![]() ![]() And even though those artists might not be queer, per se, what they did was kind of warped and weird and it carved out this space where anyone or anything is welcome. “I love how gross some of the stuff that Bowie did is. ![]() Musically, Sandridge draws from the well of guitar-tinged synthpop made legendary in the ’70s and ’80s by iconoclasts like David Bowie, Kate Bush and Cyndi Lauper – all of whom, they say, have had a notable influence on Sandridge’s own songwriting style. “I’d been a fan of Andy Bull’s music since I was in high school… when we were in the studio, he was like, ‘Do you mind if I have a sing on it?’ And in my brain I was like, ‘Do I MIND!?’” Practise the norm, and the norm will follow.” But I think the more comfortable I became in my sexuality, the more I realised that it’s just a part of me. Songwriting helped Sandridge explore that side of themself, as they explain: “For a very long time, before I came out, I tried to compartmentalise, which was obviously not great for my mental health, and also not great for representation. One of Sandridge’s biggest core values is authenticity – particularly with regards to their queerness. I think songwriting really helps you to identify your core values.” “I like doing that ‘stream of consciousness’ type of writing… when I’m just playing some chords and singing something, and I just have my iPhone’s voice memo going, and then I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that was a really weird thing to say – I didn’t realise I felt like that.’ And then exploring what some of the words mean. Songwriting can be a good tool for self-exploration, they’ve concluded. They wrote ‘Cost Of Love’ – the lead single from their just-released ‘Lost Dog’ EP – in a bid to reckon with the end of that aforementioned relationship. In that period of romantic turbulence, it was inevitable that Sandridge would turn to their trusty Fender Mustang. But it kind of got to the point where we were both pouring so much of ourselves in that, that it became more about the relationship itself than about who we are as individuals and celebrating that.” “I was in an on-and-off relationship for five years,” they say, “and the last time we were together, we gave it a really good swing: we went to couples therapy, and we really exhausted ourselves into the relationship. ‘Try + Save Me’ chronicled two separate breakups, and they went through another one in the wake of the album’s release. “The more comfortable I became in my sexuality, the more I realised that it’s just a part of me”īy 2021, Sandridge was pretty tired of mining their own emotional trauma. And it was a nice relief, during lockdown, to not sing about my own feelings.” “I was getting really deep into exploring those kind of fucked-up sounds – it just felt like being a huge kid. “It was like, ‘How do we make the sound of a space shuttle on an arpeggiator? What about an electric guitar?’ The scoring process was “so fun”, they gush. Sandridge (who uses both she/her and they/them pronouns NME uses only the latter set in this story with their blessing) beams when they talk about the play, which is primed to tour nationally in 2023. And as Sandridge tells NME, “it’s really fucking expensive to make music” when there isn’t a global crisis to contend with.Įager to keep busy, Sandridge shifted their focus to a theatrical passion project, linking up with the Brisbane-based Dead Puppet Society to score Ishmael: a gender-bent reimagining of Moby Dick as “a contemporary space saga” that “recasts Earth’s no-longer-vast oceans with the immensity of the universe, and the endless possibilities and terrors it holds”. But of course, as it did for most artists who are staunchly DIY (but not staunchly rich), the pandemic upended those plans. Sandridge planned to ride the high well into 2020, dropping new music sooner than fans would expect. Their debut album, ‘Try + Save Me’, arrived independently on Octoand – thanks in no small part to earworms like ‘Eyes Wide’, ‘Stranger’ and bonafide sapphic anthem ‘I’ll Never Want A BF’ – was an underground favourite before it even came out. Three years ago, Bec Sandridge was on the road to becoming Australia’s next queer pop icon.
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