Eliott’s Long-Awaited Debut Album Is A Powerful Ode To Self-Preservation

Charlotte Gemmill was born to be a star. She cut her teeth jamming out to records by Missy Higgins and Crowded House – the former’s 2004 classic The Sound Of White was the first album she ever bought on vinyl – and just as soon as she’d starting using her voice to talk, she was using it to sing. She made her formal debut as Eliott in late 2017 with the decidedly understated Figure It Out, a slow-burning tune steered by soulful resonance atop haunting grand pianos and a clicky synth beat.

Subsequent singles built upon its foundation – Over & Over brought some energised flair, then Calling stunned with its soaring strings and wallop of emotion – before Gemmill’s six-track EP Bold Enough – released in September of 2018 – kicked open the gates to her sprawling musical wonderland.

But that was nearly five years ago, and it goes without saying that a goddamn lot has a lot changed since then. Gemmill spent the turn of the new decade reckoning with her early twenties, learning what it meant – for her – to be an independent woman capable of thriving. Through it all, she used songwriting as a tool to make sense of the world around her; in the midst of turbulence, a song could pave for her a path to stability.

A key example would be the recent single Control, which Gemmill wrote amid the downfall of a longterm relationship. “I was still in the relationship when I wrote it,” she tells The Music, “but I remember getting back from the writing trip and listening to the song again, and I was like, ‘Wow, I need to leave this person...’”

Music has always been there for Gemmill. “Growing up,” she continues, “I was this very sensitive, kind of introverted person, and it was always hard for me to speak my truth or speak my mind. But I feel like songwriting has given me a safe place to do that.”

Now on the other side of the most trying times she’s endured, Gemmill has a whole suite of songs for which she rawly bared her soul. Those turbulent years are chronicled across her debut album, Just Calling To Tell You I’m OK, which arrives at the end of this week (on August 11, to be exact) via Island Records Australia. It’s intended to be heard from start to finish, as Gemmill takes the listener on a journey through “the breaking, the hurting, the growing and then the healing” she personally went through over the past half a decade.

Though it wasn’t explicitly written as a concept album, Gemmill says Calling follows a straightforward narrative: “It starts [from the perspective of] someone that’s pretty broken and lost, and then by the end of it, you’re like of like, ‘Okay, everything’s going to be okay.’ And that was the journey I went on as a songwriter, too.”

But Gemmill is quick to stress that “progress isn’t linear”, and although Calling ends with her in a much better place than she was a few years back, it simply speaks to the human experience that she still goes through ups and downs. This is where her knack for songwriting comes in clutch, she says: “I've taken so many steps forward and then so many steps back – it's a constant process. But I feel like being able to reflect on everything is so important; if you can appreciate the lows, it’s so much easier to celebrate the highs.”

On the cusp of releasing her debut album, Gemmill is a little nervous. She opened up for Calling more than she ever has, both as an artist and in her personal life. So, she admits, it’s “pretty daunting” to be putting it all out into the world. But overpowering Gemmill’s fear is her determination to forge ahead. “I’m ready to say goodbye to the person that wrote these songs,” she says defiantly, “because I feel like I’m not that person anymore. I feel like this album is an ode to my early twenties and all the things I went through over those years – and now I can look back on it all and go, 'Okay, that's done.’ I felt joy and I felt pain, and I learned from my mistakes. And now I can focus on what’s next.”

So... What is next? “I’ve been writing a lot lately,” Gemmill teases, “and I feel like the new stuff is even more vulnerable. I was going through some things while I was writing [Just Calling To Tell You I’m OK], which I didn't really get to reflect on until after I’d written those songs. So yeah, it's just gonna get sadder from here! Nah, jokes... I don’t know what the future holds – I guess we’ll have to wait and see...”

One thing is for certain: Gemmill won’t be told what kind of artist she needs to be. “The biggest thing I've learned throughout the whole process [of making an album],” she declares, “is to trust my gut. Before I did this record, I was kind of a ‘yes man’ to a lot of people, and I don't think I really had my own voice. But having something that I could build from the ground up and call my own, it was this big moment of realisation for me, like, ‘Okay, I'm here. This is me. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ It felt really empowering.”

A formative experience, which laid the groundwork for that realisation, came in late 2019, when Gemmill embarked on a writing trip to Paris with producer and songwriter Jack Grace. “I didn’t have a deadline to meet or any intention to write a big pop song,” she says of what motivated the trip, “I was just going there to fall in love with music again... And that’s what I did. There was a lot of growth in that: I was alone in a new city for the first time in a long time, and I got to really sit with myself and reflect on everything going on back at home – my relationships and my friends, and what was serving me in life, I guess. A lot of this album is centred around that.”

While the future looks mighty bright for Gemmill, she’s keen to spend some time embracing the present. For example, before she announces a national tour in support of Calling, she’ll launch the album live with intimate club shows in Naarm/Melbourne (this Saturday, August 12, at the Northcote Social Club) and Eora/Sydney (exactly a week later, on August 19, at the Lansdowne Hotel). Tickets are on sale now – find them here for the first show and here for the second – and pre-orders for the LP are available here.