"I don't refer to myself as a singer-songwriter," Olivia Bartley says. "I’m interested in ideas and trying to create something that will move people; disrupt everyday ideas. It's more about sounds. The music leans on language but the songs don't follow traditional form at all." Welcome to Olympia's debut album, Self Talk. As flagged by four exquisite singles — Honey, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Tourists, Smoke Signals — it's a world of heart-stopping melodies, rich sonic intrigue and big ideas, from places way beyond the debut singer-songwriter's handbook.


Musically it's an album born of specific storytelling intentions deliciously skewed by a passion for sonic experimentation, an experience that sometimes pounces, sometimes envelops, and surrenders more meaning and detail with each immersion. "I grew up in an evangelistic church near Wollongong where I learned to play instruments by ear, and not that well," the Melbourne-based singer and multi-instrumentalist explains.


Dad played Latino style on an upside-down guitar. Mum loved The Andrews Sisters. Little brother loved silverchair, John Butler and drop-D tuning. The kids asked for drums and got a piano. "And there were a lot of murders in our street as kids," Olivia adds. "I thought that was normal." By the early 2000s, she was turning heads on the national folk circuit, making friends with the likes of Christina Olsen and Vikki Thorn from the Waifs. Conceptually though, she had much bigger fish to paint.


A degree in design led to teaching design theory at university, then setting up studios in Melbourne, Darwin, Indonesia and Cambodia, working with disadvantaged women. It fuelled an ongoing artistic process that found its next musical expression on the stages of Melbourne's thriving music scene. But once again, with her head full of Hussein Chalayan, Dorothy Porter, Pedro Almodovar and New Scientist, she wasn't quite down with the folkie-confessional crowd.


The turning point came after a typically surreal solo spot at the 303 Bar in Northcote, when Simon Braxton from kiwi rock band Fur Patrol approached the stage. "He was really moved," Olivia remembers. "He encouraged me to dig deeper." Borrowing her name from Manet's famously unapologetic 19th century portrait of a reclining nude, Olympia recorded an EP at Braxton's studio with Pat Bourke (Paul Dempsey) on bass. Atlantis was embraced by Triple J as "like a storm in the middle of the ocean… beautiful, dark, powerful… majestic."