Maxine Gillon Released “Ultra Lounge” EP

Melbourne-based Singer-songwriter Maxine Gillon has unveiled her moving and energetic third EP ‘Ultra  Lounge.’ It was mixed and mastered by Wade Keighran (Polish Club, Wolf & Cub). It also features guest vocals from Jonnine Standish (HTRK, Jonnine). 

‘Ultra Lounge’ is a filmic exploration into the character of a lounge singer, down on her luck in a wintery  urban milieu, plying her trade in dingy underground nightclubs. It was inspired by 80’s New German  Cinema and Nan Goldin photography. Across six tracks, it straddles a balance between driving and  catchy rock numbers and more introspective ballads, retaining the same lush and expansive  instrumentation throughout. 

EP opener ‘Love & Loss (Overture)’ sets the scene; a mission statement on seemingly polar opposite  emotions over an evocative guitar arpeggio. It features Jonnine Standish on backing vocals. Lead single  ‘Genuflect’ presents a perverse and venomous tragicomedy juxtaposing complete self-assurance and  self-deprecation in equal measure, with a heavy dose of rockabilly riffs and a snappy drum machine  pulse. 

Track three; ‘Grief Filled Avenues’ has ethereal and mournful atmospherics that swirl around some of her  most vulnerable and transparent lyrics, presenting a sporadic story of romantic melancholia. The song  recalls 80’s Australian post-punk legacy acts such as The Triffids and Rowland S. Howard. “American  Coffee” kicks things back into gear with a hypnotic bounce, poeticizing on the themes of Americanisation  and voyeurism. 

Maxine says on the writing process of ‘American Coffee’: 

“I heard or read “American Coffee” somewhere, which struck me as an interesting juxtaposition of words.  To me that’s black, cheap, instant and strong coffee. Some capitalistic abstraction of a traditional  process, devoid of taste or care. 

The song is about the Americanisation of our own perception of our lives via the media we’ve grown up  on and that surrounds us. I moved to Melbourne and very mundane cultural differences to Sydney all  seemed so Hollywood to me. Social classes intermingling in neighbourhoods, different attitudes to drug  use, rubbing shoulders with icons of the music scene, mobster movie posters aligning the walls of a  strip club, tram cops, neo-nazis etc. 

Maxine says of the writing process of the EP: 

“I was watching a lot of 80’s New German Cinema in lockdown as well as Catherine  Breillant and Oliver Assayas movies. The EP as a whole is imagined as a filmic  abstraction or character exaggeration of myself in those worlds. A soft butch lounge  singer in a garish wintery urban milleu filled with melodrama, theatrical danger,  menacing sexuality and solambulistic darkness. It became an avenue for letting myself  get quite camp, poppy and emotive as a singer and musician, through embodying an  exaggerated persona.” The singles from the EP, ‘Grief Filled Avenues’ and ‘Genuflect’ received radio  airplay on 2ser, Fbi, NTS (UK) and RRR. They also garnered press features on US based website Post-punk.com and Backseat Mafia. They were playlisted on The  Australian Music Scene, Good Friday by Good Intent & Best New Music on 2ser.