March 19--Before she became one of the most arresting new voices in rock with Australian band The Preatures, Isabella "Izzi" Manfredi wanted to be an English teacher. She grew up feeling like an outcast who found solace in poetry. Then everything changed in 2008 when she met guitarist Jack Moffitt and bassist Thomas Champion at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney.
"At first I just played acoustic gigs around town with the boys at pubs," Manfredi says. "I remember a Valentine's Day gig about 20 minutes outside Sydney. We got paid a lot of money -- 400 bucks -- for three sets, all covers, on this massive stage, and 11 people showed up. That was pretty typical."
Rounding out the band with guitarist Gideon Bensen and drummer Luke Davison, The Preatures began focusing on writing original music, and what started out as a fun hobby took a serious turn. "Jack and Tom are really good musicians -- Jack's a bit of a prodigy and is a bit annoying because he's really focused on technique, the technical aspects of music. He thought he was beyond songwriting. And I'm saying, 'Let's write simple verse and chorus songs,' and he's like, 'Subvert expectations.' We ended up with something in the middle, instead of something long winded and contrived."
Two EPs yielded a handful of songs that effortlessly melded rock, soul and blues, clingy melodies with a bounce in their step. The taut "Is This How You Feel?" -- a burst of moody Motown-inspired pop -- brought international attention in 2013 and a deal with Harvest Records.
"It was a huge turning point," she says. "I still think it's the best song we've written. It's a combination of everything going on in the band, our personalities, all the music we loved. We'd done enough to that point to finally figure out our sound, and that song caught the moment."
The song's success in Australia, where it won the Vanda Young Songwriting Competition in 2013, brought the band plenty of offers to play shows and develop into a more energetic and confident band on stage. The group aimed to harness that newfound purpose on its debut album, "Blue Planet Eyes," which came out last year. Recording sessions took place last spring, in between appearances at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, and the Coachella festival in California. The quintet hired Spoon drummer Jim Eno as producer, and he proved to be an able collaborator.
"We didn't want to work with a big-name producer, we we're not ready to be whipped yet -- there's a time and place for that," Manfredi says. "Every band needs that eventually, and can benefit from a great producer. But we wanted somebody who would work with us, not at us."
The bulk of the album was done in a whirlwind three weeks, during a brief window in the quintet's heavy touring schedule that coincided with Eno's vacation break. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done," the singer says. "I learned a lot about how easy a life I'd had so far. We didn't get a lot of sleep. There's so much pressure on debut albums now -- a lot of bands don't get a second chance. Jim was good about offering perspective: 'You're taking this way too seriously. Get it done, and move on.' It's hard when you have something you really want to do well, and can never be 100 percent satisfied."
Manfredi threw herself into writing 10 sharply defined songs with her bandmates. "We were in Germany recently, and a journalist asked why we talk a lot about song structure because that seems so unromantic. But if you want to be a good songwriter, you have to understand structure to (mess) with it. I love structure, editing, everything about the craft of songwriting. There are so many ways to innovate and be creative within the confines, the expectations of pop."
Though the album has a buoyant feel, there are a couple of exceptions, including the closing "Business, Yeah," a devastating ballad about dashed expectations.
"It's my favorite song on the record and the most personal," Manfredi says. "It's about the making of the record and thinking about how I spend most of my time doing things that cut off that creative part of me. When artists get a little bit of success, their lives start to have very little to do with making music. That's a hard adjustment. I have a couple of friends, musician friends, that I was really close to. They were way more talented than I would ever be, but they had no drive. A girlfriend who is an alcoholic just ruined herself. She's such a beautiful, talented person and it drives me crazy because she wasn't able to protect the creative gift she had. You have to learn to brush things off, become ironclad to the demands and pressures around you. Not everyone can adapt. But I'm learning."
Also worth hearing
TV on the Radio: The revered New York City band suffered a major loss with the death of bassist Gerard Smith a few years ago, but recovered to release its fifth album, "Seeds," in 2014. 9 p.m. Monday at Metro, 3730 N. Clark St., $35; metrochicago.com
Greg Kot co-hosts "Sound Opinions" at 8 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
greg@gregkot.com
When: 8:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Schubas, 3159 N. Southport Ave.
Tickets: $18 (sold out); lh-st.com
