There are two good reasons not to go comparing Lucie Thorne to PJ Harvey, Cat Power or any of the songstresses to whom she’s been likened over the years.
The first is that – well – it makes her mum mad.
“When the first PJ reference came out, for Black Across the Field, she rang me and said, ‘Darling, I read a review that said you were like Joni Mitchell and PJ Harvey,’” Thorne laughs.
“‘And of course that’s wonderful about Joni,’” the story goes on, “‘but I didn’t know who this PJ Harvey person was, so I went down to the record store and I bought one of her albums.’”
Mrs Thorne was not a fan. In fact she came close to calling the relevant journalist to disabuse him of the notion that her daughter’s singing voice was anything like PJ’s, “yelling and screaming”.
What’s more, as performance style goes, the comparisons are not entirely apt. Where Chan Marshall has been known to while away entire gigs with her back to the audience, the 34-year-old Thorne is engaging and present on stage.
“I love touring, and I love the hyper-social side of being on the road,” she says. “I think for the two years from when [2009 album] Black Across the Field came out, I’ve been home for about seven weeks or something insane.”
Though Thorne claims a hermit side – and she has the shack in Bimbaya (population: four) to back that claim up – she has made a home of the road over her past five albums.
Her latest, Bonfires in Silver City, treads water between fact and fiction.
“I’m aware that the tone of my work presents as being autobiographical. It’s hard to escape from that assumption, being a singer-songwriter – which is fine,” she says. “But what’s more interesting to me is trying to create something that resonates with your listener, and has enough feeling and emotion in it to be able to resonate – but also to leave enough space and ambiguity in the text that your listener can bring their own experiences to a song.
“I do love that grey area.”
Sep 2, (with Hamish Stuart, Chris Abrahams, Carl Dewhurst & Dave Symes), Camelot Lounge, 19 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville, $22-25, 9550 3777
