Sycco wants listeners to get out of their heads and into nature to listen to her new album Look Up
Inner-city carparks, petrol stations, wide swathes of land lorded over by transmission towers – these mundane spaces don’t typically receive much of our attention, but to a certain Brisbane-born bedroom pop songbird, they’re so much more. Sasha McLeod, also known as Sycco, says these places of transit serve as the launch pad for her newest album Look Up, which dropped last Friday. Here’s what she told us about the album …
These last few weeks, Sasha has been teasing the album release through a series of low-key pop-up performances in these liminal spaces, including one in early September where she played out the bed of a truck in a car park in Fortitude Valley. She’s also played in petrol stations and record stores across Melbourne and Sydney, a decision she describes as integral to the album’s meaning.
“I just really wanted to play at a petrol station,” Sasha told The Weekend Edition. “There was one time where I was driving into one and I was listening to Nat King Cole and it was just like, this is so beautiful, everyone’s filling up their tanks to then keep going on their journey.”
Look Up captures this feeling of being always in transit, both physically and emotionally. The petrol stations and carparks of Sasha’s surprise gigs serve as recharging points where can audiences stop, hear the new music, and then continue on with their own journeys. With this sentiment embedded throughout the album, it’s no surprise to hear that Sasha has been feeling existential as of late – who isn’t?
“I keep talking to my therapist and I’m like, I’m just really existential and she’s like, girl, I think that you’re just going to be and that’s okay,” Sasha explains. “I don’t need to go insane about it.”
She adds that Look Up doesn’t come to a conclusion or offer the listeners answers to their existentialism. Rather, it acknowledges the feeling and sits with it. The result is an album that Sasha calls her most personal to date, as the writing process taught her to stop second-guessing herself and trust that she knows her feelings.
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“I don’t think I’ve really written from a place that felt personal in this way,” Sasha says. “Like it was always personal, but I was always rushing over things because I was just avoiding it.”
Sasha credits Look Up’s more intimate perspective with allowing herself the time to let the songs reveal themselves, rather than forcing them into fruition.
“For me, in order to write songs, I can’t just be in the studio every day, I need to experience things. I feel like I haven’t been busy writing because I’ve been trying to have some interesting things happen in my life. It’s a good balance.”
From Look Up’s 12 tracks, Sasha shares the two that she holds the most dear.
“‘I’ve Loved And I’ve Lost’ is just so cool to me, that’s a song that I’ve dreamt of making,” she says. “But also songwriting-wise and prod-wise, there’s a song called ‘Wait Up’ that when I first wrote it, I didn’t really care about it, but now that it’s finished and I’ve been singing it live, it feels so raw.”
So close is her relationship with her own music, that, when asked which songs she currently has on high rotation, Sasha includes her own demos alongside ‘I Won’t Cry’ by Remi Wolfe and ‘The Great Big Gig in the Sky’ by Pink Floyd.
Subscribe for updates“To be honest, if I’m thinking logistically here, the records would show that I listen to my demos a lot. We’ll just like leave it open for whichever one is on rotation.”
Straying from the traditional tour schedule, Sasha tells us she’ll continue with her intimate pop-up shows, explaining that with an album this personal, she wanted to do something different to bring it into the world.
“It doesn’t feel like this album shouldn’t live inside a music venue. It should be in nature and I guess petrol stations are sort of in nature. I just wanted to play outside.”
“I’m trying out something new for these shows like what I did in Brisbane. Something about that show felt like it clicked but I reckon I’ll do a whole tour hopefully in the summer with the band.”
So where exactly should listeners listen to Look Up, if they can’t make it to one of Sasha’s surprise shows? She suggests reverting back to old-school methods – lying back on your bed with headphones on and eyes closed, on a plane, or out in nature – wherever listeners can go to let the music take them wherever it is they need to go.
Sasha explains that she likes to go for a walk and sit in the park when she needs to think – it was on one of these expeditions that the idea for the album and its name initially revealed itself to her.
“Specifically, there was this one time I went and sat in the park after crying a lot, I was listening to Solange and I was sitting in the park looking to the sky and I was like, this feeling is so familiar to me and it feels like I’m getting a hug from nature,” Sasha said.
Which is what listening to the album should feel like – like a hug from nature, paired with the tender advice to look up and remember that we’re all just on a rock spinning in space.
“Although at the same time, this album feels like I’m hiding under a desk. It’s like I’m a shy girl and this album is like giving me a hug. It’s a choose your own adventure album.”
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