How did actor Claudia Karvan come to murder musician Jack Colwell in the dark waters of an Australian creek? Colwell may have sung of his close brushes with death (born three months premature, the Sydney singer-songwriter has always felt a keen sense of his own mortality). But Karvan? The Secret Life of Us star doesn’t seem the murderous kind.
“Everyone loves a good drowning! Think Nick Cave and Kylie. Think Picnic at Hanging Rock,” says Colwell, who is rightly chuffed with his latest music video for Coat – premiering exclusively on Guardian Australia – the third single off his debut EP, Only When Flooded Could I Let Go.
Time to explain the back-story, Jack. “I am Claudia’s son and I have slept with her partner. She can’t believe that someone she has given life to could betray her so greatly, so she dives in to end my life.” Phew! Nothing too heavy there then.
Happily, Karvan isn’t the precious sort. “She was willing to give the role a bit of grunt, for want of a better word. Filming next to a muddy creek in the depths of the Australian bush isn’t exactly an actor’s dream. But Claudia was unfazed – shoes off, feet in the mud, hands in the icy freezing water – she didn’t blink.”
It is a bit Where the Wild Roses Grow, he’s right, but while Colwell is happy to cite the likes of Nick Cave and Patrick Wolf as influences, it’s the female singer-songwriters of the 90s – Tori Amos, PJ Harvey and Courtney Love – who he really crushes on, musically speaking. Their unashamed confessional tales empowered his own introspective songwriting, he says.
If Colwell still sounds a little surprised his music connects with other people, he is growing in confidence. Next year he goes on tour as support act for Sarah Blasko, who issued the invitation after hearing him play at Newtown Social Club.
He’s over the moon at the gig: “I had a poster of What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have above my piano as I was growing up and I used to look up at it and imagine writing an album as good as that one!” We can’t wait to hear it, sir.
• Jack Colwell is playing Shebeen in Melbourne (8 January) and Newtown Social Club in Sydney (9 January)
