Me & My Ego is out now!
Image: Supplied.
Sydney-based producer-singer-songwriter Annie Bass has unveiled her long-awaited new EP, Me & My Ego. To celebrate the release, the musician is taking MILKY through the release, track by track!
“This isn’t another Covid story, but could I have written this EP without being forced back into my childhood home? Probably not. At the beginning of last year during lockdown number one I came across a quote while reading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe, “Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame”. As much as I wanted to resist it, the disruption of 2020 gave me the time and space to reflect. The daily habits I had come to rely on had been taken away and there were no distractions. Just me, my childhood bedroom, and what felt like all the time in the world.” Bass shares of creating the EP.
ME & MY EGO
Ego; the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.
CRAZY
This song is about trying not to bring the baggage from an old relationship into a new one. An ex- boyfriend once said to me, ‘...you’re the saddest thing I’ve ever seen’ and for some reason it stuck with me for years. I thought being sad made me special, that being a little bit broken made me more interesting. Now I know that for the most part it just made me a really hard person to be around. These were old stories I had to let go of. When the chorus hits and those wide synth starts pulsing, that is the feeling of when your thoughts overwhelm you, you can’t make sense of anything anymore, and feel like you’re going crazy.
ADORE
Adore; to love and respect (someone) deeply.
Adore You is the feeling you get when someone you love looks at you, and you want hold them as tight as you can.
I have a complicated relationship with love but I’m lucky enough to be with someone who loves me completely. Someone who has shown me all the loveable parts of myself I’d never seen before “I couldn’t see that there was beauty inside of me”. Sometimes it’s hard to show someone how much you adore them, so I wrote this song instead.
I had this melody idea attached to a dark, moody (badly self produced) demo from 2019. I sent it to Barney and he changed the vibe completely. He turned the whole song on its head; he turned it into a love song. The moody synths and monotonous drum loop were replaced with melodic piano and lead guitar. Hearing it back for the first time was maybe my favourite moment of making this EP. With this new sound I re-wrote most of the lyrics and it all came together fast.
OVER MY HEAD
I’ve been pretty open about struggles with my mental health in the past, maybe too open. When diagnosed with various different things, I wanted to deal them alone. But the thing about that is when you try to hide something it can start to leak out in ways you don’t see. But avoid confrontation I’d decided it would be easier to deal with things in secret, in private, rather than to try and explain how I was feeling to anyone around me.
This song is an argument between me and the voices that tell me to hide away. The voices that tell me to pull the curtains closed, turn off my phone, climb in to bed, and pretend I’m somewhere deep underground.
I am so incredibly lucky to have such talented friends. Elizabeth Maniscalco (aka Brux) and I have been friends for years and have always wanted to work together. I remember was a cold and miserable day is a little studio space I was renting. The roof was leaking and the windows were banging open and shut. I knew I could trust Liz to capture the nuance of this song, because she knew me so well… and that she did.
OWE YOU
I’ve always struggled with my identity. When someone powerful told me to do something chances are I would ignore my instincts and I’d do it. The music industry in particular is a difficult thing to navigate. You want to be vulnerable, but not too vulnerable. Mature, but not too old. Not too big, not too small, not too confident, not too shy. We have all heard horror stories about the music industry, but I never expected to find myself at the centre of one.
It can be hard to keep going when the universe feels like it’s screaming at you “No”. For longer than I’d like I stopped trusting my instincts and started to rely on the people around me to tell me what to do. My expectations were high, but my confidence was way low. I was lost, and felt trapped. Looking back I’ve realised I learned a very important lesson; the only thing holding me back, is me. It’s my life, I don’t owe you.
STEP ASIDE
I have what some would probably call a fear of commitment, especially when it comes to relationships. It was easy for me to walk away from someone I loved, if it meant I would protect them from feeling any of my pain. It was easier to walk away than it was to be honest.
Share too much and I would scare them off. Not share enough and eventually they might figure it out themselves. So the obvious answer? Leave before it get’s too complicated. On first listen I guess this sounds like break up song, but the truth is I was more in love than ever.
I recorded this demo with a dear friend Alex Wignall, in his living room on his upright piano. Barnaby who produced the track used the original piano recording; you can hear birds chirping and the piano keys creaking. I remember just one day after sending him the original demo he had send a sketch back, and I just burst into tears. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to hear something you’ve written come to life.
Me & My Ego is out now!