After picking up the guitar for the first time in 2017, fast-talking, guitar-slinging Lisa De Angelis makes Americana-flavoured music soaked in a fiery spirit that will hook you in from the very first note.
Lisa's first single of 2021 is 'Tumblin' Back', a scorching track of rumblin' yet laidback alt country storytelling, featuring guitar licks that bring desert landscapes to mind and vocals that sit between Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift.There's a naughty innocence to Lisa's bluesy croon that adds a cheeky charm to the music.
"Whenever anyone asks me what kind of music I make I say 'scary country music', and this song is 100 per cent representative of who I am as an artist," Lisa says.
"My father is a psychic medium but I also went to Catholic schools, so I had this very unique blend of characters and experiences in my life growing up.
"That dichotomy and the imagery from those parts of my life comes up a lot in my writing, including in 'Tumblin' Back'."
scenestr is pumped to premiere 'Tumblin' Back'. Enjoy.
The track is also the first collaboration Lisa has completed with her partner. "My boyfriend Paul Bain co-produced and played drums on 'Tumblin' Back'; he is the musical director for Kirsty Lee Akers and the drummer for Travis Collins.
"I moved to Brisbane to be with him after 18 months long distance through COVID, and am very proud of the first song we've created together.
"When I brought him the song I just said I wanted it to be 'desert-y and a bit scary'. We watch a lot of westerns and Coen brothers' films and he's a session drummer, so when he heard the lyrics he just got it immediately."
When it came time to record, Lisa and Paul had to deal with the next door tradies' regular hard rock jam nights.
"Tumblin' Back' was pretty much entirely recorded in the middle of the night; we kept accidentally organising the recording sessions on nights that the tradies in the warehouse next door just happened to have hard rock jam nights," Lisa says.
"So it'd just be Paul and I in the studio until 1am because we'd have to stop recording and wait them out. Thankfully the next day we'd hear what we did and it wasn't awful; it's hard to know if something is good at 1am!
"I did all the backing vocals and I love weird backing vocals all stacked on top of each other, so I think some of those were the only things we ended up scrapping the next day, like 'ok this has gotten a bit too experimental now'."
