TEETH & TONGUE

In between packing boxes and moving house, Jess Cornelius of Melbourne’s Teeth & Tongue takes a breather to tell me about her new album, Tambourine. It seems appropriate I catch her at this time, given the album is one marked by change: the songs reclaimed from her erstwhile five-piece band and stripped back to their raw bones; the end to her relationship with the bass player from said band; and even in reference to the instrument that lends the album its name, the jittery, carefree tambourine.

“I spent a lot of time on my own,” says Cornelius, who is responsible for nearly all of the instrument work and vocals on the album. “It did get me down a bit. It wasn’t always an enjoyable process, but it was necessary.”

Certainly, the sound is strong, firm, all her own. Guitarist Marc Regueiro-Mckelvie gets a look in, but you sense he layers on top, rather than leads. And by necessity, the bedroom drum samples became something Cornelius became attached to.

“The really compressed kick drums, the hypnotic metronomy, it became part of the songs. It made sense to me to make and album the way I’d conceived in my head.”

Cornelius also became obsessed with the namesake, the tambourine. “Using a tambourine was a way of adding a real, human, imperfect feel, the swing, the frequencies – as compared to the robotic inhumanity of the drums.”

In an album that charts change, and the breakdown of human relationships, the tambourine is the folkloric counterpoint – the warm reminder that while things change and move on, often it’s for the best.

Jun 2, Goodgod Danceteria, 55 Liverpool St, Chinatown, $8 on the door