INTERVIEW: Lotte Gallagher releases her second EP 'Blasé Vengeance': "I just want to let the creativity flow and see what happens...I like just letting it be."

Interview: Shalane Connors
Image: Max Iannantuono
Published: 24 October 2025

Melbourne’s Lotte Gallagher may only be 19, but as she releases her second EP Blasé Vengeance today she has already shown the kind of development and growth in her music that some artists take years to find.

First coming to prominence with a top five placement in 2023’s Triple J Unearthed High Competition, her debut single ‘Adam’ was released the same year, accumulating over 1 million streams on Spotify alone. Buzzy, fuzzy indiepop with a hint of shoe gaze, her debut EP A Better Feeling was released last year.

With Blasé Vengeance Gallagher could have easily coasted on the same sonic wave she established with her first releases, but in a indication of her drive and innate creativity she took the harder - but more rewarding - route of finding new collaborators to work with and begin an exploration of new sounds and vibes.

“This past year, I’ve just been writing with anyone who wants to write with me. I’ve taken every single opportunity,” Gallagher says. “It was fun and different to experiment with sounds and what I wanted to do; I gave myself room to do things that were strange and uncommon. I’m proud of myself for doing that, instead of staying in a bubble. Writing with other people has taught me so much, honestly. Working with people who think differently to me is so important because bouncing off each other is such a great thing.”

Working with Harry Charles (Tate McRae, King Princess) and Ciarann Babbington (Bakers Eddy), Blasé Vengeance’s six tracks don’t abandon Gallagher’s key indie pop sound, but it is elevated and brings into a broader, deeper soundscape, with more texture, layers and a vocal from Gallagher that feels even more present and emotive.

Opening track and first single ‘PTRCK’ is a gentle, swirling indie track that bursts into a rocky chorus as Gallagher sings of her frustration of a man who won’t commit to her. ‘What are you doing Patrick? /
This ain't enough for me / You could have me easily’. There is a nostalgic feel to the track of the alt-pop new wave of the 1980s.

‘Out of Patience’ is a impatient, poppy track which is almost lyrically a sequel to ‘PTRCK’ but with a lot more venom ‘You said that I should relax / I said fuck all that / I wanna hit you with my car sometimes’, while ‘Showdown’ is on the surface a moving, guitar ballad before it erupts with blasts of rock guitar before reverting back to a calm ballad.

Gallagher loads up the attitude on ‘F U In Morse Code’ as she gives a scathing assessment of a broken relationship - with the more than occasional dig at her ex: ‘You broke my heart and now I’m dating your friend’ she sings at the beginning of the song before the glorious takedown ‘I’m sick of motherfuckers calling me baby’.

The EP takes a darker, but necessary turn on ‘Leather Gloves’ as Gallagher takes aim at a sexist society that regularly treats women like objects against a moody, slightly fuzzy indie soundscape. “Keep your keys close / Keep your legs closed / Wear the most clothes / Until they think you’re a bloke…trying to keep me in their tiny boxes.’

“A lot of people have written songs about this issue before, but I think having it set in an angry context that is also easy to hear, is important,” Gallagher says. “It’s not saying “fuck you” to men, it’s just explaining my experience. Everyone who has a female body on planet Earth, who has walked alone at night anywhere, has probably felt like this.”

The EP ends on perhaps the most experimental track, and quite possibly the highlight. With a more electronic-pop sound, it is a delightfully distorted, constantly changing song with thumping beats suddenly changing to dreamy, lullaby shimmers, before breaking out into vocals so subverted they make no sense. The (beautiful) chaos of the song reflects the chaos you feel when you are trying to break away from someone who has an emotional hold over you, ‘Get your fix / Keep me on a string if you insist.’

Blasé Vengeance is a remarkable EP and it is wild to think Gallagher is producing such polished, assured and exceptional songs at 19, just two years into her career. It is even wilder to imagine what she will create when a full length album is on the cards, and she is without doubt a young talent who is on the path to major success. We recently caught up with Gallagher to chat all about the creation of Blasé Vengeance.

Hi Lotte! You have had quite the journey in a very, very short space of time. At just 17, you were in the final for Triple J's Unearthed High.. You released your debit EP last year, and now you’ve released your second EP, Blasé Vengeance. I love it. How does it feel to be getting your second EP out?
I’m so excited. I'm so ready for these songs to be out in the world. I literally have listened to every single song every single day since I wrote them, I love them so much. So I'm really excited for everyone to have them.

That's really refreshing to hear. I feel like most musicians I talk to are like, ‘I can't hear my songs again, I'm over them, I've heard them way too much!’
I have a kind of weird relationship with my songs in that I love them. The last EP will always be close to my heart, but I don't really necessarily listen to it a lot because I don't relate to the songs as much as I do this EP. With this EP I love it, but I listen to the songs until the day they are released, and then I never listen to them again!

