It has been almost a decade since the world met Celia Pavey as a teenage folk singer on 'The Voice Australia' in 2013.
Since then, Pavey has created a name for herself as Vera Blue, the electro-pop singer who has danced her way across festival stages globally and sold-out venues around the country.Her debut album as Vera Blue, 'Perennial', achieved gold certification after its 2017 release and now, as 2022 draws to a close, Pavey is ready to launch her latest body of work, 'Mercurial', into the world.
Three years of COVID stretched out the time between releases for Pavey, like many of her peers. But she is grateful for the extra time. "I do sometimes wish COVID didn't happen, because I would have been able to put it out earlier," Pavey says.
"But there's songs on 'Mercurial' that I hadn't written yet, and would never have come out of me if it weren't for those times. . . I don't really have any songs specifically about COVID, but things that happened during COVID; people that I met and moments, things like that."
One such song is the album's lead single 'The Curse', written at home with partner Bill Johnston during COVID. A track about unrequited love, it was inspired by an experience one of Celia's friends was having – but upon its completion, Pavey realised it was a universal curse.
"She had feelings for this person, and I've a hundred per cent had feelings for people and they haven't felt the same way back; they've been a really close friend and you're like, 'Do I tell them that I love them? Am I going to ruin the friendship? Or are they just not going to feel the same back,'" Pavey explains.
"It's definitely happened to me multiple times, and I only realised that when I was writing the song. So whenever I perform it, or listen to it, it actually puts me right back in that position and I feel all of the emotions and all of those sensations that come with falling for someone that you feel like doesn't feel the same way back."
The song does have a happy ending – the friend who inspired it is now in a relationship with the person in question. Celia hopes her second 'Mercurial' album single, 'Mermaid Avenue', has a similar happy ending.
"I did kind of want to write a love song, but naturally when [co-writer] Thom [Mak] and I write together things morph into more of a heartbreak kind of emotion – and also at the time, he was going through a heartbreak," she says.
"So the song did end up turning into a heartbreak song. . . and it's funny, when I think about that song now, my boyfriend and I joke about it: 'It's like you've written a heartbreak song about our breakup for the future!'"
Inspired by a real street near her home, Pavey says it's up to listeners to determine whether they see 'Mermaid Avenue' as a real place or a metaphor for a perfect world or dream scenario.
"I do hope I don't connect with it any time soon, because I want to be with my partner for the rest of my life," Celia laughs. "It's just. . . some relationships when they end it's not necessarily nasty, it's really heartbreaking because you had this vision of your life together and that never happens."
While 'Perennial' was broken into three chapters, almost, don't expect the same kind of order on 'Mercurial'. "It's. . . messy," Celia says of the album.
"It's all over the place. It's kind of sporadic. It's every emotion you can think of. It's about multiple things, different people – and also about learning about myself; empowerment and what I believe in, stuff like that."
What Pavey has created, essentially, is a beautiful kind of chaos. "I wanted it to be kind of like when artists have a canvas and they just throw stuff at it, and it just goes where it should be and what it needed to be, and just go, 'Yes. . . that. That's fine. That makes sense,'" she explains.
"It works well with the title, too, because it's just sudden shifts and changes in mood or mind or sounds, which I love."
This 'go with the flow' creative approach reflects the water elements that have played into the album – not only 'Mermaid Avenue', but also a good portion of the album was written near the ocean, or overlooking the ocean, when Pavey and songwriting partners Thom and Andy Mak set up a studio in an Airbnb in Avoca Beach (Central Coast).
"The thing that I love the most about it is that we're also really good friends, and we can actually hang out without making music or thinking of music – we can just talk about sh.t, basically," Pavey laughs.
Although most of the album was written with the Mak brothers, one was penned with producer Steve Solomon, who also has credits on 'All The Pretty Girls'.
"There was one song called 'Trust Fall' that I actually wrote in LA [with Solomon] a couple of years ago, when I was falling in love with my partner Billy and learning how to kind of trust myself and trust others," Celia says.
"There's something about that song that I have just never been able to shake, then I brought it back to my team and we just kind of elevated it and turned it into this '80s banger, which I love."
It's difficult for Pavey to choose just one song on 'Mercurial' that aptly describes her current creative state, but the most recently-written track, 'Feel Better' may come close.
"I think 'Feel Better' is somewhere in there that has lots of different colours and different sounds, and I kind of have a fearlessness of swearing or saying whatever I felt in that moment, and whatever I need to feel to feel okay," she says.
The Celia Pavey who appeared on 'The Voice' singing folk songs is never far from the Vera Blue we know today. "I think there's a part of me, and my music, that folky element is always going to be there," she says.
"There's songs that we will write on acoustic and piano and just build from there, but when you strip them all back, they sound like a folk song: they may be poppy, but they're kind of songs that hold their own without having all the bells and whistles."
'The Voice' experience, although a stepping stone, was one Pavey is still grateful for. "It may have been a been a stepping stone, but it was a pretty big stepping stone, and a big, brave thing to do when I think I'd just turned 19," she says.
"I feel very proud of that experience, and I think if I hadn't done it, I would have eventually found my way, but maybe I wouldn't have made the connections and met the people or had the team that supports me and found my producer today."
'Mercurial' is now available.
Vera Blue 2022-2023 Tour Dates
Thu 3 Nov - Miami Marketta (Gold Coast)Fri 4 Nov - The Fortitude Music Hall (Brisbane)
Sat 5 Nov - Civic Theatre (Newcastle)
Sat 12 Nov - Forum Melbourne
Wed 30 Nov - Adelaide Entertainment Centre* supporting Flume
Fri 2 Dec - Regatta Grounds (Hobart)* supporitng Flume
Thu 8 Dec - Ice Cream Factory (Perth)
Fri 16 Dec - Anita's Theatre (Wollongong)
Sat 17 Dec - Enmore Theatre (Sydney)
Sat 25 Mar - Wine Machine @ Commonwealth Park (Canberra)
Sat 1 Apr - Wine Machine @ Rochford Wines (Yarra Valley)
