FEATURE: Spotlight: Abbie Ozard — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rudd

Abbie Ozard

__________

HAVING completed…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Preece

a tour to promote her excellent E.P., Water Based Lullabies, Abbie Ozard can settle back and celebrate a very successful year. The Manchester artist has been courting acclaim since 2019/2020, but I think this year has been one where she is on many people’s radar. A sensational talent who is creating amazing and timeless music, I think 2023 will be her biggest and most successful year. I am going to end with a review of her amazing new E.P. I want to drop some interviews in and sort of go chronologically. As was the case with so many artists, 2020 was a rotten year. As a rising talent and relatively new artist, it was hard for Ozard to make as big an impact as she’d hoped. The year after her Growing Pains EP was unleashed, she would have been looking forward to solid touring and getting out there – though that wasn’t to be unfortunately. Since then, Ozard has released some amazing singles and E.P.s including 2021’s let’s play pretend. One of the country’s brightest young artists, I want to explore her career more. I think Ozard’s sound and direction has changed slightly since 2019 and 2020, but I want to start with a 2020 interview from Yuck Magazine, where she talks about her parents’ musical tastes and her how lockdown affected her songwriting:

“Manchester’s Abbie Ozard catapults us into the opening scene of a 70s coming of age flick, through her self-proclaimed collection of ‘sad bangers.’ Developing an interest in music from a young age, she has since been thrown into the public consciousness after being signed to Modern Sky Entertainment UK and recently releasing the lo-fi pop track ‘TV Kween.’

The song puts a spin on the classic feel-good after school special vibe, and Ozard pulls no punches when commenting on 2020’s influencer culture. There’s a real honesty in her songwriting, offering an unapologetic, shoulders-back attitude to femininity. “When you’re laying on your bed and you’re scrolling through your phone, you see all of these sick people on Instagram,” Ozard begins, “you think to yourself ‘fuck sake, I’m still at home,’ or you look at yourself in the mirror of a bar thinking ‘who the fuck even am I?’ It’s inspired by that, the pressures of influencer culture now.”

Commenting on the lyric: ‘everybody wants to be famous, I play it cool, but I’ve not got the patience,’ she says: “I don’t really want to be famous, it just sounded like a cool little line, but I think everyone is fighting for attention all the time. It’s all very fake and boring.”

The zeitgeist of our times isn’t the only inspiration Ozard draws on. She winds back the clock looking to 20th-Century music and cinema, which has almost certainly rubbed off from her parents’ admiration for them. “My Mum loves The Breakfast Club and my Dad is a big Blondie fan,” she explains. “I think it all got in my head a bit. I love films like Juno and all those coming of age type films, so I guess that’s my favourite kind of style.”

Cutting her teeth on a songwriting course at Manchester’s BIMM, Ozard found inspiration more outside of the classroom than in. “I don’t think you can really teach songwriting, it’s more of a subjective thing,” she begins. “I was going out and getting pissed, and wasn’t writing as much as I would have liked to, but the personal experiences I had at university influenced my writing a lot more than the course.” Not alone in a sea of discontent towards higher studies, she was still able to express her creativity elsewhere, “all the people in my band are from BIMM, and my housemates studied music, so we’d all just chill downstairs and jam. So it was better for the people you met, you know?”

After a spur of confidence from her Bowie-loving Father persuading her to take the songs out of the bedroom, Ozard decided to take the leap of faith with her music and accept an offer to be signed with Modern Sky Entertainment UK. “I released the single and from that Dave [Pichilingi] approached me and was like ‘I wanna fuckin’ sign you!’ [heavy Scouse accent impersonation],” she begins. “I thought I could stay independent and do it all myself, but I’m a dosy bitch, I’ve got no idea about money or anything. I’d rather just concentrate on writing my songs.”

Forced apart by lockdown restrictions, the usual songwriting process had to take a new turn, as Ozard and co-producer Rich Turvey [Blossoms, Vistas] took to facetime to squeeze in those crucial creative hours. “We wrote the song over Facetime during lockdown,” she says, “it was our first facetime writing sesh, it was so weird. We both have our guitars, he can hear me and I can hear him, so we just crack on.”

