In Division, the ninth track from her debut album Intra, Elizabeth Rose sings “why hold onto something that only separates?” Accompanied by a clip that portrays a gay couple’s struggle to find acceptance from family members, the song, she says, is a call to arms to make marriage equality in Australia a reality.
The Sydney singer-songwriter, who is touring in June, says before this album she had “never written about political issues”. That changed after she heard My People by Sydney band the Presets, which critiques Australia’s response to asylum seekers.
“Everyone has a voice but with music you have a voice and a megaphone,” she says. “You have a captive audience who wants to hear what you have to say as an artist and who follows your music. It’s very powerful.”
Intra’s offering of slinky electro-pop opens with Shoulda Coulda Woulda, which Rose says she wrote with the Grammy award-winning producer M-Phazes in Bali, back in 2014. “We pumped this [song] out in almost two hours, it just poured out of me.”
Among the programmed hi-hats and buzzing synths are also injections of analogue charm, like the soft tones of an upright piano. “I grew up learning piano, was classically trained and not a lot of people know this. I actually wrote and played a fair bit of piano [on the album] in about half of the tracks.”
The title Intra, Rose says, encapsulates a period of multifaceted self-reflection for the young artist. “I feel like I’m making strong statements with this album.”
- Intra is out 4 March. Elizabeth Rose is touring Australia 4-25 June
