Alice Ivy Unpacks Her Gentle New Masterpiece, ‘Ticket To Heaven’
A studio rigged up in the kitchen ended up capturing one of the year's most touching releases.
On Friday, Alice Ivy will release her highly anticipated second album Don’t Sleep.
The album is vast and eclectic, featuring a slew of Australian favourites like Thelma Plum, Ecca Vandal, Ngaiire, Odette, Bertie Blackman, Imbi, and more. The guestlist is important: Alice is determined to amplify the voices of women, non-binary, and people of colour through her work, attempting to crack through the white, male-dominated spaces of the music industry.
In honour of its release, Ivy shared with Music Junkee the story behind one of the album’s best and most affecting tracks, ‘Ticket To Heaven’, which was written with Plum, and gifted us with some behind-the-scenes pics and videos too. Hear from Alice Ivy below.
“Just under two years ago I packed my laptop, interface and a microphone into my carry-on baggage and boarded a plane to Sydney. My destination was an Airbnb I’d hired for a couple of days in Elizabeth Bay for the purpose of writing with one of Australia’s best and most-loved musicians, Thelma Plum.
At this point my new album, Don’t Sleep, was about half-written. I’d just returned from a six-week trip to the US, Canada and the UK where I’d written ‘Sunrise’ with Toronto rapper and legend-of-the-game Cadence Weapon, ‘My Turn’ with LA-based non-binary soul singer Swsh and ‘All Hit Radio’ feat. Teef & TESSA in London. It felt like I was off to a great start, but gazing at the draft album track-listing on a private playlist, it still felt like something was missing, and for that reason I’d kept working on new ideas.
Armed with a demo that I’d been tinkering away on in the days leading up, one that I can remember telling my manager I could imagine, “massive scando layered vox in the chorus”, I set off to Sydney with little more than a gut feeling that Thelma would be the person to unlock it.
You never know walking into a writing session, especially with someone you’ve never even met in person before, whether you’re going to creatively click with them. Sometimes these things can be awkward. Maybe one or both of us wouldn’t be feeling it that day? On top of everything else I’m a massive fan of Thelma so I was nervous!
But as soon as she arrived, any anxiety I’d had immediately evaporated. In a matter of hours, at a makeshift studio I’d rigged up on the kitchen table of the loft, ‘Ticket To Heaven’ graciously unfolded.
‘Ticket To Heaven’ is a very special song. It’s about bereavement, in part relating to the sudden loss of a close friend of Thelma’s and someone who was much-loved within the Australian music community. I can’t think of a better way to honour someone’s memory than this utterly beautiful song. When I was tracking Thelma’s vocals I was almost tearing up due to the sheer emotion in her voice.
When the session was over Thelma and I went out for something to eat, we were both starving! Maybe it had something to do with her having just laid her heart bare on the track in front of me.
In the time that followed, the rest of my new album just sort of fell into place. This week marks the end of two years of constant writing and recording between tours and everything else and it finally feels like a completed body of work.
When it came time to pick a single to coincide with the album release the choice was obvious. It had to be ‘Ticket To Heaven’, the song that turned up at the mid-way point of this journey and still gives me goosebumps to hear it nearly two years after those initial goosebumps when Thelma sang it for the first time.”
Alice Ivy’s album Don’t Sleep is out Friday July 17 via Dew Process