White Street
Ten years of performance explains a great deal about Chloe Hall’s exceptional poise and craft as a singer-songwriter, but there’s no accounting for her gift.
A distant relative played some fiddle. She has childhood memories of a house filled with Irish folk musicians and Bob Dylan records. But in a sense, she was born with the directions to White Street in her head. This year she’s arrived.

White Street is an album of strong emotions and spare acoustic arrangements. It’s the work of a mature and assured artist with an instinct for melody and subtle truths, one who knows her own voice and understands its power.

“It’s the simplest record I’ve made,” she says. “Early on, I wanted to say everything in one song. Years of live performance changed that. When you’re singing to an audience you lose yourself in one moment, one emotion, and hopefully they do too. The simpler the song, the easier that can happen.”

Previous recordings
2000 saw the release of her first CD, White Sky. In the process of recording with producers RL Burnside and Drew Stansbury, its seven songs evolved from simple folk-pop to something more slick and electronic. “I still really like it,” she says, “but I can see it wasn’t completely me” Chloe was nominated for Best Unsigned Artist at that year’s Music Industry Critics’ Awards in Adelaide.

A self titled EP appeared in ‘02, a more pop-flavoured recording produced by Things of Stone and Wood’s Greg Arnold.

These were minor milestones compared to Chloe’s larger journey of discovery. After demoing the album that would be White Street, she and cello player Anita Quayle had a simultaneous epiphany: “It’s folk music, isn’t it!”

Coming home
“It’s like a teenager going through image crises,” Chloe says. “You try on different personalities before you come back to who you are. It was such a relief to realise I’m not a pop singer, I’m not some kind of avant garde electronic diva. I make acoustic music. I’ve stopped trying to be something else.”

With White Street, Chloe Hall is palpably comfortable in her own skin. From the first song of quiet determination, All Or Nothing, her voice has the purity of absolute conviction. Amy rings as true as an old friend. I’ll Be Gone has a melody that gets under your skin like a familiar feeling.

“I only write songs when I feel something deeply,” she says. “That’s probably why they can be intense at times, cause that’s how I feel them.”

They can also be as languid and affectionate as the title track, White Street; as playful as Fallen Angel Boy and as plainspoken and unembellished as Just The Way You Are. And they’re often as gorgeous as Fall For You, a love song that resonates with the unmistakable gravity of precious life experience.

Chloe Hall can make up stories. She’s written to order for four Saddle Club albums (three gold-sellers) and various other TV and film projects. But White Street is closer to home in every respect – musically, lyrically and in the warm, woodgrain texture of Greg Arnold’s acoustic production.

“This isn’t new for me,” she says. “I’ve been doing this for years and years and years but I feel like I’ve come back to my roots. I’ve realised that this is what I do best and this is what I love.”

White Street is out on One Tree Hill Records through Shock Distribution.