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Writer Jen Cloher bangs drum for ‘overlooked’ women

Jen Cloher kickstarts a debate in the music industry: why aren’t women as acclaimed as men.

Mia Dyson, Liz Stringer and Jen Cloher, far right, want to prompt a discussion about women in the music industry. In their latest music video, left, Cloher performs as a man.
Mia Dyson, Liz Stringer and Jen Cloher, far right, want to prompt a discussion about women in the music industry. In their latest music video, left, Cloher performs as a man.

It’s not until the final verse of a rocking three-minute song that Melbourne musician Jen Cloher delivers some of the year’s most powerful and provocative rhyming couplets. “Underrated, overlooked / A woman’s work is never done or it’s erased from history books,” she sings. “Nothing against Paul or Nick / But if you want to be remembered then you better have a dick.”

That line — sung in glorious three-part harmony with bandmates and fellow Australian singer-songwriters Mia Dyson and Liz Stringer — concludes Falling Clouds, the lead single from the debut album by Dyson Stringer Cloher, which is released on Friday.

Set to sludgy 1990s-era distorted guitars, Cloher’s song isn’t meant to be a dig at Paul Kelly or Nick Cave but is intended to prompt a discussion: which Australian women over the age of 50 are touted for their exceptional songwriting while selling out venues of the same size that their male counterparts perform in?

“I think it’s really interesting to examine, rather than just going ‘It’s because of the patriarchy and women are oppressed’, and taking one angle,” Cloher tells The Australian.

Instead, she says, “it’s really exploring the ideas of why: if there aren’t any women or gender nonconforming artists who are as talented as Nick and Paul, then why? What’s going on in this country where that person isn’t encouraged or supported to develop in the same way?”

Cloher wrote the song three years ago, but decided that it didn’t fit with her fourth solo album.

Released in 2017, that self-titled work made its debut at No 5 on the ARIA chart and was shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize, while Cloher was named best artist at the AIR Awards for independent music last year.

It was only after showing Falling Clouds to her bandmates that they insisted on recording it together. The song’s two preceding verses concern Cloher’s experience of being a teenager in Adelaide and watching two female-led rock bands, the Clouds and the Falling Joys, which in turn inspired Cloher to pursue music.

“That just resonates so hard for me because with every advancement there’s always a person who blazed the trail and made it possible for everyone else,” Dyson says.

On tour next month, Dyson Stringer Cloher will be joined by Jodi Phillis of Sydney indie rock group the Clouds.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/writer-jen-cloher-bangs-drum-for-overlooked-women/news-story/19b4abe5513c607fe64753c35eaf45b5