She’s performed all over the world, with highly acclaimed sell out shows in New York, the UK and Ireland. In 2007 she picked up the Spirit of the Edinburgh Fringe award and had one of the biggest shows of the world renowned cultural festival. Now she’s back in Melbourne for a couple of exclusive performances of her show The Dark Angel as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival (MIAF), at Becks Bar. With all that success and acclaim, why then is sexy chantuese Camille O’Sullivan so excited about being back in Melbourne?
“I’m so excited to be back! Not just because I love it here, but because this is the home of Nick Cave. Melbourne is where it all began. I guess you could say it’s like a musical pilgrimage. I love that I’m performing in his home town, but I’m also a bit nervous. I just wanna do him justice, and I hope his fans agree that I do.”
There’s no doubt that she will. Camille O’Sullivan’s talent is nothing short of outstanding. She’s been described as a cross between Sally Bowles, PJ Harvey and Patti Smith. Her performances are dark stripped back cabaret with a touch of vocal magic and a delicious theatrical twist – she sings men’s songs. But not just any men. We’re talking about some of the all time great brooding, artsy, moody boys of our time. Great artists like Jaques Brel, Tom Waits, David Bowie and yes, our very own Nick Cave.
“Perhaps it because of my heritage… I’m half French and half Irish… that I feel I’ve got this melancholy inside me,” explains O’Sullivan of her song choices. “I like music that has a bit of truth, that has intimacy and honesty. I like music that inhabits a place of darkness, and that definitely has a poetic quality.”
To say that O’Sullivan merely sings the songs is not actually correct. As she herself puts it, she ‘inhabits a song’. She takes a song that is so very masculine, strips it back, and gets inside it, finding a new light and giving it a new (female) voice. Indeed her performances are disarming in the best way possible, and really do open up further, the possibilities of the amazing music that she appropriates. She doesn’t just add something vocally with her incredible voice, but there is a sense that she’s taking you on a journey deeper into a character and into the song. Her haunting rendition of Nick Cave’s God Is In The House will move you so much, you’ll clutch your pearls.
Check it out in this clip below:
“It is a bit weird that most of the songs that I do are men’s songs. They have a certain harshness… a rawness. Even though I’m a woman I feel I have a bit of that in me, and I can relate to it. I’m also attracted to it,” says O’Sullivan. “But what I don’t try to do is copy what they [the artists] have done. As a woman, I bring a softness to it, and as an artist, I bring a bit of myself.”
“I’m just so glad that I gave up my job as an architect to do what I’m doing now,” she adds, “I’m still doing what I love and it just keeps getting better and better.”
O’Sullivan is finally in Melbourne, where she will be performing at the beautiful Becks Bar, created especially for the festival at the Arts House Meat Market in North Melbourne. I had to ask, aside from performing in the MIAF, what else she was looking foward to doing while she is here. She suprises me when she says that she adopted fairy penguins from our famous Phillip Island, and that she will more than likely return to check them out. Eating and drinking also feature, as well as a decent stint at shoe shopping and a visit to boutique retailer Kinky Gerlinki.
“I may sing men’s songs, but I’m definitely still a girl at heart. I love shopping, eating and drinking. Perhaps a bit too much. So Melbourne is a perfect fit for me, and in most ways it feels like home, but better. One thing is for sure, whenever I visit Melbourne, I always leave bigger and my bags heavier than when I arrived.”
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rocknroll
said ages ago