You might remember a major event in Australian pop called Frente. They were from Melbourne; the singer Angie Hart was only seventeen when they began and only a couple of years older when they started having enormous hits. It all went crackers for Frente. Totally off the scale in terms of stardom and recognition and all that. Angie was just a girl. But boy, the girl could always sing.

That was then. This is now. Angie’s got her own thing going on, finally. And this is the thing: back then with Frente, it was like she was trying to be the singer and trying hard with her singing. Now it’s all totally effortless, the most natural thing in the world. It seems ridiculous that she never did a solo album before. It seems unthinkable. How could it be that Angie Hart is only now ready to be out on her own?

Well – she is. The debut solo album is called Grounded Bird and it’s lovely and strange.

The facts of it are that Angie lives in Melbourne again after nine years in Los Angeles but she started the record over there, about five years ago. It’s taken ages to finish, mainly because she didn’t really know exactly what she was doing in the first place. She was just writing songs. She was in a band called Splendid at the time, with her now ex-husband. That in itself should offer a few clues about some of the themes of Grounded Bird.

Then, suddenly, she found herself alone. The writing continued. Sad songs, angry songs, dreamy songs, hopeful songs and hopeless songs. Songs about wondering. Songs about transformation; the act of moving away from who you are.

A little later she started writing with her friend Ben Lee in LA; he, like her, had just gone through a break-up. Angie calls him the ‘’catalyst for so many changes in my life.’’ The pair talked things through and wrote songs; he gave her confidence. “We threw things back and forth,’’ she says. ‘’We spent a lot of time laughing at our own tragedies.’’

“When you boil it right down,’’ she says, ‘’all my songs are about relationships in some way whether they’re dark and sad or uplifting.” She’s interested in the human condition ,in limitation and transformation. She’s interested in spiritual matters, in the way the mind works individually and collectively. “It’s pretty raw and simplistic, this record,’’ she says. ‘’It’s small and intimate. But the images in it are the things that fell straight out of my subconscious.’’ Artist information