Naarm (Melbourne) based singer Queenie drops her new album Pleasance this week.
Having often been labelled as a country singer “because I’m a girl with a guitar who wore a cowboy hat one time and talked about my feelings” Queenie jokes, Pleasance shows that her influences are far more wide reaching than that as the album traverses pop, folk and alt-rock amongst other influences.
It’s Queenie’s second album. The first, New Moult was written in a maelstrom of lockdown angst and broken heartedness, whereas Pleasance comes from a very different place.
Recent single Vivid sets the scene of this perfectly. Queenie’s glorious vocals ebb and flow through the song as she addresses the fragility of her serenity and the constant fear that she could wake up one day realising it’s all been a vivid dream. In whirlwind she addresses the idea of finally being seen for who she is, not someone who is too much, and Pearl necklaces offers a tongue in cheek look at patriarchy and religion.
These singles outline what Queenie has done really marvellously with this album, which is to create something that truly represents the multifaceted complexity of who is she, yet smoothly blends it all into a cohesive collection.
Despite the album being about, well, Pleasance, it’s absolutely not shying away from the difficulties and challenges she’s faced either and if anything, many of the songs are her most candidly written so far. The Ceiling, as an example, takes us back to some of the more difficult experiences of her childhood and clearly parts of her past she still carries with her today.
You can also hear this battle between her past and present so clearly on my favourite track on the album Sea Foam Green. I cried the first time I listened to this. The lyrics “Finally laid to rest in a shallow grave, every piece of me that had been cut away” just hit me. I adore the way this song switches from being so soft one minute to Queenie belting out the chorus the next, and the way that echoes the theme of the song of once being so vulnerable, or feeling so small, and now having the strength to have pushed past that (or at least reconciled with those feelings, I’m not sure we really push past anything).
Album opener Salt gave me similar, if slightly less emotional feelings. I think this track also features some of my favourite lyrics on the album: “he looked at me and said ‘you look like hell’ yeah I just got back”. When I was chatting with Queenie recently she said there are moments in songs which only reveal themselves to you afterwards and then you’re like “oh I’m a lyrical genius” and I’m not sure if this will be one of those moments (or perhaps she knew she was a lyrical genius from the moment she wrote it) but I just love how many ways this line can be read, from the incredibly mundane to this really powerful metaphor that represents the journey she’s taken with this album.
Pleasance is an album which personally resonates quite deeply. Queenie has so perfectly captured both the joys of being so confident and comfortable in who you are as a person, so grateful that you have a safe home, a pantry full of food etc. Yet also the knowledge that this stability comes with a caveat. This deep-seated, subtle fear that I think anyone who has grown up or even just lived with periods of unsettlement or upheaval will relate to.
I could talk about this album all day, and you may remember I asked Queenie if it was a feminist album. And now I’ve had more time to sit with it, it absolutely is. It’s an album dedicate to strength and resilience. Stories of finding your place, your people and yourself. It’s as much “my sorrows don’t define me” as it is “look how wonderful my life is” and it perfectly acknowledges how this fragile gratitude could only possibly emerge from everything that came before it.
I have to give a special mention to one more song before I finish up which is Day Is Long, a solemn, almost chant-like track which roughly splits the album in half. It’s one of those songs that feels deceptively simple, but every new listen reveals a different instrumental layer you didn’t pick up on before. I can see how it could easily have felt like a risk to put this one on there, it’s not your typical pop song by any means, but I’m so glad it made the cut, it’s gorgeous.
I feel I’ve talked a lot about the album here but I’ve maybe skipped over what an incredible vocalist Queenie is. She conveys such emotion in her singing and such power that she can just tap into seemingly from nowhere. I genuinely could listen to her all day!
And give Queenie a follow here.