Sonic identity paired with storytelling ability is a combination held by only a small number of songwriters throughout the past century. This essential link between a primal sensory attraction and meaning created through spoken language gives us the magic found only in a great work of music.
The type of magic that affords the listener an understanding that their strange, unexplainable experience is somehow not theirs alone; the type of magic that allows you to think that maybe, though characterised in its own unique ways, there is a beautiful commonality in your sadness.
The type of magic that connects an everyday person with another who just happens to write some of the most-relatable, empathising songs you have ever heard. An artist with as much sonic identity and storytelling capability as country Victoria’s Alice Skye is truly a magician in their own right.
Growing up aside the sandstone mountains and wildflowers of the Grampians, Skye is inspired by her roots, though now calling Melbourne home she says, "I take great pride in my heritage, and to combine both music and my background brings me an unexplainable amount of pride and happiness." Alice Skye’s vital relationship between her music and own life experience remains at the core of her art, her body of work serving as a lens through which she continues to synthesise who, and what, her essence of being truly is.
Alice Skye
An array of dazzling single releases have culminated in two fully-formulated albums, the chart-topping 2018 debut Friends with Feelings and 2021’s shining example of artistic maturity, I Feel Better But I Don’t Feel Good, the latter resulting in Music Victoria’s award for Best Pop Act and thereby heralding Alice Skye as one of Australia’s premier music-makers.
Like her ancestors before her, Skye’s art acts as a powerful vehicle of storytelling through song.
Her clever disposition for honest lyricism coupled with a shimmering stage presence become more than just tools in creating a unique live performance or recorded experience, but time and again provide pathways for the listener to a deeper connection with oneself, engaging them in their own introspection toward a plane of self-discovery.
This blossoming body of work sparkles with harmonic sensitivity and maturity well beyond its years, accompanied by carefully crafted and hauntingly sparse melodies. Effortlessly, Skye is able to channel her earliest sources of inspiration, ranging from the visceral melodic prowess of Delores O’Riordan (The Cranberries) to the comforting vocals of Missy Higgins, all in her own unique balance.
Alice Skye continues to expand her vast musicality on her latest comprehensive sonic chapter, I Feel Better But I Don’t Feel Good, with a production nod to Jen Cloher vitalising audiences with new flavours inspired by Skye’s grungier influences like Soundgarden. From piano to a fuzz pedal, it is clear that Alice Skye is a musician who is not concerned with convention or bound by any artistic parameter.
Her once-private bedroom scribbles are presented as well-crafted and articulated lyrics on love, loss and life, offering a looking-glass to the world around her in an honest attempt to lend light to others who may be stumbling along on their own path of self-synthesis. There is a gentle moodiness about Skye’s song writing, described by NME as “nuanced, open-hearted revelations”, and matched with a vocal texture of hopeful and haunting, naturally sweet and dreamlike, the melancholy presented by Skye could not be more inviting.
Steeped in success from the outset, Alice Skye is steadily forging a reputation as one of Australia’s brightest talents since releasing her debut single “You Are The Mountains” in 2015, followed by the release of her acclaimed debut album, Friends With Feelings, which gained immediate playlisting nationally across major radio stations and has since accrued over one million streams on Spotify.
Skye was the recipient of the inaugural First Peoples Emerging Artist Award in 2018, and she received the Emerging Artist Award at the 2019 Australian Women in Music Awards. She was selected by Triple J as their featured artist for the 2019 NAIDOC Week and was a finalist in the 2019 NIMA Awards. Collaborations with the likes of Moby and Midnight Oil, and invitations to SXSW and Folk Alliance International herald Skye as a global musical force. Her most recent acclaim was at the 2021 Music Victoria Awards, breaking genre boundaries to take home the award for Best Pop Act. Alice’s biggest tour is already on the horizon as the main support on Courtney Barnett’s Australian tour in March of 2022, before embarking on her own national album tour beginning on May 13th in Canberra.
Representation
