Woodes creates her own magic pop worlds on debut album ‘Crystal Ball’
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31.08.2020

Woodes creates her own magic pop worlds on debut album ‘Crystal Ball’

Photo: Nick Mckk
WORDS BY AUGUSTUS WELBY

Woodes’ Elle Graham joins us for episode #1 of Turning Heads season two – Beat’s new music podcast.

Woodes is the project of Melbourne-based songwriter, producer and vocalist Elle Graham. Graham’s been making music under the Woodes alias for the past five years and is gearing up to release the project’s debut album, Crystal Ball, on Friday October 2. The singles ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Queens of the Night’ are out now.

Graham grew up in tropical north Queensland in a very musical household. She was introduced to the sounds of Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell at a young age and played piano and mallet percussion in school theatre productions. Her perspective on music was then shifted by the seminal mid-aughts teen drama The O.C., the soundtrack of which introduced her to artists like Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab For Cutie and Imogen Heap.

Graham moved to Melbourne after high school to study music composition, and made a point of immersing herself in the city’s live music scene. This had a significant impact on the evolution of her artistry, and over the past few years she’s released a host of singles and EPs including 2016’s Woodes and 2018’s Golden Hour.

Along the way she’s collaborated with artists like Cosmo’s Midnight, Set Mo and Golden Vessel, and brought in the likes of The Kite String Tangle, Lanks and Michael Di Francesco to work on her own music. Crystal Ball was largely written during a three-week stint in Los Angeles with Grammy-nominated songwriter/producer Scott Effman. Graham also worked with Chris Collins and The Kite String Tangle’s Danny Harley on the record.

For the podcast, we spoke about life up north, Elle’s obsession with Imogen Heap and Grimes, the move to Melbourne and her unexpected emergence as a house music vocalist for hire.

Check out the podcast episode below:

I will be back with a new episode of Turning Heads next week. You can find the podcast on SpotifyPodbean and through Apple.

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