Tallulahs tend to be sexy, impassioned things, but this one boasts a mesmeric voice and creative intelligence to boot.
In her new album, ‘Alive’, out 28th March, Tallulah presents an exciting slalom through different creative mediums, proving she’s got much more to offer than just a tight-clad package and blonde bed hair. Miss Rendall’s album is an impressive collaborative feat, in which she has given a dozen artists a different track each to inspire a unique piece of work. The result is a multi-faceted body of work with co-conspirators including Kilford the Music Painter who paints to the title track, sculptor Andrew Logan, Jonathan Bishop, whose work is made up of tiny Japanese stickers, playwright Danae Brook, animator Joanna Czajka, who contributes a 4.5 minute film, cartoonist Gray Jollisse and illustrator Beshlie Mckelvie, who designed an ethereal book of drawings to compliment Tallulah’s first album ‘Libellus’.
Tallulah has battled the cold on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth with her guitar and pitched up at St Pancras for one of their Station Sessions. Jumping from one project to the next and across oceans like the ‘whirling dervish’ she sings of, she is an example of insistent and forceful creativity. Her songs are brimming with quirky power and a raw abandon, while sticky lyrics ‘drip desire’ and demand attention. i-D Online caught up with the vital blonde, and instigator of this glorious collision of art and music, following her Australian tour.
What gave you the inspiration for this ambitious project? The illustrated book to my first album ‘Libellus’ was so well received that I was keen to open the project out to include movement, words and sculpture. I was touring in Japan with an aerial artist, Amy Richardson-Impey, who does a fantastic type of pole-dancing that’s really more like ballet on a pole, and she was keen to get involved. We filmed her for eleven hours to ‘Ghost on the Water’ and went from there.
How did the dozen artists you approached react to the idea? None of them had ever done anything like this before, so they were all excited and enthused by the concept. They did the work for free as they believe in the music and me, so it was a fantastic experience. There was a real sense of community and camaraderie, which you have to really fight for in London.
You seem to be touring a lot, off anywhere nice in 2011? We’re doing a little whirl around the UK and then we’re off to Germany, France, Spain and New York. I love being on tour, gathering material from every new experience, sleeping on the bus, listening to Pink Floyd for energy and focussing on the work. It’s when I’m at my most content.
‘Alive’ is out 28th March. Watch Andrew Logan in conversation with Tallulah here.
