Spunk Records is proud to announce the release of the debut album from Sydney artist Holly Throsby. The album, On Night, is a collection of ten songs which Holly wrote, sang, and played on guitar.
The recording took place in a tiny house on Saddleback Mountain just out of Kiama, NSW. Producer Tony Dupe (Saddleback, The Woods Themselves, Via Tania) lives in that house, along with an 8-track tape machine, a collection of various instruments, a dog, and hundreds of birds. Tony recorded and mixed the album and played some of the instruments, including piano and pump organ. Davey Cotsios from The Woods Themselves came down and played some guitar and sang. One night a group of people stayed over, including Joseph Leonard Fuse (Founder) who played drums and Abel Cross (The Pure Evil Trio) who played bass guitar and bowed double bass. On the joyous ‘Up with the birds’ everybody sang.
Holly wrote most of the songs for On Night during a 6 month stay in Austin, Texas. She wrote the other tracks over the past year, in Sydney and down on the south coast of NSW. The songs are mostly set at night, hence the album’s somewhat literary title, and are built around finger-picked guitar and Holly’s distinctive, fragile voice. She sings about howling wolves, dead birds, bedsides and coffeepots, oceans and fire.
On Night was mostly recorded in Tony’s kitchen and living room with the windows open. Listen closely and you can hear birds, crickets, breathing frogs and the wind in the five hundred year old fig tree out front. The arrangements, which incorporate cello, trumpet and the barest of vocal recordings, are both delicate and painterly.
Holly recently returned from showcasing at SXSW in Austin, Texas, and a string of shows in America and Canada. In the last year or so, Holly has played shows with Joanna Newsom, Smog, Devendra Banhart and Architecture in Helsinki and has toured in Australia with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon), The Eels, Hayden, Micah P. Hinson, Art of Fighting and New Buffalo.
