Kimbra on her new album and her love of Melbourne

New Zealand-born Grammy-Award-winning singer/songwriter Kimbra is sitting at the Auction Rooms in North Melbourne, on a whirlwind visit from her home in New York, indulging in some people watching.

She’s back in the arms of Melbourne – the city that kick-started her music career at the age of 22 – for a quick stop before heading to Tassie for a show at Mona.

“I really came up as a live musician in Fitzroy and played gigs every week,” Kimbra says. “Melbourne was home for seven years and I still feel very connected to it when I return.”

Best known for her chart-topping duet Somebody That I Used to Know with Gotye which shook the world over in 2011, Kimbra is about to release her fourth studio album A Reckoning.

If her worldwide success had a downside, it was the unravelling that came with wondering what happens next and how to sustain a place in music without a major label deal – which is where she finds herself now.

The 32-year-old unpicks her inner-self throughout the new album, tackling issues like her – at times crippling – battles with anxiety and finding her spiritual purpose.

“I was fascinated with topics of anger and rage when I wrote this album,” Kimbra says.

“Being a woman and not knowing how to deal with big emotions led to me understanding the ups and downs I was going through with my anxiety.”

Songs including Save Me, Foolish Thinking and I Don’t Want to Fight reflect her modus operandi of being kinder to herself. She wants to be less about self-loathing and more about self-soothing.

“I feel intense empathy for things and can’t let it go, which means I hold more inside and it led to some terrible moments with anxiety,” she says.

“Some of the aggressive songs on this record are my way of getting to the bottom of what was going on for me.

“I wrote about a range of emotions from violence, sexual frustration and surrender as a way of letting go. And to say to myself there is freedom and fun on the other side if you hold on tight.”

Kimbra says that, with Saturn’s return (the astrological phenomenon said to happen around age 29) behind her, she’s learned how to process the highs and life journey she’s been on since she went from Melbourne’s underground to global stardom.

Her desire for self-exploration isn’t a reflex that comes with fame. Kimbra insists she’s been like this ever since she was a teenager; she was always reading about religion (she grew up in a Christian faith-based family) and became interested in mystical faith in her 20s.

“Faith is essential to my life,” she says. “It’s the life force, the heartbeat of human connection for me. I believe in something beyond myself.”

These days Kimbra prays to her god (not the white man in the sky version, she insists) twice a day, and relies on meditation to calm the soul.

The album A Reckoning is a therapy purge served with fries on the side, leaving you wanting more.

“I learned I can only move through things when I face them and that’s what I have done here,” Kimbra says.

In the noughties, Kimbra lived in Prahran, Windsor and East Melbourne share-houses. She was a regular on the Melbourne music scene, which led to her signing with Warner Bros and moving to LA to make her debut album, Vows.

“As an artist, it’s your dream to be noticed for your work. When I sang with Gotye, it was a strange moment that made us semi-household names,” she says.

“Suddenly I had access to working with producers like Timbaland and singer John Legend. To be able to get their attention without having to prove yourself was certainly a good feeling, and it isn’t lost on me the opportunities that came my way because of it.”

Kimbra is still good friends with Gotye (the stage name for Australian Wally de Backer, who now lives in Brooklyn). She also counts Daniel Johns as a close friend – she was inspired by his music growing up and he helped out on four tracks on her 2014 album The Golden Echo.

The pandemic saw Kimbra swap the East Village, Manhattan, apartment she lived in for seven years for a rental in Phoenicia in upstate New York.

“I thought I wanted a mountain escape, but turns out I really am a city girl,” she says. She now lives in Manhattan with her boyfriend and their dog, Nadi – which she bought from an Amish community in Philadelphia.

“I grew a deep love for the psychology of dogs and now train my friend’s dogs for free,” she says

Kimbra is also hosting a new podcast, Playing with Fire, that takes us where she can’t with her studio albums. There are deeper conversations about transcendence and finding nirvana with guests from priests to musicians and mystics.

“I think life is made up of few transcendent moments,” Kimbra says. “We can try to replicate them but you can’t force them.

“For me, I feel most transcendent when I am performing and when I see the audience also lose themselves in that moment.”