STACK #196 Feb 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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INTERVIEW

The effervescent Kate Ceberano talks conjuring candour, singing for the times, the relief in unravelling, and how the threads of her new album Sweet Inspiration came together. Words Zoë Radas KATE CEBERANO

A mongst its luminous covers, Sweet Inspiration ’s original title track swells into a slow wildness; it’s not frenetic, but a gradual building of riotous vocals, organ, electric guitar licks and horns that disgorges itself outwards in a very With A Little Help From My Friends fashion - and it’s a fitting reflection of how this album, Kate Ceberano’s 28th, was created. “First of all, I entered the project quite mad,” Ceberano says simply. “We were

all a little bit in shock: ‘What’s actually happening, and when will be the next time we get to do this together - when will it ever happen again?’” In addition to those lockdown realities, Ceberano had also been wrestling with the “weird crux” of wanting to create, but feeling self- indulgent in doing so. It was the words of Nina Simone - “An artist’s duty is to reflect the times” - and the practice of Leonard Cohen, which came to steer her true. She

interprets her eventual understanding of her position thusly: “‘You’re born to sing, and somehow describe the feelings that you have about the world around you.’” “So we started off with the simplest kind of recording - and we did it all live, by the way,” she says. “There were very tiny, minimal edits here and there, but because we were all in the same room, you couldn’t actually do a lot [of editing], acoustically. And so what you get is that kind of Joe

FEBRUARY 2021

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