They seem quite personal and quite angsty, and I was thinking ‘this is a therapy EP’.
Yes, literally! I feel like every song I write is just therapy for me. If I have a bad time with anything I write a song, it is such a good outlet for me. A lot of them are about relationships, and I feel like everyone can relate to a bad relationship!

So once it's out, you're like, ‘I'm done, I'm better now’!
I've had my time. It's everyone else's time now! It’s not for me anymore.

It's got a very quintessential Melbourne feel about it, I gotta say. I don't even know where that sound comes from as, but soon as I started listening to it, I was like, Oh, it's so Melbourne.
I've gotten that from other people before, and I get it, but I don't know what it is! I don't know sonically what it is about it, but it is, you're so right.

I was trying to think how I would describe this EP, and then I realised it’s all in the title. It is blasé vengeance.. It's super angsty, it's super angry, but it's also like a really casual, flipping the bird kind of feel.
That's exactly what I was going for! I feel like that's just me in a way, blasé vengeance. I mean, like, I remember, for one of the press statements for the last EP, I was described as having ‘a blasé vengeance’. And I was like, that's actually sick.

I'm usually quite chill, I'm not necessarily a grudgy person. I have a song called ‘F U In Morse Code’, and it’s obviously very spiteful, but I feel like I have moments of spite, and then the rest of the time I'm like, yeah, whatever, it's chill. So being nonchalant about being so angry in the music is where the name comes from.

It's all under the surface. We can feel it, but can't quite see it. The music really reflects that - I wouldn't want to be on your bad side!
I get that a lot! Lots of people say that to me and I'm like, no, I swear. I'm nice!

Tell me about your approach. You've done a bit of collaborating with the songwriting specifically for this EP?
I wrote three songs with Harry Charles, who's an amazing songwriter, composer, producer, musical genius type shit. I honestly am so envious of how his brain works. I wrote ‘Showdown’, ‘Out Of Patience’ and ‘Fix’ with him. And then I also wrote with Ciarrann Babbington, who is a songwriter and producer from New Zealand, he’s in a punk band called Bakers Eddy. I wrote ‘F U In Morse Code’ and ‘PTRCK’ with him.

The first time I wrote with Ciarrann we wrote a ‘F U In Morse Code’. We went in with literally nothing, and five hours later, we had the song. And that's kind of the way I go about most of my sessions - going in with absolutely nothing, starting from scratch, and having a conversation for 30,40 minutes about what's happening. What do we want to write about? What are the sounds we want to use? By the end of the session, we'll come out with something that is kind of unexpected most of the time. That's kind of how I went about it.

So it's still super organic, but it's quite deliberate where you go in and say, we're gonna write a song today. Is that a new approach for you to how you were writing in your early career?
With the last EP, It was all written with Oscar Dawson, and I'd never written with anyone else other than him. He wrote in the same way with me, so I've kind of just picked that up from him. It is quite deliberate, but sometimes I come up with ideas the night before that I really want to bring in, but I don't do it because I just want to let the creativity flow throughout the session and see what happens. Because that's what's really fun about writing sessions, you're writing with someone who has a completely different brain to you and completely different thoughts and ways of going about things, so you never really know what's going to come out of it. So I like just letting it be, because it's always a good happy time, and it's a good surprise at the end, getting something out that you literally had no idea of at the start of the day.

Does it often fail? Do you come out at the end of a session thinking ‘we’ve got nothing’?
Not really, no. I don't know if it sounds arrogant, but fuck it, I'll be arrogant! I'm a good songwriter, , I like writing songs, it's my favourite part of my job. I've been doing it since I was 13. Like, I've been doing it for, like, that's like, six years. I have no idea how people do maths every day and do accounting as their nine to five, I couldn't do their job, but this is my nine to five, this is what I'm good at. I've figured out ways to be good at it and to always be happy with something. I don't necessarily think there are bad songs, they're all different, but you can always find a part in a song that's good, even if it the rest of is meh. I'm always pretty happy with the songs that I write with other people.

That's brilliant. What first got you into songwriting at such a young age?
My mum and dad have always had musical instruments around the house. Mum's always played the guitar, so I've always had it around. We’ve always been a very musical family, Mum would wake up at like 5am on a Saturday, and by 6am she'd be playing Beyoncé's Homecoming, we were always a noisy household! Mum tried to get me to write diaries, and I just didn't like it, but when I was 13, I started writing songs. Mum and Dad thought it was cool, and maybe I should do something with this. So it kind of just happened very naturally, I guess, for me.

