INTERVIEW: Tori Forsyth releases new album 'Provlépseis': "Genres will slowly fizzle out. Music is based on feeling and how particular sounds make you feel."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Australia’s Tori Forsyth creates earthy, emotional, gritty pop-rock music that has a depth and maturity belying her young age. Today she releases her second album Provlépseis (it’s Greek for ‘predictions’), which is full of guitar driven pop-rock delights which range from delicate, gentle, warm acoustic numbers such as ‘Keeper’ through to the driving, punk infused ‘Shapeshifter’.
With her unique, marvellously expressive voice and talent for writing songs that really connect, the album is a worthy successor to her critically acclaimed 2018 debut album Dawn Of The Dark and sees her breaking free from the constraints of genre expectations. “Most of the new album was recorded pre pandemic and it’s interesting to interpret the lyrics with the benefit of hindsight,” she says. “Where I might not have really known what a few songs meant at the time, I definitely do now… I’m a pretty spiritual person, but I think that just goes to show how important it is to listen to your intuition.”
With a global tally of close to 6.5 million streams to date, Forsyth has been steadily attracting attention - and a strong fanbase - with her masterful music, and with the release of Provlépseis the acclaim and the fans will continue to grow. To celebrate the release of the album we recently caught up with Tori to find out more.
Hi Tori so lovely to speak to you today, how are things with you?
Good thank you very much. In the grand scheme of life, I feel like I'm in a really great place right now. So thank you for asking.
Congratulations on the release of Provlépseis you must be stoked. Can you tell me the meaning behind the album title?
The idea of it was a later addition. We didn't even have a name for the album for a long time. But when the album was initially written, it was pre COVID and coming out after COVID, the events that I had written about, I felt like I had almost predicted them. So Provlépseis means predictions in Greek. And it just felt like I'd written in a future context. So to look back now, on the album as a whole, and the stories that have gone with it's kind of crazy for me to listen back and just see what I've written was before the events that had happened, which is crazy.
Is there something quite wonderful, and also disconcerting about being the prophet of your own life?
For me it is a very odd thing. I have never experienced anything like that before. Especially because I thought when I was writing it, I was in a fairly good place. But to look back at a few of them and be like, ‘holy shit!’ sort of thing…that's incredible to me. I think maybe intuition is just a little bit more powerful than we give it credit for.
Absolutely. I want to get into the single ‘Courtney Love’, because I'm a huge fan of the song’s muse for starters. I read that the song is dedicated to those who piss on your back and tell you it's raining. Please talk me through this!
I am a massive Courtney Love fan. And I really don't want people to confuse the song for being actually about Courtney Love because it isn't. It's just the title that I pulled from a lyric. That song for me is very much about you're gonna get a lot of people in your life who want to shower you with compliments to you face and stab you in the back when you're not looking. And that is something that I experienced quite a bit early in my career. I was never really in the ‘girls girls’ group in high school, so weirdly enough in my later years of high school I didn't experience a lot of bitching. So to come into adult life and experience it to such a ridiculously extreme level, I was actually quite taken back by it. Obviously high school's high school, it sucks but it wasn't like those [high school] movies and it just almost felt like the movies coming into the music industry as a teenager.
When you first started releasing music it was very warm country music. I can definitely still hear elements of that in your voice. Do you yourself still hear that when you play, even though you're playing very different music now?
Definitely. With the way that my career's gone, and the way that I've stuck to how I create and how I show up for my music, it is a very personal thing. For me, the career part is a really welcomed byproduct. But essentially, at the end of the day, I do this because I love it. And I love music, and I love writing music. I guess incorporating the heavier sounds and a lot more guitar driven is just because of where I was at the time. At the beginning I started singing, I've been told that it was a weird voice to have, which now I'm quite happy about because I feel like it's created the sound for me, which a lot of artists that are classically trained might not have that luxury of the sound being created for them. So I am very grateful for my weird voice. But I don't feel like I've shifted to a whole new level. I do feel like it's been a gradual expansion. Dawn Of The Dark definitely held some elements of where this record was potentially going to go. And we kind of just gave space for that to happen.
You said how you wouldn't be doing anything else, this just comes from you doing what you love. What role did music have in your childhood?
