It’ll be the kind of warm, intimate show you only get in a venue that used to be a butcher shop. Come on down.
Door at 8pm Tickets $8 on the door ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Official bits:
Anna Smyrk launches a new video for the song “House of Straw” with a national tour.
Taken from her EP “Song of the Silver-tongued Magpie,” which ABC Radio National called “exquisite” and Rhythms magazine describes as “a slow-burning gem,” the song has all the darkness and whimsy of a childhood fairy tale.
Just like the folk story on which it draws, the song speaks of struggling to build up solid walls for protection against the big, frightening world outside. This idea of building a safe, enduring home is something of a theme in Anna’s work, stemming from a nomadic life that has seen her living and working in diverse places over the last few years.
She wrote the song in a Buddhist monastery guesthouse in Northern India while backpacking around the sub-continent, then came home to record it in her old family farmhouse in Central Victoria. The release was put on hold while Anna went to work in Cambodia for a year to do community development work. For the past 12 months she has worked in the health development sector in the Solomon Islands, flitting back home to release new music and tour when she can.
The song’s haunting banjo picking and crystal-pure vocals are mirrored perfectly in the new animation for the single, created by Melbourne filmmaker Bethany Young. Like the old fable, the film shows that there’s nothing you can do but keep building better walls and warmer fires, hoping that they are enough to keep the bitter winds and wild animals at bay.
