Bluesy indie rock simmering with emotion via beautiful strings, Anna Smyrk's 'The Excavator' is an intense ride about being a passenger to another person's grief.
"It took me a long time to write 'The Excavator'," begins Anna. "It had a whole different chorus when I first wrote it, and a bunch of different verses."I think when a song is about an experience that's really personal and emotional, it can sometimes be hard to get perspective on what's working and what's not."
A mesmerising listen that will instantly hook you in to numerous playbacks of the track, 'The Excavator' is part of a forthcoming EP, 'The Hour Between Us', Anna began to write from her Melbourne home last year as the pandemic completely shutdown our lives.
"I workshopped the song with some wonderful songwriters to help me get that perspective," Anna adds.
"Ainslie Wills gave me some feedback that was really helpful – we talked a lot about the form and the instrumentation, she suggested using the really gritty guitar tone that comes in at the choruses.
"Rachel Baiman, an amazing songwriter and violinist from the US, also helped me with this one. She and I are both lyric lovers, so we spent a lot of time on the story flow within the song."
scenestr is amped to premiere the music video for 'The Excavator' today. Enjoy.
"'The Excavator' is probably my favourite song to play live from the EP, so I was stoked to have the chance to make a live video with my full band.
"We managed to sneak in an afternoon between lockdowns in Melbourne at the beautiful Fight Night Studios to shoot this."
As the songs for her new EP began taking shape, Anna turned to Joel Quartermain (Eskimo Joe, Meg Mac) to bring them to life.
"Joel Quartermain, who produced the EP, also had a lot of great ideas that went into this song," Anna says. "Actually, we completely re-wrote the lyrics for the second verse while we were tracking.
"I had put down a few vocal takes of the verse, but it just wasn't feeling quite right.
"We ended up sprawled out on the studio floor throwing words back and forth until we found the right ones."
'The Hour Between Us' EP is scheduled for release 7 October.
