This summer, a new artist announced herself in no uncertain terms. The Melbourne-raised Kaity Dunstan, who sings under the name CLOVES, released an EP that had fans of the vocal greats of yesteryear dusting down the superlatives and pinching themselves in disbelief. Not yet 20, CLOVES already has the voice of a veteran. A voice that stops you in your tracks, that gets under the skin of a lyric, and inhabits every syllable of a song. We probably used to react like that to singers more often than we do today. Ella, Etta, Billie, Aretha, Dionne. Dusty, Joni, Amy, Adele, Lana. Latterly, the list has looked thinner. In her songs, feelings are hinted at rather than shouted from the rooftops, but you can hear the hurt in every bar.
CLOVES wrote her first song when she was 11 – and, no, she isn’t about to let anyone hear it. “My mum saw a poster for a song competition on the wall at school, and she asked me if I wanted to enter...
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This summer, a new artist announced herself in no uncertain terms. The Melbourne-raised Kaity Dunstan, who sings under the name CLOVES, released an EP that had fans of the vocal greats of yesteryear dusting down the superlatives and pinching themselves in disbelief. Not yet 20, CLOVES already has the voice of a veteran. A voice that stops you in your tracks, that gets under the skin of a lyric, and inhabits every syllable of a song. We probably used to react like that to singers more often than we do today. Ella, Etta, Billie, Aretha, Dionne. Dusty, Joni, Amy, Adele, Lana. Latterly, the list has looked thinner. In her songs, feelings are hinted at rather than shouted from the rooftops, but you can hear the hurt in every bar.
CLOVES wrote her first song when she was 11 – and, no, she isn’t about to let anyone hear it. “My mum saw a poster for a song competition on the wall at school, and she asked me if I wanted to enter. I think the prize was some sort of record contract. I didn’t get anywhere: it was the worst song of all time, called Just a Memory. The lyrics went: ‘The time you shared with me – just a memory.’ It was terrible. But I carried on, I’d write a song and then play it to my mum and dad and they’d go, ‘Oh, that’s so good’, even though it was rubbish. But it was amazing to have that sort of encouragement. They were always on at me to write, practice, develop. My dad had a bunch of guitars in the house and spotted that I was fascinated by them. I think he’s got terrible taste in music, he’ll go, ‘I’m not sure about this new song, I liked your old ones’, and they were so bad.”
An early development deal taught CLOVES the importance of not compromising, no matter the temptation there can be to do just that. “The first people I worked with tried to iron all the kinks out, but I wasn’t having it. You can hear the discomfort in those early songs – they just weren’t me.” At the same time, a process of elimination was helping her understand what she needed to change in her approach to songwriting. “Looking back, I was just writing about things I heard other songwriters dealing with, and thinking I understood them. It took a while before I started writing lyrics where I could go, ‘This is all making sense to me’, and that made me upset to sing. At the start, it was just lots of sad love songs. The usual thing.
On Frail Love, the lead track from CLOVES debut EP, you can hear it, too. Working with Justin Parker (Lana Del Rey, Sia, Rihanna) and Rich Cooper (Mumford & Sons, Banks, Lucy Rose), CLOVES has fashioned music of haunting minimalism: pop-noir soundtracks over which her extraordinary voice arcs and keens. “They get what I’m trying to do completely, it’s like telepathy. If it takes time, all the better: you’ve got to honour your feelings, not go for the quickest fix. I carry a notebook around with me everywhere. Not just for lyrics, sometimes it’s just a splodge of words about something that’s really annoying me or getting to me, and only later will that work its way into a song. It’s like a feeling that’s waiting, patiently, sometimes impatiently, to be expressed. I take forever to write lyrics; they mean too much to me to rush. If something is upsetting me, I won’t really bring it up with people, I just let it simmer. And then I’ll find myself singing an idea and think, ‘Ah, that really was an issue, wasn’t it?’ You know: ‘There you are.’”
The name CLOVES was inspired by a trip to Bali, where cloves are a national symbol. “I went there straight from being in LA for five weeks, and the contrast was breathtaking. In California I had my head up my own arse by the end, and the minute I got to Bali I went: ‘I need to get my act together.’ I went from that constant hustle to what felt like real real life.”
Slowly but surely, CLOVES debut album is taking shape, but, as we’ve learnt, she won’t be rushed. “I want it to be stripped back and all about the songs – because they need to breathe. Over-polishing things just takes away so much of what is special about them. So, yes, the iron has been unplugged and thrown out. Someone asked me the other day: ‘What is success to you?’ And I said: ‘Being happy with the album. To be able to feel that I’ve done something good, that sounds like me.’” It will, it will. And when you hear it, it will stop you in your tracks. This is serious.
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