Very early on in primary school, I had a teacher who would teach us poetry, different forms like haikus. And we would get paper and have to write the poem on it and present it in an aesthetically pleasing way, make it pretty and the best ones got hung up around the classroom for the week. And for some reason that really stuck with me. It gave me a love for writing poems quite early on. The music element of writing a song really did not come until I was about 18 and out of high school. So I was fairly late and it all happened quite quickly,, but as soon as I did, I just fell so in love with it that it felt very much like a missing part of my life. Music for me has always been around. My parents have always listened to a lot of different music, although no one's musical. Well, my dad can sing he just doesn't! So it's [always'] been around, but it took a bit for me to kind of explore it.
One of my favourite tracks on the album is 'Keeper'. And particularly because as you mentioned, it's very lyrically poetic in all its confessional. I absolutely love it. You're a wonderful songwriter. I know it always changes, but what's your usual process for writing songs? Do you have a book of lyrics, and then you put it to melody? Or do you get the melody?
I kinda do it at the same time. I do definitely write things down in voice memos and notes and stuff like that. But I find it really hard to go back to things, I feel like my brain can't quite compute that into something that's usable. So if I'm writing a song, I really need to just do everything right then and there. And I only write when I have something to write about. I find it hard to sit down on a random day and just be like, right, let's hop to it for a couple of hours without something to say. It is very, very natural for me, which kind of a cringy thing to say, but it is.
'Be Here', which was a single from 2019 features on the album, which is awesome. And I feel that that track was definitely that kind of line in the sand where you shifted to the sound that's on this album. What was it about that song that although it was from 2019 you felt it had to be on this album?
It’s probably the first song that I'd written for the album. At the time I wrote it I had had surgery and I was actually laid up for a little bit recovering and I became super obsessed with Nirvana and Hole and just the 90s. Really, I just obsessed weirdly over that pocket of music. And because of that, for me the connection of sound really became important, because these bands and songs were evoking a different feeling in me, that wasn't just lyrically based. And it was very much instrumental based, which for someone like me, who's not a guitar player - I use it for writing, and I play it on stage, but I wouldn't necessarily call myself one - that was exciting. And I'm very much driven by what's exciting for me creatively. And I was excited by this idea that this was something new. So I was learning. teaching myself barre chords by ear just listening to these records. It started to get me excited about creating again, which was a catalyst for this record.
We talked about your shift in sound, do you believe that genres in 2021 are even a tangible thing when it comes to creatives today?
Genres are really funny because pre-2000s you can kind of pinpoint genres with subcultures. We don't necessarily have subcultures anymore. You can be whoever you want to be sort of thing and there's no real segregation. I mean, there is obviously if you want to get into it, but as far as aesthetically defining an era like 80s punk, 90s grunge sort of thing there's no scene forming this era. Everyone's kind of just doing what they want now as far as fashion and culture in the West. People want to put you with other things that are like and like, that’s with everything not just music. So I think genres will slowly fizzle out. Music is based on feeling and how particular sounds make you feel. With Spotify now, it's very mood based, you get playlists that are more based on a mood than an actual specific genre. I've been called seven name things like folk-noir-goth-country but I am pretty open about the idea that I don't really cater for one particular thing. And I like to continuously be open, I love all music. I genuinely love so many different conflicting genres. I don't think that the weight on genre is as heavy anymore, which, hopefully lessens a little bit as we go on.
You're a solo artist, what have been the ladders and the snake pits of total creative control?
I'm pretty lucky with my record label, having being so open with what I want to do. A lot of other record labels would probably not enjoy someone going and changing and stuff like that. I've heard a lot of horror stories in different scenarios. For me, you know, I obviously struggle a lot with identity and where I sit with with that, but I'm also in my 20s, and I think everyone does, you know. I feel pretty lucky music wise and being able to be heard by my team. I'm very lucky in that regard. As a whole though It's just like everybody else, I guess - some people are going to not like ya!
I like that a lot that - some people are not gonna like you, some people are so move on! Lastly, before I leave you what is coming up for Tori Forsyth?
I've definitely got some touring coming up. We're in the process of booking that and just kind of hoping that this record gets heard as much as possible. That'd be awesome!
Well it's definitely getting that on my playlist. So, so many good tracks on there. So thank you so much for your time today. And really congratulations on the album, it sounds so good.
Thank you so much. I appreciate that a lot.
Provlépseis is out now via Island Records Australia. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Tori Forsyth you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