Despite the struggles of the pandemic, the creative process is not halted and ‘sad bangers’ continue to be written: “they eventually develop and you then realise that you’ve actually written a song that’s very personal, without specifically saying how you feel. ‘On A Low’ was on my own, so it’s a bit more sad and slow. It’s always good to mix it up though.”

Ozard has rightfully garnered interest from tastemakers at BBC Introducing and Radio 6Music, playing a number of festivals before lockdown hit and is certain to appear on more line-ups when (if) the time comes again. The growing pains are surely over for Ozard now with an impressive collection of tracks under her belt. Watch this space”.

I love the fact that Abbie Ozard was surrounded by his great and eclectic music in her family house. As DORK discovered in 2021, her musical beginnings were quite different to what they are now. If she is a Folk artists with Pop sensibilities now, there was a time when something more choral and classical was in her life:

“Surrounded by the sounds of the 80s, David Bowie and The Cure growing up in a family home in love with music, Abbie’s first steps to stardom involved stepping into… a cathedral? “Yeah, like a cathedral choir,” she laughs. “It was classical music at the start but then as I got older, when I was 13, I was like fuck it, don’t want to do any of this classical stuff anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind whacking a bit of it on now, but I started kinda listening to folk-y music and that, and it went from there.” A love of artists including Bon Iver and, in particular, Bombay Bicycle Club soon followed and it became the base for Abbie’s early forays into songwriting.

That “base of folk” as Abbie puts it poured together in no time. “I’ve realised that when I’m dead happy, I find it really hard to write, like it’s so frustrating. PLEASE someone have a go at me, get me out of this happiness!” Songs began to flourish from the emo poems she’d write down after school. “I was 17 and had my first breakup, and I didn’t know what to do,” Abbie remembers. “I wrote and wrote, and it helped me make this product out of me just being a mess.”

2019’s ‘Growing Pains’ EP was a bubbling introduction to a songwriter having fun with the world around her. Combining lo-fi bliss with pure pop sensibilities, it was an early sign that Abbie was a voice bound to make a mark. Last year’s standout croon ‘TV Kween’ is the track Abbie points to as a perfect snapshot of where she is now. “Before, the whole genre wasn’t really solidified. With ‘Growing Pains’, it was like right okay – I’m going to make a little EP that’s a chapter on everything’s that happened in that year and the pains of growing up basically. It was a little experiment really, compared to what I was doing before. With this next EP, it’s basically that on steroids”.

“Like ‘TV Kween’ was done over Zoom, and that’s been my favourite one so far. After that I was like, right, I love this vibe. I wanna stick with this for a bit and see where it goes. Like it feels like I’ve found my sound, though saying that I’ll probably end up getting bored and trying something different in the future, which is fine. That’s the fun of music, you can do what you want.”

While those live moments that the ‘Let’s Play Pretend’ EP scream out for may be on pause, there’s no doubt that Abbie’s future seems destined for those grand occasions. Early nights supporting whenyoung are ones Abbie can directly point to as inspiring her to write songs that “absolutely slap live”, but with a wealth of material that also pulls from those early folk routes – predict what comes next from Abbie at your peril. “I have this SoundCloud playlist of all these sad demos that I just haven’t released,” cracks Abbie. “I keep thinking that nobody can ever hear these, just so sad and no laffs at all, but I may slip a few of these in next time…

“I just want to get to a place where every day can be music, and things to do. To play a show, eat some pizza and then get back on it again. I want to meet people who love music and chat to them. I want to make people feel better with whatever people are going through. That’s the aim really, to make people feel better.”

Abbie breaks out another smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop… don’t really have a choice! Might as well have a listen, eh?!”.

