Blouse’s Charlie Hilton talks to L’Officiel about going solo.
It was a love song for her husband that led the frontwoman of Portland’s dream pop group Blouse to branch out with a solo album. Charlie Hilton’s album Palana is due for release 22nd January 2016 (via Captured Tracks) and as a taster for what’s in store, two tracks have dropped— the slow dance worthy ‘100 million’ and the more up-tempo, synthy ’80s ‘Pony’.
If these songs tell us something about the artist, it’s about fluidity and flux … she elaborates on that later. Hilton’s sound has the quality of water, taking on the shape of different vessels. ‘I felt that I could practically put anything on the record and it would be OK.’
The sun is setting on a gloomy day in Portland when L’Officiel chats to the softly spoken Charlie Hilton. She admits that the album has ‘been on the back burner for a while’ and is a chance to get more personal and find a place for songs she felt were not ‘conducive to the sound of Blouse.’
‘I have always thought of music as a secret way to be a poet. You get to publish poetry when you make a record.’ There is a agreeable lyricism on the tracks that hints at deeper waters. ‘I read a lot of darker things; Capote, Dostoyevsky— writers that get to the bottom of human angst.’
The singer-songwriter was raised in Los Angeles and was named Palana (Sanscrit for ‘protection’) by her parents’ guru.
‘My dad is a musician—he was always in bands. There were always guitars around and when I came of age he gifted me a guitar. That was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me because writing songs as a young person was such a nice thing to have. It is so confusing growing up. I started writing music at 14—a lot of terrible, miserable songs.’
In an age with an excess of content and information she does ‘romanticize about the period in the past, when you had to go to a show to see what a person was about.’ That’s not to say that she is against the internet, ‘I probably wouldn’t be making music if it wasn’t for the internet.’ Describing herself as shy, for Hilton playing in front of an audience is more about connecting with something greater (‘the universe’ she says with an embarrassed laugh) than a desire for the limelight.
On choosing the androgynous name Charlie to record under, Hilton explains, ‘I always feel weird about the question when somebody says, ‘be yourself.’ I don’t really know what that is and I think that’s OK. But there is this pressure, which I think we all feel, that there needs to be one person inside [us] that we need to get to know and that there should be continuity. I think that makes life kind of stressful, it’s something that I think about a lot. I am getting comfortable not being overly consistent, I guess.’
If there was ever a guru for appreciating the in-between and the shifting, Hilton may be it, one which Australian audiences can witness perform in person soon.
‘I’m putting a band together right now and working with my booking agent to set up a tour. I would love to come to Australia if I ever got the opportunity.’
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