Taylah Carroll
Seeing Taylah Carroll perform is nothing less than an ethereal experience. She poises herself on stage delicately, yet her presence is sturdy and powerful. Her songs vary between slow ballads, their lyrics as powerful and emotive as the sombre melodies that accompany them, to upbeat hard-hitting songs that make you well up with power and joy. Taylah has been on the Melbourne music scene professionally since just before COVID in early 2020, and describes it as a ‘non-linear start to her career’. When describing her music style Taylah uses the words ‘vulnerable & honest’.
‘I love words and philosophy. In terms of genre in a more typical sense, I’d say it sits somewhere in the realm of Alt-Folk, Rock, and Alt-Pop.’
‘Usually - I’ll be sitting at the piano, or with my guitar, and will tinker around with a chord progression or melodic hook – and if the music is resonant enough – I’ll start looping a vocal line over the top. I’ll often repeat the same lyric or sentiment, until another line or phrase follows. Once a theme emerges, it becomes like a puzzle. How do I get this feeling, story or message that I’m trying to convey, to fit into the phrasing that this rhythm or melody line dictates? How do I make two lines rhyme, or rhythmically and melodically relate… whilst ensuring the message and meaning of the language remains clear? Like most forms of writing, it’s the editing process—where you have to be discerning—that the real work is done. Massaging the words. That’s where the craft is, the rest is just intuition.’
Taylah’s songs are complemented with her striking voice, but it’s the lyrics that truly capture elements of the human experience. When I asked Taylah about her process she said she felt rewarded when listeners connect to her lyrics, as it’s such an integral part of the process for her.
‘I didn’t passively receive inspiration from around me, or compulsively burst open with a repressed feeling that simply. must. come. out! I gave myself a deadline (December), and a brief (Christmas themed). It felt more like writing an essay than a diary entry, love/hate letter, or poem. At first all I knew is that I wanted to write a Christmas song that had a unique angle. Something dark. I think the juxtaposition of festivity with a sort of heaviness is a really powerful thing to play with. All things exist in relation to opposites, and this is necessary for our full comprehension. I had this lyric that had been bopping around in my head for months about ‘bloated plastic men on our lawns’. I was picturing blown up plastic Santas strewn across sun-bleached grass rectangles in front of modest cream bricks. I liked that the word ‘lawn’ felt uniquely Australian (write what you know), and that the image the line evoked was so literal but could also be so richly metaphorical. That’s where the feminist theme was born. I learnt Italian in High School and remembered La Befana, a Christmas Witch that delivers gifts to children on Epiphany Eve (January 5th). I looked further into ‘The Christmas Witch’ and learned that Christmas (a pagan celebration) actually has a super-rich history of Christmas Witches throughout Europe. Christmas Witches became the perfect conduit through which to question why the capitalist icon, Santa Clause, had been popularised and iconised globally, overshadowing these now forgotten women of history. Witch, in general, is such a powerful word, and concept. It’s become representative of all the (often polarising) women of history who have been ostracised, vilified and hunted, simply for threatening the status quo. To reclaim the concept of the ‘Witch’ – and wear it in an intentional way – feels powerfully feminist to me.’
Taylah recently released a Christmas single titled “Maybe Santa is a witch”, a feminist take on Santa Claus. Talking to Taylah about it, she described it as a great exercise in songwriting for her because unlike her usual process, it wasn’t led by intuition.
“Shower Song” never ceases to make me cry, I think Taylah captures this feeling of emotional hurt in it so viscerally. When I asked her how she captures this emotional vulnerability in her music she said;
‘I almost didn’t release this song because it felt too… intense. But I’m learning those are the best ones. The most vulnerable ones. I think – increasingly, people are drawn to vulnerability. I was having a shower one morning and came out of it feeling super frustrated yet numb. I wrote all the lyrics pretty urgently on the back of a discarded envelope I found, and sat there in my towel, trying to fit all of the words as they poured out onto this little rectangle. It’s a reflective piece on my late childhood and adolescence. I cried while I wrote it. It was a stream of consciousness that actually hasn’t really been messed with too much. I think capturing emotion can be done in numerous ways. The final recorded vocal being imperfect can help to achieve this. I guess that’s the most immediate way to really perform and communicate the right mood and feeling. Another way is through storytelling. I remember reading a Lou Reed bio, and in it he was quoted as saying “to be terrific, be specific.’
This emotion translates incredibly in Taylah’s live performances. It is nothing less of a unique and electric experience. I talked to Taylah about how her performances have evolved since she first started playing and what she embodies when she plays live.
‘I absolutely adore performing. With a good show – you can completely get out of your head.’
Taylah talked about when she first started playing and how it started in restaurants and bars, very much as background music.
‘I feel like I very much earned my stripes during my years of performing in those settings. I never do gigs like that anymore because it just doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. When I know people have bought tickets to come and experience my set – it feels a lot more natural to really lean in and physically embody the material. Nowadays I think I present a more confident and less apologetic persona on stage than how I am in my day to day. I won’t make myself smaller to create energetic balance in the room or subvert a point to preserve the mood. Also, I used to try to be awkward and funny when I first started to play live. I think it was a way to make light of the heaviness or ‘sad girl’ vibes in my music, I don’t feel like I need to do that anymore.’
Now Taylah is a force in the Melbourne music scene, and I only felt it natural to ask her the cliché question of what direction she thinks her music is taking and what she hopes or imagines for the future of her music?
‘I definitely feel like I’m on the precipice of a shift sonically. I’m currently writing what will be my debut album, and it’s slowly revealing itself to me. I want it to be moodier, more beautiful, and cinematic. Probably a little darker too. It actually feels like I’m ready to come back to myself in a strange way – back to my roots. When I first started writing music, it was all based around piano. I started playing piano super casually when I was around 7 – and it definitely makes a lot more intrinsic sense to me than a guitar. I can find my way around a piano far more easily, which makes it easier to pull sounds from my brain into the physical world. Piano ballads can tire on boozy dinner crowds … but now I’m like – fuck it – I don’t care if what I make makes you feel happy or sad, or if it fits into a genre or world that has traction right now… I just want to make a record that feels like mine. There are still so many things I hope for. I dream of touring the UK/EU and US. I also would love to make a record with producer Jon Brion, who produced the soundtrack to Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson) and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. Recently, I was super lucky to have the opportunity to co-write a song with Jack Ladder. It was remote, and definitely not the writing process that comes naturally to me – but I’d love to get in a room one day with other songwriters and continue to stretch that collaborative muscle.’
Taylah is opening at Shotkickers on the 1st of June so make sure to catch her there. You can also check out all of Taylah’s music on Spotify and Apple Music and her latest 2023 single “Maybe Santa is a Witch”.