By the start of this year, Ozard had confirmed herself as one of the most arresting and consistent artists around. I am looking forward to seeing her career grow and expand even more. Water Based Lullabies is another amazing release from the Manchester artist. I guess sit begs the question as to whether a debut album is the next step for her. The Line of Best Fit chatted with Ozard earlier in the year. One of the most interesting segments talked about the fact Ozard has not been able to tour much to date:

“Mentions of family and growing up as the youngest child are peppered throughout Water Based Lullabies. It was with her family in Manchester where Ozard’s mish-mash of influences from McFly to Mazzy Star spawned, and today, she can still be seen lending a hand at the family café on a Friday. “I haven’t had any fans pop in yet!” Ozard laughs. Yet, despite not having fully flown from the clutches of the café, Ozard is on her way to achieving her ambition of making music a full-time career – and so too are many of her Manchester contemporaries.

So, what’s the secret behind the city’s musical talent? “Probably just being northern!” Ozard suggests. “I think everything is more rough and ready, which is quite a good thing. I’m not shitting on people from down south at all, but everyone here is so focused on what they’re doing and there’s a sense of community surrounding it all as well. You don’t have to move to London to do music anymore, which is exciting.”

To achieve the authentic vision Ozard strived for in her Water Based Lullabies, she had to overcome self-imposed barriers. Apprehensive that “nobody would listen” to tracks such as “Grown”, a tender ballad on a broken relationship, or her favourite Coldplay-esque track “Norway”, confidence was required for Ozard to hone in on the sadness that characterises her artistry – and the artists she loves most.

“Most of the time, I tend to listen to sad, depressing music from people like Phoebe Bridgers, but I was almost too scared to release those kinds of songs,” Ozard reveals. However, with its contrasting dynamics from pop banger “Pisces” to the dreamy “Rose Tinted”, Ozard has conquered her fears. And with it, there’s a newfound maturity evident in her songwriting. “With Water Based Lullabies, lyrically, everything is quite deep – but it comes in peaks and troughs,” she says. “I’ve tried to be as honest as I can with the lyrics and I think it tells listeners more personal details about me than they’ll have heard before. It’s quite open, which is scary too.”

Recently, Ozard spoke about the treatment of some record labels encouraging artists to upload excessively to TikTok. It’s a problem plaguing many up and coming artists such as Ozard today with the changing landscape of the music industry. Ozard admits that her own relationship with social media “isn’t great”, but has mixed opinions on the impact it’s having on artists today.

“Personally, there’s no pressure coming from my label for me to make TikToks and things like that, which is why I like working with indie labels,” Ozard explains. “However, on my days off, I find that I spend so much time making TikToks, which means less time for writing. I feel like artists getting signed from 10-15 second clips on TikTok could pose problems for the music industry. I think I go on it too much and I compare myself to other artists a lot too. Everyone does it, you know? There’s a lot of pressure from that end, but a lot of the time though, I do find it fun. It’s just hard not to become obsessed with it.”

Live shows have been a bit of an inconsistent fixture in Ozard’s musical career to date (through no fault of her own, though). Plans for her first UK headline tour have been side-lined on numerous occasions due to the pandemic. But off the back of a stellar Glastonbury performance, this December marks the end of Ozard’s wait for a headline tour. “I feel like the tour is coming at a good time,” says Ozard. “It’s been pushed back for two years but I’d rather it be perfect than rushing into doing it. I’m looking forward to Manchester the most, and London. I’d also say Glasgow as well. We played at St Luke’s a few months ago and we had the nicest promoter there. We even got fed, which was great!”

With three distinct EPs in the bag, can Ozard now begin to set her sights on a debut album? “I’ve got it laid out in my head, but I want to start thinking about where I want to go with it,” she ponders. “I think Water Based Lullabies is a really good direction of where I’m heading next. When I’m ready, in my head, it’ll be there!”.

Before ending on a review for Water Based Lullabies, there is a great feature from Atwood Magazine from this year. Maybe her most Pop-driven offering yet (?), the sheer quality and confidence finds her stepping up a gear and cementing her brilliance:

“Captivating and charismatic, anxious and unfiltered, Abbie Ozard’s third EP is an utter thrill: A radiant outpouring of dynamic passion and stirring emotion all wrapped up in fuzzy indie pop fever dream. From angst-ridden upheavals and stirring inner reckonings to resonant anthems of empowerment, the Manchester singer/songwriter soars high and true with seven tracks that inspire the mind and invigorate the soul. As charged as it is charming, Water Based Lullabies captures Ozard’s raw energy and irresistible allure, cementing her place as one of the UK’s most exciting up-and-comers.

