Ella Thompson is talking about her favourite song on Dorsal Fins’ new album. But there’s a problem; the track’s title is proving elusive. “Have you got the album in front of you?” she asks sheepishly.
Suppose that’s what happens when you’re as busy as Thompson, who splits her time between Dorsal Fins, her solo work and the electronic duo GL.
The song in question is Digital Zodiac’s final track, ‘Full Of Fear’. It’s a telling choice in that it reveals a difference side to the usually raucous Melbourne nine-piece.
“We just wrote the lyrics in the studio on the spot and then were like, ‘Let’s record them.’ But there’s something about it,” Thompson says. Slow, gentle, and unusually sparse, it has a dream-like quality — more “morning after” than the midnight psych-pop rave-ups you might associate with the group.
“It’s got a new sense of calm for Dorsal Fins,” Thompson admits.
Digital Zodiac is a confident step forward for the band, which formed in 2014 as a shared songwriting vehicle for Liam McGorry (of Eagle and The Worm and Saskwatch) and co-vocalists Jarrad Brown and Thompson. Aside from that newfound calm, the band’s second record also boasts a cohesiveness that was not a priority on its debut, Mind Renovation.
“We tried to get some of the energy that we have in the live shows,” Thompson explains of the new album. “Mind Renovation was a whole lot of different genres. We didn’t really know what the band was or whether it would just be a recording project. This time we tried to consolidate it and go with what works live.”
There is still variety on the album — from the infectious, upbeat ‘Sedated’ and ‘High Low’ to the “new sense of calm” of tracks such as ‘Full of Fear’. But the result is a focused, fun psych-pop record that sounds like the work of a band, rather than a three-headed songwriting project.
Thompson says splitting lead vocals with Brown and the workload with the whole collective makes for a difference experience, too.
“Sharing the role as front person means the pressure is off a bit,” she says. “Sometimes I feel Jarrad’s style can lean into rap or spoken word – and I feel like the hype person! And vice-versa. It’s the MC and the hype person. That’s a fun thing, I’ve never done that before.”
“GL, that’s also two friends making music,” Thompson continues. “But it’s a lot more compact and we have a lot more roles to share. With this all I have to worry about is singing. That makes you perform in a different way. You just worry about being a performer. There’s no instrument to hide behind.”
Thompson began singing backing vocals with the Melbourne soul/funk icons The Bamboos about 10 years ago before becoming one of the band’s two frontwomen on its Fever In The Road album. So how does splitting vocals in Dorsal Fins compare to her time in The Bamboos?
“I guess The Bamboos was that you were chosen like, ‘This person can play their instrument well,’” she says. “Whereas Dorsal Fins was like, ‘This person’s my best mate.’ And everyone can play their instruments very well, which is a plus. So it’s a win-win there.”
Eventually Thompson left The Bamboos to pursue her solo project. She says she battled the perception that she was merely a singer, despite also contributing as a writer.
“It was pretty disappointing really,” Thompson says, “that people thought I was just given these songs when you’ve written them as well. With The Bamboos I wrote every song that I sung on that album (Fever In The Road).”
“There’s always assumptions flying around, like, ‘She couldn’t produce that or he must have done the production. He must be the beats guy and she must be the singer. That must what be what happens.’”
Thompson says the key to breaking down those gendered perceptions is “fostering confidence in young female artists”.
“It’s that quote, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’” she muses. “When you start to see more women being credited for their own work, or producing their own music, you see that’s there’s a pathway to do that.”
Despite the “new sense of calm” on Digital Zodiac, Thompson is looking forward to unleashing the record on stage. Aside from the collective’s “band of best mates” mentality, it is still the primal, visceral live sound that stands out to Thompson. Indeed, it’s Dorsal Fins’ defining characteristic.
“It’s such a forceful sound,” she says. “It’s an immediate thing. When you get on stage and there’s that many people, even if they’re each just playing one small note, the force of sound is amazing.”
Digital Zodiac is out today via Dot Dash.
