Biography
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Born
1986 (age 38)
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Born In
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Influences include: Jack Ladder, Fleetwood Mac, Cat Power, Warpaint, PJ Harvey, Loudon Wainwright
The easy path attracts a lot of people.
Melbourne based singer-songwriter Ali Barter is not one of them.
In these on-demand times of overhyped pop idols and dubiously talented Internet sensations, Ali possesses the natural chops to have garnered instant attention years ago. But the classically trained soprano, with a decade of choral experience, abruptly quit music in her late teens to become a self-proclaimed 'ragbag' and itinerant world traveller.
Having been exposed to a pantheon of 20th Century musical genius in her upbringing - Frank Sinatra, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Patsy Cline - she credits the brilliant, notoriously tortured Cat Power with providing the spark that re-ignited her original passion.
Raised by a Buddhist mother and a Catholic father in a Jewish neighbourhood (all whilst attending a Methodist school), she found herself craving the 'sense of community' she observed in all the above religions. At long last, in the late 2000s, she 'found it in music' - the timeless last refuge of the vagabond since time immemorial. As a result; the stakes were always going to be too high for taking short cuts.
Ali embraced the hard graft of the generally glamour-free open-mic circuit. She threw herself into the solitary interior enterprise of writing her own songs and painstakingly practicing her own unique style of guitar playing, recording her debut EP 'Trip' in 2012 with local producer MATIK. The EP caught the attention of national radio broadcaster triple j and earned Ali a coveted spot at the 2013 Laneway Festival in Melbourne, and from there she built her following up and down the east coast of Australia, sharing the stage with acts such as The Rubens, Cloud Control, Alpine, High Highs and Holy Holy.
Ali's clear, pure tone has a habit of elevating every note she sings, evoking comparisons to a long list of acclaimed singer songwriters - the afore-mentioned Cat Power, but also Sharon Van Etten and Bat For Lashes.
Now, with her follow up single (a reintroduction, if you like). Entitled 'Community', with it's rolling groove and dusky vocals, this is a rousing, jangling confession; as Barter says, it is a 'surrender to everything that we use to feel a part of the world'.
‘Community’ is taken from Ali’s new EP of the same name which was co-written and produced by Oscar Dawson (one half of folk/rock duo Holy Holy). After meeting in early 2013, the pair performed around Melbourne and embarked on several east-coast sojourns. During this period, Dawson fell in love with the songs, and so the pair began a far-reaching creative collaboration. Says Barter, ‘…I would start playing one of my songs, and Oscar would start playing along… and it was like the other half of the song would just appear. It was like the missing piece of the puzzle.’
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