Paris Wells

Thu 28th Oct, 2010 in Features

Paris Wells is set to play at the southern hemisphere’s biggest ever under-18s festival Another World in Melbourne next week. It’s a huge show, but the soulful singer getting very used to playing massive gigs.

She sang with Bliss N Eso at Sound Relief, performed the St Kilda club song before 100 000 fans at this year’s AFL Grand Final (mark one), lead the Melbourne’s SLAM rally and even supported Justin Timberlake on his most recent Australian visit. Oh, and she also stopped by the FasterLouder office to perform a few songs and tell us about her new album Various Small Fires.

If you enjoyed her soulful first disc, Wells wants to assure you that her second work is a progression, not a re-invention. “I don’t think people are saying ‘she’s changed her sound’ or ‘gone electro’ or anything like that,” she explains. “I’ve only heard really positive feedback about the evolution of the writing.

“I wrote it with Ryan [Ritchie] again, so I think we evolved as a writing team as well. He got better at his job and I got better at mine. But we decided to make an emotional continuity between the albums.”

Where the do the ideas for the lyrics came from – are they based on Paris and Ryan’s true-life experiences? “A couple of them are other people’s lives, but then you always add your own emotional content to the vibe,” she reflects. “Then a few were about me, but I was a bit more metaphoric this time.

“Jenny’s the name of my alter-ego, and also I kept some of the recordings really raw so they could be a little humorous. But there are bits of me there that I hadn’t really exposed on the last record.”

She says she discovered her singing voice quite late: “I was about 18. I left a private girl’s school to go to an arts school to do acting. Then when I got there I realised that I hate actors,” she laughs. “So I left that unit and did a music performance unit just to fill the gap. Then I ended up getting straight marks, so I thought ‘oh I’m pretty good at this.’

Paris rattles off a great little list of her musical icons – Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Annie Lennox, Robert Palmer, Cold Chisel, Paul Simon and then she notes that hip-hop is a particular inspiration for her. “I think the thing that people forget about hip-hop is that the beats underneath and the sounds that are being experimented with are always on the forefront of what’s going to be the next sound. Sometimes, because someone’s rapping over the top of it, you forget how clever hip-hop actually is.”

Finding her voice led to Paris breaking into Melbourne’s vibrant and eclectic live music scene, which she says is still on top form following a recent campaign to save its best-known venues from ruthless licensing reforms. “We had the SLAM Rally – 25,000 of us rallied in the city – it was one of the biggest protests in history,” she explains proudly.

“We needed to fix up all the liquor licensing laws for live venues, because they were going to shut half of them down, by charging too much for the liquor licensing and security. We had to save what is essentially the best music scene in Australia. But we won – so the music scene in Melbourne is OK again at the moment.”

One highlight of Paris’s career so far is supporting Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/LoveShow tour around Australia in 2007. “I compare him to a ninja,” she replies cheekily when asked for backstage gossip. “He’s very calm, but very aware that of the 96 people on the road with him, he is the most important part of that entourage. And sometimes you can forget that, even if you’re the main part of a show. With all these people around you, you forget that you matter.”

“So he had this really great strong vibe about him. He’d rock up a few hours early to the stadium and relax into it. I think the main thing I learned from Justin was how professional he is. And he respects everyone around him because he’s hired the best – he doesn’t need to worry, he knows they’re good at what they do. There was no brattiness about JT – he carried himself really well.”

Paris says she wants to give her listeners a few months to get used to her new album before embarking on a major Aussie tour in February. But it’s ‘so far so good’ as her recent intimate pre-album shows have all sold out and gone down well, she says. “I’m singing eight new songs and people are giving me their full attention for all those eight songs, which is a good sign.”

Paris Wells Tour:
Monday 1st November – Another World, Hisense Arena, Melbourne
Saturday 6th November – Bended Elbow, Geelong
Wednesday 24th November – The Toff, Melbourne
Saturday 27th November – The Palais, Hepburn Springs
Thursday 2nd December – The Vanguard, Sydney
Thurday 9th December – The Harp, Wollongong