It sounds like you had great support from your parents too in wanting to pursue a career in the arts?
Oh my god, yeah. I'm so lucky, I can't imagine having parents that say ‘you need to be a doctor’. I'm so grateful for how my parents are and supporting me being in the arts and wanting that as a career. Especially in high school as well, I did not do well in high school in any way, shape or form and they were always ‘that's okay, there are other pathways’. They're very chill like that.

That's amazing. Who were your women in pop influences when you first started out in music?
I have always loved Billie Eilish. When I was younger I listened a lot to Billie Marten. I’m really and at describing genres, but she's just very soft, it's like drinking a nice cup of tea in the sun on a Monday morning when you have nothing to do that day! You know it's going to be really cruisy, so you kind of just float around the house, and you're just happy and bubbly, and it's nice and you're calm.

Going with that analogy, how would you describe your music?
Oh, god! For this EP, I would go with you're on the way home from dancing all night with your friends after having a fight with someone. It could be anyone, but you're not gonna let that ruin your vibe, so you're walking around the streets laughing with like a bottle of champagne. Or maybe cheap Prosecco because we’re 19 and have no money! We're a bit tipsy on the way home, and then you spend the rest of the night sitting on the couch having chats, and then maybe you go for a swim later and invite more people around for the after party. That would be the way I'd describe it.

Love it! You've been in the public arena of this industry for a couple years now. Is it what you imagined it would be?
Certain parts, yes, certain parts no. The music industry is really glamorised, it's made out to be easier than it is. I've had an amazing time, but it is really hard. There are so many artists that I know that I think are just incredible, and they aren't where I think they should be. The Australian music industry is an interesting one, I'm really lucky to have an amazing label and have such great support from my management and my publishing, I have really good opportunities from that. I'm very grateful to have that support, and I wouldn't be where I am without that. It's really hard to go about doing music on your own, there's no way I'd be able to do it because it's just hard. It's amazing, and it's messy, and it's fun and it's sick, but it's very different to what I thought it would be.

You've also entered the industry in the age of social media
Which I hate!

Do you find it hard playing that game that everyone has to play now?
That's such a good way of explaining it. I'm quite a confident person in my day to day, but the reason I deeply dislike social media is that I feel everything I do and everything I post has to be 1,000,000% perfect, because it's up there forever, and you have zero control over how anything's gonna go. You could post a stupid video of you saying something really silly and that could go viral, or you could post this amazing, incredible video of you doing something amazing and incredible, and it would do nothing. That's the bit that I find really frustrating. You have zero control over it, and I like having control over things.

Well, you've got control over your songwriting, and you've got this amazing EP out in the world. What are your plans, are you going to go on a national tour with Blasé Vengeance?
I'm going on a tour in November from the 27th to the 29th. I'm doing shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. I'm super keen for that. That's the other thing I struggle with with social media, you can't see people's faces. That's why I love performing, you really get to connect with people who connect with you, whereas with social media I can't see the other side of it and that's really tough. I love performing because I get to see people and have a dance with them and sing with them. It's fun, it's like making new friends.

And you get all that energy back that you've put into your recording.
Exactly, there’s no energy in social media. It's a weird weird time. But I honestly can't complain, my job is to sing and perform and write songs and occasionally post on social media - poor me! I can’t complain about it,

It's not the worst job in the world!
I love my job so much, I'm so lucky to have it. There's always gonna be something you don't like. I'm pretty lucky that it's just social media that I'm not a fan of.

What kind of band will you be touring with?
I'm having a bassist and a drummer and possibly a guitar slash synth player. I've just started playing with a guitar player in Melbourne, which adds a lot to the show. So if I can make that happen, that would be really good.

Have you got any aspirations to take on the overseas market?
I've got a lot of aspirations. I'd like to go to the UK. I haven't really been travelling yet at all, so I don't know. I'm just trying to think of places where I can perform and then also go on holiday!

I usually ask people if there was ever an alternate career path, but you're so young that maybe that is pointless!
I going to be a kindergarten teacher, I'm going to do a course. I've always really liked hanging out with kids, and I used to be a nanny in the summer holidays. So I'd really like to do that. I'd be a great kindergarten teacher, because I can play guitar, I can sing with them, I can teach them songs, I can paint with them - even though I can't really paint! I'd be so happy doing that.

Last question, what's your ultimate image of someone listening to Blasé Vengeance?
I think that depends on the song, but I think my ultimate image for any of them is just the classic screaming in your car with a friend next to you. I always think that's fun, and I do that all the time with my friends. I think that's just the ultimate listening experience, just a car with good speakers, a soft drink and having a good time and a scream and singing out the window.

Blasé Vengeance is out now Mushroom Music. You can download and stream here.
Follow Lotte Gallagher on Instagram and TikTok.