Lazing By the Warrandyte River With Filmmaker-Turned-Music-Maker Dannika

Images: Jasper Jordan-Lang

Filmmaker, photographer and, now, musician Dannika Horvat (Dan-EE-ka) is really good at writing pop songs. Songs that tread the line between broad and specific, universal enough for a listener to project their own experiences, but also unique, endearing and intimate. They possess all the markers of a great pop song.

At the launch for their For Peaches EP, the band covered Rihanna’s "Higher". The song is short, romantic and wistful – much like one of Dannika’s.

Along with her band – Liam Parsons, Stefan Blair (who also make music as Good Morning) and Paul Ceraso – Horvat has made an EP that forms a concise and compelling portrait of a relationship. It’s a beautiful introduction to the group. The four songs hold up individually as the pop tunes that feel fun and vital – twangy ambling tracks without posturing or hangups.

Though the band shares a name with Horvat, the lead singer, songwriter and bassist, you get the sense from talking to her that the three boys were pivotal in getting the project going. When talking about writing and performing, she often ends up doting about Parsons, Blair and Ceraso. A couple of times our conversation comes back to the same conclusion: “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

Dannika showed us her favourite spots around the Warrandyte River, outside Melbourne, while we chatted about photography, writing and how she started playing music.

Noisey: What’s the significance of the Warrandyte River?
Dannika Horvat: I grew up in Warrandyte, so I’ve spent a lot of time here, and I wrote this album when I was still living in my parents’ place in Warrandyte. I wrote it in summer, when I was coming here every day to just have a little dip. It’s just a really great place. It’s home.

How did the band form?
I’ve known the boys for a very long time. I went to high school with Liam and Paul and Stefan. Paul and I actually dated for four years and became best friends afterwards. So, I started wanting to write music with Liam ages ago, but we didn’t really know how to do it because I was just a singer, I didn’t know [how to play] an instrument. But then I saw the film Whiplash and decided that I wanted to play bass. I bought one on eBay. It was the cheapest one on there – and it happened to be pink, which I love about it. I started writing songs with really simple bass lines, and showed them to Liam on his veranda of his house and I showed him "St Kilda Sunrise", and he was like “Yeah, let’s do it, let’s make an album”, and that was really special, a really nice moment.

Does your filmmaking and photography practice tie into your musical practice?
A little bit, because sometimes when I’m writing something I’ll go off an image. Like, "Next To You" – my friend Georgie Savage wrote that as a poem. There’s a lot of imagery in that, and that helped a lot with the writing of the song. I guess they are very different mediums, and that’s what I kind of love about music, that it’s a very different way of storytelling compared to filmmaking. They’re both storytelling, but they’re vastly different.

"St Kilda Sunrise" is about not wanting someone to leave, and then "Goodbye Darling" is about resigning yourself to the fact that a relationship has to end. Were you conscious of wanting to create a distinct arc in the EP?
Not at the time, they just kind of happened. But then when I wrote “Cake” and “Next To You” it just made sense to put them in the EP in that order, and I love that it does have a beginning, middle and end. I’m a writer [so] I like things having a three-act structure. I didn’t really expect it to happen that way, but I like it. Symmetry.

Why is it called For Peaches?
Because the EP is dedicated to my friend Georgina Savage. She’s just been my biggest fan and my biggest motivational push. She was the one who was making sure that I was making the album. I showed her the songs in the really early stages, before I even took them to Liam, and she was just like “You’ve gotta record this!” She took all the press photos for us, and she’s just a very special person for me. I wanted to make it for her because I did it for her.

‘For Peaches’ is available now.

Shaad D’Souza is a Melbourne writer. Follow him @shaaddsouza