With the release of her sophomore album, 'Colour By Number', Australian songwriter Leah Flanagan has delivered some of her most poignant and beautiful work yet.
The record sees the NT artist present observations on her life's journey as a biracial Australian with artful finesse, capped off with gorgeous production by Sarah Belkner.It is material that Flanagan is open in acknowledging has been harder to discuss in the past, yet in working with Belkner, she has found a new sense of pride and courage within the words she has written.
"A lot of these songs had been written five years ago," Flanagan explains.
"The songs that came together [on the album] were the songs Sarah picked, she's amazing. I hadn't developed them or anything; they were sitting in the backlog of songs I had half-written. It has been the most collaborative record I've ever made."
"The music side of things. . . You find yourself exposed in ways that you don't want to be exposed." - Leah Flanagan
In creating 'Colour By Number', Flanagan and Belkner worked on the record out of Free Energy Device Studios in Sydney, examining and exploring each facet of the lyrics and arrangement.
The final result is a textured and nuanced album that covers wide-ranging experiences, both personal and creative.
For Flanagan, 'Colour By Number' is an album that paints the truest representation of herself as an artist, while also presenting an honest and candid narrative of the challenges and scrutinisation she has experienced when her cultural upbringing became a burden more than a proud part of her work.
"I remember talking about my identity early on," she says. "You don't think about it like it's a marketing tool; the music side of things and the industry turns into one. You find yourself exposed in ways that you don't want to be exposed."
The exploitative nature of the industry that Flanagan experienced in those crucial, formative stages of her career stopped her from wanting to use the art to tell her personal story in-depth.
It became an element of her life that would simply remain something she would continue to write about, but not perform publicly.
"I was still writing the songs but I was like, 'I'm just going to write love songs. I don't want to talk about living in two worlds. I don't want to talk about Aboriginal issues, I just want to be a person who creates music.'
"I experienced early on, this horrible side of the music industry that was just so. . . they wanted to exploit it for their own gain, without actually knowing anything about me or the way I grew up, being biracial.
"The care wasn't there. It damaged me for a long time. I didn't want to talk about that stuff."
But as Flanagan explains, working with Belkner helped her overcome this personal hurdle; all it took was Sarah taking the time and consideration to actually hear about Leah's experiences, on a human level.
"I've known Sarah for years and I wanted to make something beautiful, and I knew how wonderful she was at arranging strings and melodies.
"There was a lot of support in the room. She actually asked me what the songs were about. She was like, 'How come you don't really sing these songs? I had no idea you felt that way about certain situations.'"
'Colour By Number', out now, is the sort of album that has been crafted for an immersive listen. To get the most from it, brew up some tea and allot the appropriate amount of time to listen, uninterrupted.
"I love the art form of the 'full album'," Flanagan says.
"All the kids who grew up with the world of streaming and digital music, I guess if they hadn't grown up listening to records from start to finish, it's a new way of listening for them.
"I went into this going, 'I know this is going to be the opening number. I know this is going to be the bookend.' I knew where the bookends were straight away; that's how we composed it."
Now the album is released for public consumption, how does Flanagan feel about having a record listeners can experience – one that exposes her story, but in the way that is honest and true?
"We didn't really think about the outside world," she says.
"The process was like, 'What's going to do the song and story of these songs justice?'.
"It was a really gentle, lovely process. I hope that's reflected in the music too. They're gentle songs, a lot of them are quite delicate; but I'd like to think that there's depth to them, musically and sonically."
