Deep Dark Savage Heart follows Melody’s acclaimed debut, 2013’s The Hurting Scene. The Australian declared it Album of the Year, while Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 50 best albums of 2013, stating, “Pool’s voice is sublime, her lyrics propelled by heartache”.
After the success of The Hurting Scene and gigs with the Eagles and The Milk Carton Kids, and a NZ tour with Marlon Williams, Melody retreated. She reveals “I got lost in my mind. Whenever I listen to the first album I feel like I was a little girl,” explains
As the title suggests, the new album takes us to a deeper and darker place. This is not a collection of throwaway pop hits. As Melody states simply in track 7 ‘How Long’: “I’m not trivial.”
Melody returned to Nashville to make Deep Dark Savage Heart with producer Brad Jones, an American who has worked with several artists, including Josh Rouse and Matthew Sweet. “Brad’s like a nutty professor in the studio,” Melody smiles. “He’s always up for trying new things.”
The centrepiece of the record is ‘Black Dog’, Melody’s heartbreakingly honest account of her battle with depression. “Nobody sees what I do to me,” she confides. Melody wrote ‘Black Dog’ in Melbourne, lost and alone in a big city. “When you’re in a city of millions of people and you’re still alone, it feels worse than being in a small town and being alone. You feel like there’s so much potential to not be alone, but you still are.”
Melody wrote all the songs on Deep Dark Savage Heart. In-between albums, she tried co-writing. It didn’t work. “I like co-writing,” she explains, “but I don’t like it for my own songs. My songs are so emotionally heavy; it doesn’t feel right to share that with someone else.
“I feel like I’ve really stood my ground with this record. I didn’t ever expect to make an album filled with pop hits. It’s always going to be me playing guitar and singing the truth.”