Trauma Cleaner’s wild life story inspires a song

Sandra — a four-minute track based on the story of Sandra Pankhurst — appears on the third album by indie rock duo Holy Holy.

Oscar Dawson and Timothy Carroll of indie rock band Holy Holy with Sandra Pankhurst. Picture: David Geraghty

Like many readers of The Trauma Cleaner, Tim Carroll was transfixed by the story of Sandra Pankhurst, whose life has contained more than its fair share of challenges.

Inspired by her journey from an abusive childhood to running a successful business devoted to cleaning up violent crime scenes with care and compassion, Carroll was moved to write lyrics to accompany a piece of music he’d arranged with collaborator Oscar Dawson.

The result is Sandra, a propulsive four-minute track that appears on the third album by indie rock duo Holy Holy.

“When we were children you would say I was the strangest one/ Never the way you wished I’d be, never the son you want,” sings Carroll in its opening lines.

“It’s quite a wild story, with a lot of sad and hard moments in it — but it also has this incredible strength at its core,” said the songwriter. “I felt like it was really important to make contact with Sandra, because I wanted her to feel as if the song painted her in a light that showed her resilience and her significance.”

In that sense, Carroll and Dawson — who are based in Launceston and Melbourne, respectively — hit the right notes. The trio met for the first time during a recent photo shoot for The Australian.

“I was thrilled to the back teeth, because I couldn’t believe someone would write a song about me,” Pankhurst said.

“They’re very well-mannered and very considerate of my feelings, and I appreciated it. I hope it’s a success for the boys.”

Sandra immediately follows third track Faces to create an absorbing nine-minute suite near the beginning of My Own Pool of Light, which was released on Friday. In its frenetic chorus, Carroll sings of Pankhurst’s gender transformation: “I can’t go on now / Come as far as I can go in this shell / I need this to be.”

“Our band has gotten bigger than I ever would have thought,” said Carroll of the duo he co-founded in 2013. “We have this audience of young people all around the country, so the opportunity to introduce them to Sandra, and to get people reading that book and understanding her is a cool idea.”

The Trauma Cleaner was written by Sarah Krasnostein and published by Text in 2017. Last year, it won several awards, including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. With a national tour to begin next month, the two musicians of Holy Holy have added Pankhurst’s name to the guestlist for their upcoming show at The Forum in Melbourne. “We hope to have her there,” said Carroll. “I wonder what her tambourine skills are like?”