Lisa And The Buffalo Gal

Celebrated songstress Lisa Miller and pop wunderkind Sally Seltmann (aka New Buffalo) span generations and genres. They share thoughts on their new albums and their art. By Dan Rule.

THE Torquay foreshore is washed in late morning sun and wind-blown small town activity. Parked cars line the Esplanade, young mothers with prams compete for footpath space. Beyond the orderly row of Norfolk pines and the gentle, sloping green of the foreshore, a gusting south-easterly has made a white-capped mess of Zeally Bay.

Were in Sally Seltmanns adopted home town - where she has lived for the past year with her husband Darren (of the Avalanches) - and after an hour and a half in the car, Lisa Miller is hankering for her morning flat white.

Dressed in a black skirt, jacket and signature shock of meticulously applied red lipstick, she smiles at the sight of the cafe where Seltmann has arranged to meet us.

Miller and Seltmann, two of the countrys most distinctive and inimitable female voices, havent crossed paths before. But today theyve agreed to meet to discuss the ideas behind their very personal new albums.

Waiting to order her coffee, 45-year-old Miller, one of Australias most respected independent songwriters, seems a little anxious. "This is pretty weird, you know," she quips for the umpteenth time, before turning to find a grinning Sally Seltmann in the doorway.

They introduce themselves and we take a seat in the cafe forecourt. Seltmann with her blonde locks tied back, is characteristically bashful - the 31-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist behind the beautiful pop of New Buffalo is a bundle of nervous smiles and giggles.

The discussion begins tentatively. "Do you want me to, err, ask a question?" Seltmann ventures. "Oh!" she adds, turning to Miller. "I heard one track from your new album on the radio the other day and l really liked it."

"Thats a good start," Miller replies.

The record theyre referring to is Millers poignant fifth long-player Morning in the Bowl of Night; an album she describes as a "love letter" to her parents. The follow-up to 2003s acclaimed Version Originale - which garnered glowing reviews and an ARIA nomination for Best Female Artist - Morning will go down as the most emotionally unguarded of her career.

It sees Miller strip her songs back to their lilting, heart-rendered essence, as she crafts sweet, smoky melodies around stunningly spare motifs and arrangements.

An intensely personal album, Miller finds talking about Morning a difficult task. She sits in contemplation for a moment, before apologising. "Sorry, this is still really weird, really strange," she says, falling into silence again before Seltmann asks.

"Where did you record it?"

"It was at the same place Id done the last record, with Shane OMara at Yikesville," Miller begins. "Its a little studio out in a backyard. So that really suited me and I felt very comfortable there doing that.

"Id just been through this big thing - my mother had died - and it was a couple of years later and Id started writing again, and that stuff just started coming out," Miller says.

"I thought, well, I could just try and disguise this and I could just write a whole lot of songs and get them out of my system and then make a record, because no one wants to hear a record thats dealing with grief so obviously.

"But in the end, I thought, no, Ill just keep doing it," she continues. "It was kind of a recording that pretty much did itself. You know, the songs started to form and they began to kind of feel balanced, and I could see that there was a process going on. And for the first time in my life, I thought, I just dont care, Im going to put this out the way it is. I thought that it fitted together as a piece and that if people like (it), they like it, and if they dont, they dont."

The records title comes from the first verse of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a book of poetry that her father gave to her mother as a courting gift, only to be rediscovered by Miller and her brothers when they were packing away their parents belongings. It is this intimacy with a family artefact and experience that underscores the record so powerfully.

Seltmanns new album Somewhere, Anywhere has a different kind of connection to family. Indeed, the record - her second under the New Buffalo moniker and follow-up to the lushly layered sample craft of her internationally celebrated 2004 debut The Last Beautiful Day - saw her write the majority of its pop vignettes on an upright Thurmer piano that has been in the Seltmann family for nearly 100 years.

"Darrens grandmother brought it out from Germany and its just really beautiful and old and a bit rickety and has lots of character, so its really nice to have that as quite a big focus on the album," says Seltmann.

"And it makes it more challenging as a songwriter to just focus (on) one instrument and vocal and to make the song work in that way."

"You sound a lot more confident," offers Miller.

"Yeah, definitely," says Seltmann. "I went away on tour for nine weeks in America and found it really challenging, and yeah, I dont know, I think (it) just felt natural to want to record," she says, her eyes widening.

"I experienced a lot of different things and just thought, Right, now Im ready to go! And then we moved down here and set up a new little studio in our backyard."

"Its a little shed," she continues. "It used to be a tool shed and when I got in there I stripped down the benches and a wall and painted it, made curtains. It just felt like I could close the door and just really let go in there.

