Kids in the kitchen

November 26, 2004
Troubadours: Holly Throsby and Tony Dupe. Photo: by Edwina Pickles


Holly Throsby and Tony Dupe can record music and cut carrots at the same time. Bernard Zuel washes the plates.

The Kirk, 422 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills
December 3, 8pm
$8 at the door or 0419 250 439

There are three words you won't hear when Holly Throsby and Tony Dupe play at the Kirk in Surry Hills: "Turn it down."

Dupe and Throsby are more inclined to bring you in rather than pin you back , to whisper rather than shout - or, in Dupe's case, to say nothing at all.

"There'll be no metal that night," Dupe says. "It will be intimate, definitely."

Dupe will be backing Throsby as well as playing as Saddleback, the name under which he has released the instrumental atmospheric album Everything's a Love Letter. Throsby will be launching her debut album of spare folk-pop, On Night.

It's tempting to wonder if this intimacy has something to do with the recording location for Dupe's and Throsby's albums, which might be the loveliest and, sometimes, saddest things you will hear this year.

The albums are genuine kitchen-sink dramas in that they were recorded in the kitchen and loungeroom of Dupe's house, just out of Kiama, overlooked by Saddleback Mountain. We're not talking country mansion or expansive country retreat here: visiting recording artists sleep in the loungeroom-cum-studio.

"There's a see-through wall between the loungeroom and the kitchen so you kind of feel like there's space," Dupe says. "You do have to squeeze past the oven, though."

It might seem like some novel primitivism compared with the average flash studios employed by some artists, but it's how Dupe likes to produce and how Throsby came to flourish.

"It wasn't that different for me because I've never recorded in a flash studio and I always record my things at home in order to write them, not forget them and stuff," Throsby says.

"We did a lot of stuff ... like set up the mic, do the vocals and guitars and do it once.

"It felt nice, natural, like the way I play them. At first, I thought my voice didn't sound that good or whatever, but Tony convinced me and now I think he's right."

Dupe is fast gaining a reputation as a pair of ears to rival that other underground production maven, J. Walker of Machine Translations. He also handled the production for another of this year's finds, the similarly moody but low-key the Woods Themselves. But for him, it's not about technique; it's about something more intimate.

"I've always been on the gentler side of things," Dupe says. "One of the good things about being in the country is the decisions you make are fairly sound because you made them in a kind of stress-free, focused environment.

"I enjoy the communication aspect of records, but if it's done from the heart you have to strip away those things that get in the way of communication and be as honest, as direct as you can, maybe as simple as you can, so you're not trying to cover up or compensate."

There's no covering up for Throsby in On Night. It's not just her vocals and the instrumentation that are stripped bare; it's also her life. Or at least her life over two troubled, if not traumatic, years that fed this material.

The songs on the album are almost invariably open romantic wounds, littered with betrayal and doubt. Sometimes they're quite detailed. Sometimes they're as brief as the words for Damn That New Body, which stretches barely five lines.

She is reluctant to go into detail, but Throsby says: "I didn't lie about anything. I don't write about other people or anything."

Of course, admitting that, means more of us will assume we know her.

"Yeah, I met someone the other day who said, 'Now I know you after listening to the album,'" she laughs. "I started to freak out - 'Oh no, what have I done? I hope he liked me - didn't think I was evil.'"

He probably thought she needed a hug.

"I don't want it to be a slit-your-wrists album," Throsby says. "All the sadness on there is tempered. I think an awareness of sadness makes sadness a little less sad."

Being aware that you are sad makes it easier to deal with?

"Yeah, I think. I do feel there's hope in the record. I'm a hopeful person."

Dupe is a bit older than the artists he has seen in his living room and kitchen. However, when asked about them, he says: "They're all such music nuts, but they're all such frail people. Your late 20s knocks people around these days, people get the wobbles. But when they release [music] it's powerful."