“As soon as I started singing, making sound, no other artistic avenue resonated with me again,” says performer and musician Jonnine Standish, about what it took to join a band in her late-20s after what already felt like several lifetimes of trauma and tragedy. “I was able to process a lot of my pain through music.” Speaking to editor Steph Kretowicz for AQNB’s latest Artist Statement podcast from her home studio, the Australian artist talks about her changing relationship to music and the alternative lifestyles and therapies that helped her get there.
Best known for fronting Australian post-punk band HTRK since 2003, Jonnine’s mononymous solo career debuted around this time last year with an EP called Super Natural. She is currently living in the small town of Kallista with her husband Conrad (of CS + Kreme), where she recently wrote, played and recorded her first album Blue Hills. It’s named after the idyllic Dandenong Ranges of greater Melbourne where she’s been spending her time during lockdown, and was released via Boomkat in late July. The LP moves even further from the dub-y post-industrial gloom of early HTRK into a lovely warmth and introspection that’s lightly sprinkled with the singer’s inimitable wit.
‘Post-Traumatic Everything’ is the latest in our Artist Statement podcast series, with past episodes, featuring Colin Self, Lawrence Lek, Geo Wyeth, Lucrecia Dalt, and more. The full episode is accessible to our subscribers right now on Patreon. Sign up now: www.patreon.com/aqnb.**
