Luckless singer Ivy Rossiter packed up her life in inner-city Auckland last year and took off to tour small town New Zealand.
Ivy Rossiter begins her Vindication Blues tour at the Wunderbar in Lytellton, this Friday, 11 July. Photo: Sabin Holloway
“With the release of the self-titled record we started touring more and more. The more time I spent on the road, the more time I wanted to spend on the road. That was where I was enjoying myself the most," Rossiter says.
She'd been looking for a place to take a break to write. After a show at the Barrytown Hall, on the South Island’s West Coast, a local woman asked if Rossiter wanted to stay at her house for a month while she went to Thailand.
The sound of the desolate coast became part of the songs she wrote and found its way on to her latest album, Vindication Blues. "The presence of the weather, when you live on the West Coast, it’s incredibly controlling of your life.”
Another South Island locale that’s also found its place on the album is Lyttelton, where it was recorded. The song ‘A Port In A Storm’ deals with being in the town after the Christchurch earthquakes. However, Rossiter says, “it’s certainly not a universal experience and certainly not an experience of someone who was here during the earthquakes either.”
Rossiter’s voice on track has a dark ambience in the album.“I can be a relatively moody and melancholy type person. A lot of people might describe me as a pessimist but I say that I’m a realist.”
LISTEN to Ivy Rossiter talk to Antonie Tonnon about making her new album: