INTERVIEW: Clea launches second album 'Idle Light': "This is how I'm feeling, I want every concept in every sound to come through true to who I am"

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: James Caswell

In the soft, ethereal, hypnotic sounds of the second album from Queensland’s Clea Idle Light is a brutal message - this is as good as it gets. “The album is a lot about letting go of expectations. You get to a point where you're like, ‘this is actually it’,” Clea says. But the important takeaway is that there is immense beauty and opportunity in that letting go; embracing it allows you to see life through a different lens, slow down and connect to your spirituality.

While the album has touches of melancholy, the overriding feeling it leaves you with is life affirming joy. Written and recorded by Clea and her partner Alistar Richardson in a hand built studio on their property in Queensland’s Scenic Rim region, it is an album that delves into multiple genres, often in the same song, with electronica, indie, pop, guitar-pop and synths all making an appearance. This soundscape was carefully curated, with Clea saying “We really wanted to create sounds that you may have never heard before.”

The album opens with the first single ‘Listen Up’ with its sparkling harp introduction and soaring chorus, it speaks of needing love and peace to embrace life in the fullest way possible. “I want a cause to love you lately
I want a road to travel lightly…Call me back again / Wide awake instead”

‘I Wanna Be Alive’ is a gloriously upbeat pop track infused with synths which has a touch of melancholy in the lyrics as Clea sings of dealing with the mundaneness of life as the thrill of childhood fades into the responsibilities of being an adult, with the mantra that life is still incredible. “Sad most days / Wouldn’t have it any other way…I wanna be alive / Take it in stride.”

‘Tabitha’ is a remarkable melting pot of a song and an album standout. A stuttering, electronic beat reminiscent of the 1990s trance-house music sound evolves into a drum and guitar heavy chorus with soaring vocals from Clea.

‘Market’ is a woozy, otherworldly almost psychedelic track, while second single ‘Easy To Forgive’ is a jangly electronic song interspersed with calm, acoustic sections. The album ends with ‘Breathe’, which leans heavily into the 1980s-1990s indiepop-rock-shoegaze sound and is arguably the most rock track on the album. Lyrically is has a message of hope - a reminder to always take time out to breathe - and the perfect ending to the album: ‘Must we always be defeated? / Maybe one day we’ll start breathing’

Idle Light is a triumphant album that deserves much acclaim. It is easy to categorise Clea and her sound as ethereal - and part of it is - but there is so much more depth across all ten tracks than that simple term. It is full of life, ever changing soundscapes and a message that resonates deep. This is music is live by and Clea has created something you will happily drown in. We recently sat down with Clea to chat more about Idle Light’s creation.

Hi Clea, congratulations on your beautiful new album Idle Light. Before we get into it, talk to me about the significance of the album title and where you've been creating the album.
So ‘idle light’ is a lyric that's in the first track of the album ‘Listen Up’. ‘Life before the moon’ was what I originally thought the te title was going to be, because the moon was such a prevalent and important part of the process of the album. My partner Ali and I we really discovered the moon in that time, especially in 2020 when we had so much time, and we had so much time on the property by ourselves. We were very much aware of the cyclical movements of the months and how the weather was very prominent, being in such a large space and seeing the drastic changes and how the moon correlates to that and where it is in the sky in summer as opposed to winter. Also just what it represents, in terms of the new moon being a time of renewal and then the full moon can be quite ominous and obvious and really in your face and a little bit spooky. It's just a really good reference point for us in our life, especially coming into my mid 20s and sitting back and taking a look at my life and how I got here. I thought maybe that title was a little bit too obvious and wanted something with a bit more space around it. ‘Idle light’ just perfectly captured that moment of life being so fickle, it's always flickering, like a candle, and it's just constantly changing. So that's why we landed on that title.

Beautiful. You spoke about this reflection of where you're from, in your mid 20s, which we call the quarter life crisis! What was interesting is you wanted to know where you're from, and quite often when people are going through this, It usually comes from a place of, ‘oh God, where the fuck am I going?’ Artists in particular have so much pressure on them, they're like, ‘Oh my god, I'm 24. I have no time left!’ Did you also have a bit of that?
Absolutely. It really snuck up on me, I don't know where it comes from, if it's societal, it must come from somewhere. But there is that point where, from, like, 18, to I'd say, 23, I wasn't really thinking about that at all. It's like, this easy period of I'm young, and therefore I've got endless time. But then something happened, definitely at the 25 mark, and especially when COVID hit, and there was all this time to just think. It was very much in your face and obvious. It's not really spoken about a lot, but there seems to be this invisible period, especially for women in the industry, where you've got a cut off date. I’ve definitely felt it, and just moving through that, and obviously coming to the realisation that that is absolutely ridiculous. Life is what you make it and age is always up to you and how you factor that in, and if you want that to influence your life or not. But I couldn't help but just feel that underlying pressure underlying, and this album was very much like, ‘I gotta get it all that now, this is how I'm feeling, I want every concept in every sound to come through true to who I am’. That's definitely what it sounds like, and you can hear a little bit of desperation and also just chaoticness. There's so much that went into this album because Ali and I had the time and we did it ourselves. That can be a blessing but also a very big trap.

Because you're so invested in it you can't actually see the forest for the trees.
Yeah, and because we're in a partnership as well it can be very insular and you can get blinded very quickly. So it was important for us to make a deadline, when we got towards the end, to when we introduced other people into the process. Because we could have kept going and kept spiralling.

