Georgia Mulligan’s music feels like wiping off your muddy shoes on your verandah, retreating inside as the rain starts. You ruminate and relax with a candlelit warmth, as if the two coincide. Overpriced marshmallow-and-smoke candle fills your flat - you dream of hotter weather and clearer skies.
‘Unheaven’, the titular track off Mulligan’s newest, upcoming album whispers in your ear like an anxious old friend. The word is made-up, much like the world surrounding her work. The Sydney artist pulls herself apart and then back together again, a familiar concept to the artist. Lamenting about broken machinery and resilience, the track is an attempt to self-soothe.
“I'm trying to say to myself, just let yourself see that there is heaven or whatever, let yourself see that there is so much around you and there is so much beauty in all of these things.”
‘Note’, her newest single, reflects on a relationship that’s circling the drain. Raw and honest, the track could be plucked straight from a Big Thief album. “Wish we could go back, to before when you-," it ends abruptly, and the bathtub is emptied.
“I think similar to the sounds, I wanted to have a palette, like have a really deliberate set of things we were working with, which is something that I've just found deeply satisfying and it's just like, these are the sides of the box and sometimes the box expands in weird directions.”
After supporting Julia Jacklin on tour and a turbulent COVID-19 period, her debut album was born. Nothing Wrong (2023) paints a canvas with eucalyptus-green and turquoise acrylic. It holds a mirror up to its face then smashes it, using the shards to craft something beautiful. The track ‘Nothing Wrong’ bites its fingers and spits out the nails. ‘Disintegrate’ puts that papier-mâché project you worked so hard on in the lake. You wave it goodbye as it falls apart.
“I loved how we recorded the last album, Nothing Wrong, but it was just the fact that it was a patchwork COVID record, and we did it in different places. We did it in different living rooms, a studio for a bit, and then back in a home studio.”
Her work is a body of water, sometimes clear, at other times murky and sediment filled. Regardless, you dive in.
Words by Nick Hibbs