Georgia Mulligan has released her second studio album, Unheaven. The follow-up to 2023’s Nothing Wrong was produced by longtime friend and musical collaborator Blain Cuneen, and is described by the Sydney singer-songwriter as an album of “continuing”. “With the encouragement of my heroes, I carved out some time for the shapes of the songs to appear out of the depths, sat by the water’s edge and played a few up to the surface,” she said in a press statement.
“Some didn’t flow so easily; they needed trimming, or hacking, and suturing back together. I wanted so much, and at the same time I wanted out. Looking back, the only one of those wants that was useful was that I wanted the next thing. I’ve always been looking ahead, from the moment I started doing this ‘songwriting and singing in public’ thing.” You can stream Unheaven below, with Mulligan’s track-by-track breakdown of her new album – exclusively for Music Feeds – below that.
Georgia Mulligan – Unheaven
1. ‘Note’
I had been playing around with open tunings, and this can make a lot of simple things feel new again. Same with the words; I didn’t analyse them too much, I just let them arrive. Some stuff had happened that I needed to process rather than archive, as I would have done in the past.
I wanted the song to have this driving feeling, and when I took the demo to pre-production with Blain and then to the band, it grew into something that felt natural: a big jangly rock ballad with weaving guitars and stacks of layered vocals.
It’s a cathartic and weirdly joyful song to sing, but it contains a lot of things that I haven’t ever known how to talk about very well – so it feels very vulnerable. To reconnect to parts of yourself you had buried is an often messy and sometimes beautiful process.
2. ‘Unheaven’
I wrote this after a period of feeling helpless. At some point, I realised that we are not actually ‘supposed’ to be in control – and it’s okay. Sometimes you can let go, and let the air hold you. I was thinking about how an aeroplane stays up, and how that’s so crazy. If you get scared, like I do, the only way to get through the fear is to let go – and let the air hold you.
3. ‘Split’
Once I had the bones of the song, Blain and I both felt like a John Parish-style approach felt right to support the strangeness of it. We experimented with drum loops and synth bass. Blain tried out this slightly theatrical upright piano part, and we just had fun pulling together an arrangement that became the basis for what we took to the band. Clay [Allen, drums] and Maia [Jelavic, guitar] took this skeleton and brought their feel to it. We broke it down and built it back up, over and over, so the making of the recorded version became like the processes and cycles that sparked the song itself.
4. ‘Care’
‘Care’ feels like a simple song about complex emotions. This one is sort of about feeling guilty for needing what we need, and feeling like a burden just for having one. Really, though, we all need so much care – not just some, all of us. Just as much as you need it, you have endless reserves to give.
5. ‘New’
When we recorded this one at Golden Retriever we played all together; it was called a ‘practice take’. Simon [Berckelman, engineer] put it down on the tape. It wasn’t perfect, so I wanted to try it over and over, but a spirit had entered the machine that first time. Guess which take ended up on the record.
6. ‘Tide’
You go to the beach if you can, and let the crashing waves, the salt, the pressure and the unbearable sound make you new.
7. ‘Pool Of Reflection’
This one is shaped like a cone in structure. It starts little and quiet, but it keeps asking and keeps pulling at the thread, until it unravels into a big billowing cloud. It’s full of regret and acceptance in equal measure. It asks: Why should we get what we want, just because we want it now?
8. ‘The Floor Of The Enmore’
It was 2022. The rain wouldn’t stop, and floors were collapsing, and my life felt like it was built of rotting wooden slats about to do the same. In 2024, this song came back from the beyond with Blain and the band. It was painful, and I almost scrapped it multiple times during the recording process, but I think it turned out well. We recorded the main vocals as two separate tracks, line by line, that weave and speak to each other in the mix. The outro is my favourite part, when the words stop and it’s time to rock.
9. ‘Aura’
When everything is getting super overwhelming and fuzzy and loud in your head, and then you remember all at once that there is just a little kid in there, you probably need to give yourself a hug and have a nap. Listen out for Maia’s shred-lording on the distorted guitars on this one.
Unheaven is out now via Double Drummer. Georgia will launch the album with a show at The Vanguard in Sydney on Friday, October 3rd; tickets are on sale now via Moshtix.com.au.
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