American Pastoral

Stark, ghostly and eloquent, the sounds we hear on folk shanty ‘White As Diamonds’ could have come from many lands. Hints of indigenous Australia, North America and South America are all there. Parts even have a Celtic feel. With diversity seemingly flowing from every orifice, you can be forgiven for forgetting that Alela Diane Menig has only been involved in music for a handful of years. And probably all the better for it.

“I think it’s forced the songs and the structure of the songs to be quite simple which, in some ways, draws people to it,” she explains. “The first record, I mean I had no idea that anyone would even hear that. I hand-made copies of it for two years before anyone wanted to release it. Seven of the songs were recorded within one hour. I mean, it was just my Dad and I recording songs I’d written and without much thought to it at all, just making a little quick project.”
Even with a producer in the family, Menig says she didn’t have the most ideal introduction to music.
“I heard my parents play like old traditional songs and my Dad was in a Grateful Dead cover band so I heard that, but we didn’t have a very great record collection. There’s a lot of music I’ve only recently started listening to. Things like Neil Young, as a kid we didn’t have every Neil Young record. I just recently discovered Fairport Convention.
“It’s kind of exciting because I have all these things left to discover and look forward to.”
While both Alela Diane albums boast a genuine and natural knack for storytelling, Menig says the origins of many of her tracks, not least ‘The Rifle’, from 2006 debut The Pirate’s Gospel, are less than conventional.
“I was staying in a hostel and I had this crazy dream about the house that I grew up in,” she recounts. “This was around the time that my parents were getting divorced and they were selling the house so that was really fresh in my mind. I woke up with this dream of my house and there was something really frightening coming out of me. I woke up at like 5am and wrote all the words just as they are.”
Menig gushes that working with her producer/musician father has been somewhat of an unexpected pleasure.
“Because he’s my Dad I can take what input I think sounds good and then if something doesn’t seem like a good fit, because I’m so comfortable around him I can just kind of say, ‘Nah, I don’t think so’ and he’s not offended or he doesn’t force me into it. He’s a really easy going guy.”
Alela is already something of a star in France where she regularly supports the likes of MGMT and Fleet Foxes. What kind of pressures were on her mind for the follow up To Be Still?
“I just kind of had the gut feeling that I wanted to add different things and that I did want drums, something that kind of drove the songs through. I never could have imagined that I would have created that record or that that’s what it would have sounded like. It wasn’t a clear vision at all.”
But that’s not to say the quirky 26-year-old doesn’t labour long and hard for her art.
“I didn’t know how to play guitar at all until I was 19 or 20 and I’m self-taught so it has been a slow process. It’s not like I’m one of those kids that was writing crazy songs when they were 12!”