After releasing her debut EP 'Black Bird' in 2016, Central Coast alt.country singer-songwriter Tori Forsyth has returned with her debut album, 'Dawn Of The Dark', that is available now.
“When I recorded the EP I was very naive and it was kind of just a fun project for me to do,” Tori says.
“I didn’t realise it was going to be a life-changing career choice. Now I think I'm a bit more driven and the album is a bit more personal and a bit more honest. The sound is definitely more diverse as well.
“I recorded it with Shane Nicholson and he's an amazing producer. I learnt a lot from just watching him do his work and watching the record come alive. It was an awesome learning experience.”
Singles from the album, 'In The Morning' and 'Grave Robber's Daughter', have already been released. “Every song is a personal song on this album,” Tori says.
“So they basically explore my life over the past couple of years. The lyrics that I've chosen create more of a metaphoric story, so you can't really tell what the songs are about.
"I also incorporate different ideas that are happening around the world into the songs, to make it a bit more diverse in what people can relate to.
“My favourite is a song called 'White Noise', and it's a very different sound from anything else on the album. It's a bit heavier and it's just a lot of fun. I found this new love for creating a different sound and it inspired me, post-record, to do a lot more of that.”
Tori recently headed to the US for SXSW in Texas. “It was amazing, a lot of fun and really busy. The festival has over 3,000 artists, and it's a genre-less festival. We had metal, country, hip hop.
“And that's the best part of it because you can go and discover new bands and not have any pre-conceived ideas of what they're going to be like. That's why it's different from any other festival in the world.”
Recently Tori took to social media to start the #boycottthefilter challenge. “Honestly, it was a really spur of the moment decision.
"It kind of came out of me questioning why I hated social media so much. Everyone's trying to look 100 times better than they really are on social media. I was saying to my partner that I hated social media and wanted a break from it. But I'm bringing an album out, so that's not really an option.
“I thought about how many other people must feel this way, and I contacted 20 other girls and they all related. We decided that we'd upload a selfie with the hashtag [#boycottthefilter] and it just took off from there.
"I think it's a really positive thing to have online, because there's so much rubbish.”
2018 is set to be a busy year for Tori. “I'm going to be doing an album launch party for the record in May. Then I'm going to be touring Australia-wide and I think we're doing about 50 dates over 12 weeks. It's going to be a lot of touring.”
