had to kind of shut the thought of any outside pressure or response to this new record out of my mind. Because this album was intentionally very different to my last few albums, I knew it was risky. I had to get to a point where I could be happy with the work regardless of the eventual reaction to it. I think that made it easier to experiment. I don’t think it’s right to ‘design’ creativity with the intention of pleasing others before yourself. You end up being inconsistent and inauthentic.”

The album is really beautiful, haunting and heavy. What was your inspiration whilst making it?

“Love and lust are always my inspiration. And the miseries and mysteries that seem to always accompany those things. I am consistently driven by my heart and everything else is secondary including; career, money…mental health! This album was really inspired by two of the great loves/lusts and eventual heartaches of my life. I think the darkness that comes with the death of love is a beautiful muse.”

Did you come in with a set idea of how the album should sound or was it a more organic process?

“It was more about experimentation but we did always want to make a very heavy record. We definitely didn’t want to make a Lo-Fi record. I chose to work with Sam Ford as producer because he displayed a confidence in recording dirty sounds in a clean way. So the intention from the start was to create something heavy and dirty but modern sounding.”

As a live performer, you are known for mowing the audience down with your Fender Jaguar and delivering an explosive, dirty performance that seems to send intoxicating waves of primal energy through the room. How do you think the new album will translate live?

“The set we play for this album is very heavy. I think it is definitely dynamically different to my previous live shows but it feels more intense to me than anything we have done before. I’m really enjoying playing this album live. There is now even more opportunity within the set to machine gun the audience.” May assures us.

One of the things that stood out for me on this album was the simplistic but mesmerising lyrics. How has your song writing and lyricism developed over the years?

“My song-writing keeps evolving because it can become very hard for me to stay enthusiastic if I keep writing the same songs in the same way over and over again. It would be like that Bill Murray movie, ‘Groundhog Day’. Lyrically I was more interested in playing with words and word combinations that had interesting phonetics. (Taurus chorus, design desire, mammalian locomotion) all give me a sort of pleasure when I sing them. They feel good to wrap my tongue around and they sound good to my ear.

You are a Cancerian; do you think this bares any influence over your music?

“I have a fascination with Astrology. I have not studied it enough to argue its merits flawlessly to the cynical. But I will say that my sun sign (Cancer) is only one part of a much more complex astrology. I am also a Scorpio rising with a Leo Midheaven and I think that those 3 elements combined could definitely be interpreted as having an interesting impact on me as a musician.”

On a completely unrelated note: I can get my whole fist in my mouth, do you have any hidden talents?

“I learnt to circular breathe so that I could whistle continuously for 5 minutes… could probably go for longer but nobody wants to hear that and I worry about getting whistlers wrinkles” May laughs.

Be sure to check out Abbe May’s Design Desire, out now through Source Music/MG.
She has also just announced a national tour kicking off this August!