Laneway: Watercolours' portal to perfection

Rising local star Watercolours talks to Lydia Jenkin about following her own artistic path.

Is Chelsea Jade Metcalf a perfectionist? Well, if you look at any of her work, the answer might seem like an obvious yes. Everything she presents has the air of being perfected and detailed - from the covetable clothes she chooses for her videos, to the well-composed images and layout of her blog, it's all beautiful, stylish, and resonant.

"I don't know if I'm a perfectionist. Maybe a masochist?" she says as she sits in a cafe, looking as serene and angular as she does in her photos.

Her striving to only present the best work she can has kept her public output relatively slim so far - some lovely photos, a handful of esoteric videos, the occasional show and finally, in November last year, her first six-track EP, Portals.

"It's funny, I feel like it's a by-product of going to art school, where if you put something up on that wall for a critique, you know you'll get torn apart, so you better believe in what you're putting up there. I guess I don't like to share things that aren't refined.

"My friend said something that was kind of a backhanded compliment that came full circle the other day: 'You know Chelsea, from some perspectives, it may seem like you've just been f***ing around a lot, but really you've been refining things'."

Indeed, Metcalf has long been presenting her creative side - dancing as a child, art school through her university days, as one third of whimsical Auckland trio Teacups, and as a photographer and poet - it just feels like we've been waiting for her first release as Watercolours for a while.

Her first appearance under the moniker was in 2011, and she went on to win the Critics Choice Prize in 2012, all the while developing her solo voice and testing ideas. But songs came together rapidly when she was paired with Jeremy Toy (She's So Rad guitarist and producer) for two weeks in late 2012 for a Red Bull project - they wrote an album of songs from scratch.

"It felt almost like automatic writing, like we barrelled through the first two songs so quickly. Sliders was the first one we did, and it was just done. And it felt so good. It was great to have all that focused, unfettered time in the studio too."

Toy allowed her to play with ideas ("If you suggest that you want to tap dance on a plank for a track, he'll be like 'okay"') and helped ensure that the tracks sounded like Watercolours.

"I was surprised with how strong my own voice and ideas were. It was a lovely validation that I do have a musical language even though I don't have any particular training in it, that my dabbling and curiosity has been enough, and it seems somehow intuitively I do know what I'm doing, and I do have something to say."

Metcalf has plenty to say - and it's not all serious. She has a bright sense of humour and a grand curiosity that leads the conversation from discussions about other inspirational artists ("Holly Herndon is a San Francisco-based sound and performance artist who I've just found, and she is my new hero"), how amazing it was to see a video of the inside of her throat ("I was singing at the time, so you could see my vocal cords vibrating and wobbling. I was suddenly confronted with how delicate that structure is, inside yourself"), to the trepidation she felt when one of her notebooks disappeared in the new year ("I do a lot of brainstorms, and free writing, which is where you just set the timer, and write without thinking for 10 minutes. I'm pretty sure they'll never grow out of being teenage-style diatribes about the world. They're 100 per cent personal ... fortunately it was found").

Talking to her is not so different from listening to a Watercolours track. There are elements of openness and vulnerability but they're offset by bold, strong ideas, and a confidence in her eclectic approach.

"I don't know if I write like that intentionally but I definitely respond viscerally to beats and bass, and then I guess, maybe I just haven't become bold enough to write lyrics in the same vein as the beat yet. But I do feel like the lyrics, and melodies tend to counterbalance that, just because lyrics make you so vulnerable."

Indeed, she says, there's nothing made up in her songs - they're all derived from personal experience.

"That's not to say they're not sullied or influenced by my sole perspective or a heightened emotion. But it's all based in reality.

"Except for killing someone, that didn't happen. That's about being ignored when all you want is attention. You know that frustration of banging on the wall, but they won't look at you, no matter what you do - that's when I fantasise about burying them alive."

That dry sense of humour might not be immediately apparent in her music, and she muses on whether people who have never seen her live, would think she takes herself too seriously. But see her live, and you'll be sure to laugh.

"I guess on stage is more how I am in regular company. I hope I'm not undermining myself by what I end up doing on stage, but everyone is multi-faceted, and I feel like the songs are the extreme of one aspect of me, and I feel really happy that I can express it, but I also don't want everyone to think that I might kill them in their sleep. I'm not a maudlin person."

Maudlin people don't usually dance on bars, as she did during her show in Mt Maunganui two weeks back.

"There just happened to be the right level chair standing next to the bar, and it was all the right proximity."

Unfortunately there's unlikely to be a bar for her to dance upon at Laneway, but it's still a festival she's been dreaming of playing at since it started here in 2010.

"It's something I've wanted to do since I went to my first one. I actually met Florence Welch backstage, and she gave me a watch. I gave her a CD, so she was, like, 'What do I have?' and went through her purse, and pulled out this little vintage watch. I'm sure it's not a particularly valuable bauble but I love it.

"Also I thought Laneway was refreshing because it seemed like a great halfway point between Camp A Low Hum and Big Day Out for me. So I'm pretty stoked to be performing this year."

Who: Chelsea Jade Metcalf aka Watercolours
Where and when: Playing in the Red Bull Thunderdome at 4.15pm, and opening for Lorde at her Laneway sideshow on Wednesday January 29.
Listen to: Portals EP (2013)

- TimeOut