"I recorded through winter and I felt very focused. I feel like Im the type of person that, once Im like OK, time to do another one, then I just get totally in the zone and just go for it. When I finally get it finished, Im just like, Phew, thank God thats finished! " she laughs.

"I can just sing the songs and not feel so emotionally attached to each of them any more, because I find that really difficult in the recording process. I dont know about you?" she asks Miller.

"I think songs have to become themselves and they have to be separate from you," Miller offers.

"Then you can go back and do what has to be done with the songs. I mean, of course youre attached to the song, but it becomes its own thing; it becomes its own being."

This is an important point in the context of both womens albums. While exceptionally intimate and emotionally honest documents in their own ways - even the cover photographs of Millers album are taken from her family album - both Morning and Somewhere, Anywhere try to strike a balance between a soul-baring candidness and a more elusive sense of metaphor and whimsy.

Tracks like Millers Such a Find and Shining Star, and Seltmanns Cheer Me Up Thank You and Emotional Champ glow with shimmering pop beauty and wonder, while still traversing very personal themes.

"Sometimes Ive felt really strange and worried that my songs will be really emotional," says Seltmann. "And Im just not willing to talk about some songs in interviews. But I just feel like Ive gotten to a point where its all right to be like that. Its like, This is who I am and Ive got to go with it."

"Thats right," says Miller. "Like, for me, when I had my children, that was a time that I thought, I cant just write songs about my children! What am I going to do? So I kind of made some of those songs almost like love songs.

"I write from life so I have to find a way of making the songs kind of more than they are, which is just about love and the power of relationships, and try and make albums that dont sort of box me into just being kind of a housewife, which is essentially what I am."

Both Miller and Seltmanns creativity has a background in visual art. While Seltmann - growing up one of six children in the Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill - studied photography and visual art at uni, Miller, the lone girl amid three brothers, grew up in Chadstone with a father who was a highly regarded social realist painter.

In fact, her older brother Lewis went on to win the Archibald Prize in 1998. But Miller, who these days lives in Elwood with her partner of 16 years, Ben Lempriere, and their young children Charlie and Elodie, never saw it as her calling.

"My older brother really had quite a lot of influence over me," she says. "He was very, very, very gifted artistically. But it was too hot next to him. It was like, Dont even attempt it, or Ill crush you! " she laughs.

"Maybe it was just my situation, but I think that what I always like with music was that it was the only time when I felt like I had something that was really mine. I could sing my own songs the way I wanted to and they were mine. Its just great to have something that you have complete ownership of.

"I felt like I could express myself more through music," adds Seltmann.

"I dont know, I love art and its very affecting to me, but I feel like I can be more touched by a certain song or piece of music than I can by a painting. I dont know, with music I feel like there are so many different elements and so many different ways to do it. Like, with song writing, its sort of like poetry, and then theres the music and the arranging and the recording and the performing."

Miller and Seltmanns musical careers have followed markedly different routes. Having fronted a string of rockabilly and roots acts such as the Hepelectics during the late 80s, Miller began making a name for herself fronting early alt country act Truckasaurus, before embarking on her solo career in the mid 90s, going on to release full-length albums Quiet Girl With a Credit Card(1996), As Far as Life Goes (1999), covers album Car Tape (2002) and 2003s aforementioned Version Originale, touring with everyone from Neil Young to Wilco in the process, and making a name as one of Australias great female voices.

Seltmann, on the other hand, played in a band with an old school friend in Sydney, before making the move to Melbourne after meeting her husband-to-be, Darren.

She completed her first EP as New Buffalo, About Last Night - a collaborative effort with Darren - in 2001, before solo recording and producing The Last Beautiful Day (not discounting contributions from Beth Orton and the Dirty Threes Jim White), which went on to make her something of a household name in indie communities across the UK and US.

But despite all their successes, theres still little thats scientific about their song writing.

"My process hasnt changed at all," Miller says with a laugh as she braces herself against a cold ocean wind.

"Which isnt very comforting because you still dont know when its going to come. But it ends up generally just coming anyway when Im in the shower or walking or wherever. It just kind of spins around in my head in this cycle until it comes out. If it sticks, then it stays."

"Im exactly the same," offers Seltmann. "Like, one of the songs on my new album, I was actually doing my taxes in my lounge room," she says. We all break into laughter. "And I was singing this song and it was like, Oh, this is catchy."

"Its just such a great feeling when those really natural songs come out. Its beautiful in a way."

"I dont think theres anything better," adds Miller, smiling contentedly. "I think thats one of the most incredible feelings, when a song is born. Its just an intensely fantastic feeling."

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