Jessica Alyssa Cerro, better known by her stage name Montaigne, joins the conversation somewhat sleepily, groggily.
But the art pop singer-songwriter needs all the rest she can get as she's in the middle of a nationwide tour in support of her latest album, 'Complex'. “It’s the longest tour I’ve ever done [as headliner], and it’s going to be hectic, but I think good.”
Her body may still be waking up but her mind, like her music, is pretty sharp. 'Complex' is the kind of bright avant-pop album, rife with eclectic elements, that can convert even the most dedicated of metalheads. “You don’t know how many times that feedback has been given to me!” Montaigne declares excitedly.
“Someone actually emailed my management saying ‘I’m usually only into metal, but I just wanted to pass a message to Montaigne saying how much I love this album'.
“There’s something, I don’t know what it is, about the music that for some reason it’s appealing to metalheads, and I’m so into it.”
Could it be the thematic narrative? Brash, unforgiving, uncompromising. Or could it be the sonic soundscape? The production is sensational and does cut quite cleanly, which perhaps is the edge metalheads like. “I have a feeling it’s some sort of intersection between all of those,” reasons Montaigne.
“I think some of my vocals can lend themselves to. . . well, they have intensity, I think.
“I love my new song [‘Love Might Be Found (Volcano)’]; some guy actually posted a video on YouTube where he was playing drums over the song, but they were full metal – it was so sick, it sounded so good. I reckon if someone did a metal remix of the whole album, it would make sense.”
When Montaigne sees renditions of her music like that, she doesn’t necessarily see them as having new life or being incomplete, but is happy they're in the hands of someone who can interpret them whatever way they want.
Her music can be adapted, retold, and performed with so many possibilities. “When I saw that video I thought, ‘This is sick! This is how we should play it live!' I found it really exciting.
“I’ve had a lot of these songs for two or three years, so once it gets into the hands of listeners and they start to inject their own meaning into the listening experience, I think that’s what is keeping myself from sh.tting myself to tears with boredom."
'Complex', as well as Montaigne’s 2016 debut album 'Glorious Heights', is truly a snapshot of her life as she lived it at the time she wrote the songs – these aren’t sentiments that she relives with any sense of dread or disdain, but familiar sensations do occasionally resurface.
“After the last [album] cycle, I was telling everyone I was completely over all the sentiments and hardships in the album.
“Then I started dating my best friend, and things are great but I haven’t been in a relationship for since forever – [I’ve] always been happily single or frustrated with a crush – and then once it happened, all of this sh.t emerged and my trauma and insecurities came up, and I was like, ‘Oh dear God, I’m not as over these things as I thought!’
“I think art is a living and breathing thing. It involves weird influences and relationships with its creator. I think there are truths about me in those songs, which will never really go away. I’ll only ever be able to manage well, you know, if I work hard enough. I used to think they were snapshots, but now I have a feeling they’re like the soundtrack to a movie that is still playing out of time and will until I die, probably.”
Montaigne’s subconscious talent here is that her music captures life lessons, the good and the bad, in a unique style.
Performing at Falls Festival, it all comes full circle – what Montaigne loves about what her listeners do with the music and how she readdresses her music – performing alongside some huge names, there’s scope to learn and to share with her peers, the methods for which they live through the events of their own songs, living their own movie.
“It’s very possible for people to stay connected to the songs, but not enough to relive the memories that are imbued in them.
“I think the whole ‘time heals all wounds’ thing, and you do heal with the time you’re given, you can have a loving relationship with those songs.
“It’s like a break-up with a partner – you don’t have a falling out with every one of them, sometimes it’s just not working, at the end you can still be friends and love each other until the day you die.
“I feel the same about old songs. Old friends. You’re an old friend I was super close to and maybe things were a bit intense, but now they’ve pitted out into a nice acquaintance. You can still accompany each other down the road.”
Montaigne 2019 Tour Dates
Fri 15 Nov - The Zoo (Brisbane)Sat 16 Nov - The Northern (Byron Bay)
Thu 21 Nov - Tap House (Bendigo)
Fri 22 Nov - Torquay Hotel
Sat 23 Nov - The Croxton (Melbourne)
Thu 28 Nov - UC Hub (Canberra)
Fri 29 Nov - The Metro Theatre (Sydney)
Sat 30 Nov - UOW Unibar (Wollongong)
2019/2020 Falls Festival Dates
28-31 Dec - Lorne (VIC)29-31 Dec - Marion Bay (TAS)
31 Dec & 1-2 Jan - Byron Bay
4-5 Jan - Fremantle