What’s the point in growing up

When each day you give less of a f-

Meditate they say

It’ll take the pain away

while you suffocate (I’d rather medicate)

Now I’m trying my best to translate

The emotional cocktail pouring out of my brain

And I’m trying my best to keep it at bay

Put it on the shelf for a rainy day

But I can’t, and it feeds my anxiety,

Takes the best of me

Hoovers up my fun

Leaves me feeling like a liability

Listen to my favourite song

And now everything is rose tinted…

Everything is rosey everything is great

I love my life I love my dog

So wrapped up in a bubble for a moment I forgot

– “Rose Tinted,” Abbie Ozard

Released July 1, 2022. via House Anxiety, Water Based Lullabies is an inspiring, energizing aquatic-themed reverie. Following her 2019 debut Growing Pains EP and 2021’s follow-up, let’s play pretend, Abbie Ozard’s roaring and resounding new seven-track EP sees her embracing a vast range of stories, sounds, and styles: From the explosive indie rocker “Candy Blue” to the post-punk strut of “Rose Tinted” and the churning, cathartic, and contemplative rush of “Grown,” Water Based Lullabies is an achingly intimate and unapologetically expressive eruption from the artist’s innermost depths.

Deeply vulnerable lyrics and hard-hitting sonics ensure a spellbinding journey throughout this tight, triumphant 20-minute experiece. Ozard cites artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Wolf Alice, Lorde and Colouring as some of her current influences – and just like all of the above, she truly holds nothing back in her songwriting. “I love that no two of my singles are sounding the same in this era,” she shares. “The last thing I want to be is predictable. I feel like genre isn’t really a thing anymore and when I remind myself of that I feel like I can express myself creatively and have the freedom to make whatever music I want”.

I will finish up with a review from Clunk Mag. Water Based Lullabies has quite rightly received so many glowing reviews. Albums get preference when it comes to attention and the end-of-year lists. I think E.P.s are very important, and Water Based Lullabies ranks alongside the absolute finest of 2022:

“From the first dreamy strains of ‘Pisces’, Abbie Ozard‘s latest EP ‘Water Based Lullabies’ sweeps in, picks you up and transports you to somewhere beautiful. The wavy synth and bouncing bass line create the flowing river that Abbie Ozard‘ sweet, vulnerable sounding vocals ride along on with lyrics like “I’m a Pisces so I’m not sure your energy’s for me” lending further lightness to an already breezy song.

When ‘Candy Blue’ comes bursting in with a flurry of drums, it grabs your attention in an instant before Abbie Ozard‘s special blend of dream pop sweeps through and carries the rest of the song. Songs like ‘Comfy’ and ‘Grown’ slow the pace but are no less charming and special. ‘Comfy’ with its wonky guitar sounding like it’s being played through a warped vinyl complimenting Abbie’s vocals wonderfully and ‘Grown’ leaning a little to the left with a harmoniser on the vocals and various instruments drifting in and out creating a cinematic quality to the song.

‘Fizzy’ plays almost like a sweeter Pale Waves with scuzzy guitars in the chorus creating a huge chorus that can’t help but satisfy a live crowd. With each song having its own unique identity, ‘Water Based Lullabies’ is sown together by Abbie Ozard’s gorgeously sweet and raw voice and flawless knack for writing indie pop gems.

Much like Lauran Hibberd, there is something about Abbie Ozard’s music that is not only dripping with cool but feels totally unique to her. All hail the future of dreamy indie pop”.

With so many great songs under her belt, I feel Abbie Ozard will tour quite extensively last year. She has just completed some U.K. dates, but I think there is a possibility of international dates in 2023. I am going to wrap up soon. Go and check out Abbie Ozard, as she is a stunning talent and someone who is being talked about as a huge artist of the future. I would not be surprised to see her feature heavily during festival season next year. I am sure she is not getting ahead of herself, but Ozard should prepare herself for an explosion. If you do not have Ozard’s music in your life, then that is something that you need to correct! Someone bound for huge glory next year, here is someone that…