After 16 years being focussed on family and putting her creative career on hold, singer/songwriter/actor Danielle Spencer returned in appropriately dramatic fashion in March with the release of her new album, Regenerate, which debuted at #8 on the national ARIA Album Charts.
Spencer’s previous two albums – 2002’s White Monkey and 2010’s Calling All Magicians – were both met with critical acclaim. The eight-year gap between the two releases can be put down to considerable family commitments – Spencer staying on homeward shores with two sons as ex-husband Russell Crowe supported the family with an international acting career.
The couple amicably divorced in 2018, and any creative notions were again placed on hold as she negotiated the life of a single mother – but with her sons maturing, the last few years have allowed Spencer the freedom to embrace her creative spirit once again.
Exclusive: Watch Danielle Spencer’s latest video for Am I There Yet?
Regenerate seems to be the creative space that Spencer has long willed to inhabit. Previously shoe-horned into a ‘piano-playing-singer/songwriter’ persona by record labels, the album has wide scope, from ballads to ethereal electronic elements and an overall theatricality drawing organically from her drama career.
“It all definitely fell into place for me while I was writing the title track,” Spencer explains. “As I was writing it, the vision of how I wanted to present all of this suddenly fell into place. I do have a theatrical background, and I just thought this time around, I would really love to do it differently. I don’t just want to be sitting at my keyboard, which is what I was always doing prior to this album.
“I wanted to actually bring in some visual elements that just make it a bit more exciting and dramatic. I just wanted to embrace that kind of ethereal tone and bring visuals to the sound.”
Musically, Regenerate is very much a cinematic album. The atmospherics both soar and have an emotional depth that screams for visual accompaniment. This has occurred in spades with the directors of Spencer’s three videos thus far (Michelle Pitris, Hummingbird; Tim Madden, Older; and Adam Kiers, Regenerate) working closely to realise these visions as authentically as possible.
“It was really important to me this time,” Spencer says. “Probably more important than the two previous albums, I think, because I had a strong vision for it, and because I felt very clear about it. Previously, sitting at the keyboard or whatever, and having the record company there, and you’re just making clips that are kind of singer/songwriter, low-key, all of that…
“I just was so clear that I wanted to go in a completely different direction, so it was very important that I found the people that clicked with me, and I was very lucky in that all three of those people really got it, and we all had similar visions. I would send them mood boards of visuals that I wanted, ideas and moods and atmosphere and all of that, and they were all on the same page.
“So that’s why we worked well together, and I was just very lucky that I also found my fantastic stylist Fleur Egan, and hair and makeup artist Sarah Laidlaw, who also brought that really important aspect of presenting me in a heightened character mode, but… they got it as well. We all just clicked, so I’ve been very lucky that the team around me have just understood it.”
While her father is the acclaimed children’s entertainer, Don Spencer, Danielle’s early musical influences were movie soundtracks, intriguingly The Exorcist and The Omen. Music, in her world, has always been cinematic.
“Definitely,” she says, “that was where the penny dropped for my style of writing melodies on the piano after hearing those soundtracks. I don’t know what it was. I still feel it, I remember sitting there and listening to both of those soundtracks while I was writing.
“This time around, just revisiting it, there was a strange connection for me with both of those soundtracks. I don’t know what it was, but I felt it again when I sat there to have a listen for inspiration to see if they still hit me like that, and they did. So the cinematic theme that has been in my music from the get-go and obviously there’s been other soundtracks I’ve loved, but listening to those soundtracks, they still arrest me, somehow.”
Spencer, of course, has a highly regarded film and television career. Music, however, is the focus after 16 years away from the microphone.
“Screenwise, I don’t have any plans at the moment,” she says. “I am definitely very focused on music. It’s not to say I wouldn’t ever do it again, but I’m not chasing it, and I would only do it if something particularly piqued my interest. To be honest, music’s the thing.”
When pressed, however, there are understandably fondly remembered highlights from her screen career.
“Well, I would have to say The Crossing (1990), the movie I did with my ex, Russell Crowe, and Robert Mammone. That was a highlight because I was only 19 or 20. So things are exciting at that age, and it was working with George Ogilvie, who was a highly respected and beautiful man, wonderful director, and I had a great connection with Russell and with Robert. The three of us all got on like a house on fire. We went and shot it out in Condobolin and Junee. So we were a very tight-knit little friendship group there, and it was exciting and fun and very gratifying. So that would have to be a highlight.
“I did a movie before that called What The Moon Saw, and that was the first kind of big job I got, and went to live in Melbourne on my own at 18. So that was exciting, too. I’m harking back to the really early jobs because you’re full of enthusiasm and naive optimism. So absolutely, it was just exciting and fun time.”
So you were, perhaps, to borrow from Seinfeld, a cockeyed optimist?
“That’s it, and that’s one of the qualities I miss,” she laughs. “It’s the one thing about getting older that is hard to hang on to. I kind of miss that naive optimism.”