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Clare Bowditch.
 One
of the many musical revelations for me this year was Melbourne
singer/songwriter Clare Bowditch. But with 'Autumn Bone', the
debut album from her and her very able Feeding Set (they named
themselves, apparently) featuring the glorious harmony of that
record's Midnight Bird, the sultry cameo on Machine Translations'
Simple Life, and her listing as an entire 'choir' in
the credits to Richard Easton's 'Two Thousand Demolition Songs',
Bowditch has become a staple part of my musical diet. Now I
can even have her magically appear on my TV set.
"We've got a new DVD. Some local guys from a media company called Resolution Media were tired of doing lots of corporate ads, and they approached me and said, 'We're interested in doing a side project, can we make you a DVD?' So we said, 'OK!' And that's about it. So we're going to do a big tour," she tells me, always so matter-of-fact. "Oh," she continues, interrupting what would have been my next question, "and we've just been recording a new album with an ArtsVictoria grant. It'll probably be out in June next year."
That is good news. Does that mean we can expect a Bowditch album every twelve months? "I don't think so. I like writing songs, and I kind of do it every day so I've always got a few kicking around, but with 'Autumn Bone' we kind of recorded it a year or two ago but put off releasing it because Marty [Brown, of the Feeding Set/Art Of Fighting] and I had a little baby girl. So we've had 'Autumn Bone' sitting around for a while, and there's now a backlog of songs. And we've had a grant, so that's why we're able to get it out so quickly."
In the meantime, I must say that for an independent act, releasing a DVD is quite an ambitious event. Bowditch, however, maintains her expectations for it are "pretty small, really, because we're not doing it as a separate release. We're releasing it with copies of 'Autumn Bone' from now on, so it's a little free extra. The reason, I guess what we're really doing is letting people in on the first year of life in our band. And also letting people see us live, because we're Melbourne-based and we only get around the country a couple of times a year.
"Basically it's a live show, then it's interviews with me, interviews with the band, and a little tour montage, footage from our tour with Machine Translations, and a filmclip. It was recorded at a little jazz club here called Bennetts Lane, it's where quite a few bands have been playing lately. They've just started opening their doors to things other than jazz, and I used to work there, behind the bar, so it's the return home!"
Ben Revi
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Clare Bowditch & The Feeding Set play at the Jade Monkey on Thurs 14 Oct.
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