Lisa Crawley is the latest guest on Making Music, Making Ends Meet, a series focused on Australian and New Zealand musicians during the cost-of-living crisis.
We spoke with the Kiwi singer-songwriter shortly after the release of her latest single, “Hurry Up and Wait”, one of her best releases to date.
In our interview, Crawley told us a bit more about her song, describing it as “living in that strange space between hope and uncertainty.”
“In a larger sense, it explores the feeling of waiting for life to happen while trying not to stand still. It’s about bad timing, indecisiveness and feeling like you’re stuck on repeat,” she explained.
“Sonically it’s one of my favourite recordings I’ve made, blending piano-led indie-pop with some unexpected textures — including omnichord, clarinets, and recorder.”
The accompanying music video (watch below) was filmed at a small drive-in theatre where Crawley actually once worked for several months.
“Officially I was hired as a ‘musician’, but I also set up the drive-in cinema, cleaned the bathrooms and, as my boss requested, ‘introduced’ the movies into a fake microphone — even if there were only two people in the audience,” she recalled.
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“It had been about two decades since I’d had a non-musical job, and it wasn’t an easy period of my life, so returning there years later to film a video for my own music felt surprisingly full-circle.”
Crawley also released Songs I Like But Did Not Write – Vol. 2, a live piano and vocal EP, this year.
“It’s a collection of songs I love that I recorded completely off the cuff after a producer didn’t show up for a session, leaving me with unexpected recording time at Village Studios,” she told us. “I’d never covered any of them before, but they’d all shaped me as a songwriter, so I sat down at the piano and hit record.
“I’m excited to get back into full writing mode and work towards a new album. And if I have to work playing four hours of requests regularly to help fund it, so be it.”
Read her full feature here.