Image: Jack Birtles

This is your second album, your debut Vermilion was so well received and you had an award winning single with ‘Dreaming’. I imagine that comes with some pressure, because then people are constantly asking ‘what's next?’ How did you go into Idle Light and try and shake off that sophomore pressure?
To be honest, I don't really know. My brain is constantly moving forward, especially creatively, so I'm never really held back by whatever I've done in the past. At the very beginning, when I released my first singles from my EP, there was that first industry look and attention, which to be honest I wasn't quite ready for. I didn't really know what to expect. Having that immediate success and draw from people within the industry, that's what was at play in terms of what I then released afterwards. Always in the back of my mind I had ‘how is this going to be received? Will it be received well by the industry?’ Whereas when I was making music before, I kind of put it out to the world and I never had that in my mind. Then when I got the attention, I was like, ‘oh, I need to keep this up’. So that was the major transformation from Vermillion to Idle Light, I was truly making music for myself, as opposed to trying to get somewhere with it in terms of other people's perspectives and opinions. That's really the major difference, I was really writing from a place of what was true to me at the time, and how I was feeling through those transitions from my early 20s to my mid to late 20s.

I think that's great. Everything should be threaded with your own integrity and stuff, but it's very hard to shake success from your past and then try and go forth. It must be really tricky. I want to talk to you about ‘Any Time Soon’, because I think this track, the melody, the production, the whole mood is absolutely brilliant. From what you've said about the creation of this album, the fact that you and Ali could have gone on and on and on, I feel like if any song, it's this song on the album that fits that bill! Talk to me about this gem.
It actually was one of the easiest songs, because we found the pocket so quickly. The running theme through the song is mantras - mantras to myself, mantras for others to take on in order to move through something with a little bit more ease. I found the very first idea on my phone the other day, and it was from 2018 when Ali and I were just in our house and he started to play those those call chords on probably a shitty little toy synth. They obviously stuck with us and we revisited it when we recorded this song. It usually happens like that where either myself or Ali will be tinkering on something, and both of our ears prick up when we notice something that resonates with us both, then we record it and revisit it later. So there was that original synth idea and then I came up with the ‘it’s a part of me that I can’t explain’ part when Ali was playing those chords on an acoustic and they just came out, just like that.

I wanted to create a song about something that's unexplainable, and those deep feelings within us that we can't seem to shake, but we also can't seem to communicate, but knowing that that's okay. Because there will always be moments in our lives and feelings that we are just not be able to express. There are some things that can be just for yourself.

It’s so beautiful. The single ’Exit Game’ is, again, such an incredible track, but I want to talk to you about the siren video that accompanies it, because it is everything! You make some very, very beautiful videos, but I think ‘Exit Game’ is top of the game. Talk to me about this track, and its video and the creative mind behind it.
Thank you! This song was an entirely different song before. We were really into reggaeton beats, and we wanted to make a song with a reggaeton beat underneath. You can still hear that within ‘Exit Game’, but it was an entirely different song. And just one day fully wasn't feeling it so we just flipped it, and started to create ‘Exit Game’ - which nearly broke the album! That song has nearly over 100 tracks on the session, and Ali sometimes isn't very good at being careful with music and tracks we’ve recorded in terms of backing up. At the time, he had pretty much everything on the hard drive, and because we just kept adding to this song, we just wanted to create this spooky, evocative monster, it corrupted the hard drive. We were pretty much finished, we were just getting to the mixing stage, and we thought we had lost the entire album. They don’t really make this type of hard drive anymore and it's really difficult to retrieve from them; we went to two places in the city and one place said they would try. We waited a week, and it was just the most anxious week of our lives. Thankfully, it was able to be retrieved and recovered. The universe was definitely teaching us a major lesson, but also still looking after us. So that song has a lot of significance.

With the video clip. I made it with Jack Birtles, who I did most of the content for Idle Light with. The creative director was one of my best friends Lily Cotter. I've known her since I was 15 and she has always been an incredible inspiration to me, I always find my inspirations tend to be from my friends, I think because they're so close, and I get to be in awe of their creativity at such close proximity. You can see a lot of Lily’s style, like slimy, fairy, goth core.

It was one of the hardest clips to create purely because it was over only one day in Wollongong. We woke up at 4:30am and finished at 11 at night. It was absolutely freezing the entire time, there was the wind and obviously the cold water that I had to go into, so in that sense, it was very difficult. For example, that shot at night of me on the rock, I was just so cold, but obviously so determined to get the shot. Lily was there constantly, I'm naked, and she’s covering me in every slimy thing that we had, Vaseline baby oil, just slicking me down! Then I had to do that swimming shot at, like 10pm in one of those ocean rock pools, and again it was absolutely freezing and hyperventilating when I came out! The whole was difficult, but when you do difficult things, you tend to come out with something that you're really proud of.

Absolutely, people think the video’s already amazing, and then when the read this, they're gonna be like, ‘extra points there!’ Lastly, before I leave you, Idle Light is out, everyone gets to listen to it. What else is coming up for you this year?
So, Ali and I are already writing the next album, getting into the demos. Because there's the ability now to really plan ahead, especially with gigs, there will be a lot more performing. We're already looking at gigs, all I will say is potentially a headline tour!

Idle Light is out now via Dew Process/Universal Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Clea, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.