Welcome to Changeling, an indie-pop singer songwriter from Melbourne Australia. Her music is defined by the genre-bending diversity of her songwriting and the distinctive vocal textures she creates with her "wall of sound" vocal arrangements. For Changeling, music is the bright thread in the darkness that leads you home. From her to you - these are her songs, brought back from the dark, sent out to you wherever life has picked you up and set you down.
Unofficial video for single release 'Goodbye Hello'- Official video coming soon.
Fairytales for Grown-ups by Changeling: EP review by Andrew Masterson
Combining great verve with the kind of musical discipline that only comes after long and hard-won experience, Changeling’s EP Fairytales for Grown-Ups is simply a tiny treasure.
Changeling herself – under her other name, Sue Speer – will be well known to roots music and jazz fans as the eponymous frontwoman of Sue Speer's Big Buzz Combo, a long-running all-star line-up that drew together musos from bands such as the Moovin’ and Groovin’ Orchestra, the Pearly Shells, The Melbourne Ska Orchestra, Way Out West and Pre Shrunk.
On Fairytales for Grown-Ups she once again surrounds herself with top-notch accomplices, including guitarist Ben Edgar (Gotye, Angus & Julia Stone, Washington) sticksman Danny Farrugia (Tin Pan Orange, The Bamboos, Missy Higgins) and keyboardist Bruce Haymes (Paul Kelly, The Waifs & Archie Roach).
But it is Changeling herself who leads, defines and owns the six songs on the album. There is a joyful eclecticism here – with echoes of sixties pop arrangements meeting 90s indie accents and happy runs of horn-backed funky basslines – but also an overarching vision that ensures the document as a whole is consistent, and consistently excellent.
There are fleeting reminders here, in vocal tone and phrasing, of Abby Dobson, peak-Ceberano and perhaps even Meg Mac, but Fairytales for Grown-Ups is no pastiche. Neither is Changeling guilty of emulation.
She is her own artist, and always has been. With Fairytales for Grown-Ups she is well in her stride – and, boy, can she strut.
Andrew Masterson
Changeling
Sometimes you've gotta take the road less travelled. Not always because you choose it, but because life has a way of picking you up and putting you down somewhere you don’t always expect. And ‘somewhere’ at times can be nowhere that you want to be. A land of echoes and dreams and shadows that lean in way too close, whispering secrets you never asked to know. That guide you to the crossroads in the forest, that sing songs until midnight, that dance until dawn.
And there is one thing that is true – has always been true – and that is music. Music is the bright thread in the darkness that leads you home. It’s the song you sing when they say ‘don’t speak’. It’s the soft shoe shuffle when you just can’t dance. It’s the irresistible tune that rouses the living and the dead, that says we are all one, and one all.
Such are the songs of Changeling, brought back from the dark, sent out to you wherever life has picked you up and set you down.