The Chicago transplant that creates music under the moniker Via Tania released Moon Sweet Moon last month. It’s a very pronounced, intricate dream sequence that seems to dabble a bit in Bat for Lashes or P.J. Harvey territory, while maintaining a dance vibe that is ripe for remixes. The Aussie native has an ache in her lyrics, a smoky voice that evaporates through the air and she’s managed to answer a few questions for us regarding domesticity and keeping a writing cycle going. She’s like a shark who can’t stop writing or else she’ll cease to be.
When you write a song do you have a visualization of the setting – are you a visual writer in Moon Sweet Moon that you sort of see those fields in Fields? Or does it have more to do with lyrics later and music first and lets see what spaghetti sticks to the wall?
Gotta say it's a bit of both. I am really visual and I like settings and I like to imagine the feelings I would be feeling in a story, like sometimes when you have a dream and you wake up and that feeling lingers....that kind of feeling.
Anyway, then sometimes lyrics spurt out uncontrollably and later on I can make sense of it and edit. Spaghetti is a good term, I usually say something else.
Lightyears has a great feel and vibe – could you explain some of the instruments that you used for the song. Is there a washboard in there or am I watching too many episodes of the Muppets?
Haha no washboard was used, but so close. Two tambourines I think one had a skin and one was wood and so that scraping sound is the wood sliding against the skin, like sandpaper... if my memory serves me correctly.
The first version of this song was like a straight up rocking out song. It had Chris Brokaw on guitar and John Mc Entire on drums, but when we went to mix it, [producer] Craig [Ross] was like, this could be much creepier, and I like the creep so we re-did it.
You had a list on your blog about a million years ago (actually it was last year, but that’s like a million years, right?) Are you generally a well-organized person and I don’t want to say wholesome, but you play a ukulele and it just seems that would fall under wholesome.
Wholesome sounds like such a dirty word for musicians doesn't it? But I just looked it up and the Merriam –Webster’s definition is 1: promoting health or well being of mind or spirit. 2: promoting health of body 3 a: sound in body, mind, or morals b: having the simple health or vigor of normal domesticity
Ah-ha, what is normal domesticity?
Anyway I LIKE that definition. I am not really well organized but I get inspired sometimes to be organized and neat and tidy but it does not come naturally. I usually leave a trail of ukulele's and pins and needles. My husband jokes that he knows exactly what I did that day, the evidence is all around.
I was talking to someone recently and we were saying how writers like to have angles, for musicians it's usually how wacky they are in some way or another. That doesn't really fit me, I like to be normal and well adjusted, but I know there isn't much of a story in that...I guess I'm introverted, some would say.
What would Tiny Tim be doing right now if he were still making music (alive)?
Probably raking it in with advertising jingles and cameos.
So you’re doing what you love, which is making music. But at the same time there must be a tremendous amount of anxiety when putting together an album – how do you cope with that? Does the anxiety just fuel more songs? Is it a vicious cycle that will never end?
During the recording part, I don't feel anxiety, it's too much fun. The anxiety comes way after or before in the boring logistics part of it. The money side and the 'how am I going to swing this' part.
Finishing an album or a set of songs, that really is the part that fuels more songs, 'cause you're kind of ready to change and make new songs now that that last phase is out of your system and into the open. It's not a vicious or insatiable cycle, it's a natural cycle, I mean I don't want to break that cycle.
What with you flying from Chicago to Melbourne and Sydney, what’s your cure for jetlag?
I like jet ease those homeopathic pills but they don't always work, I just don't plan things for straight away after I fly like some crazy musicians. I need my sleep I need my chill out time. I'm not proving anything by trying to cram shit in.
When can we (and we being the music masses who have ears and like music) expect some more Tania and Jori remixes?
Ahhh, we've worked on a bunch of songs. We really need to get to the next point which is:
a) meeting in person...b)mixing and finishing the recording...whenever I can get the hell over to Finland I s'pose.
Your first band was with your sister and it was called SPDFGH – that’s a very science conscious name there. I had to reach for my high school Chemistry book (which I didn’t steal by the way) were you ladies all about Enrico Fermi and Marie Curie growing up?
No, my friend's brother made up a chanty song to remember the molecular structure of the atom. I don't think any of us took science electives.
I have to say I’m enjoying the mood of Moon Sweet Moon. It’s all very ethereal and dreamlike and… when people start listing adjectives like that does that make you want to write songs that go in the opposite direction or do those sort of labels just sort of bead off of you?
Good question. Doesn't make me want to go in the opposite direction, I guess I don't take the labels seriously because I'm not trying to be anything, like I can't take it personally if I didn't aim to be that, it happens so naturally that it is what it is. I like all sorts of music but I'm beyond the years where you can wear your influences on your sleeve like that. This music is just me being me.
How old were you when you first wrote a song? Did you have an active imagination that got you in trouble?
Gee, my sister and I wrote this song, it was like those hand-clapping kids games that take two... ours was about a Gold Sphinx and the hand movements were very complicated (like Egyptian dance movements).
I also did weird things like dressed brooms up as people and drew faces on pillows and put them in dark hallways and in family members’ beds. For some reason I loved scaring people. That got me in big trouble often.
