The artist formerly known as New Buffalo speaks to DOUG WALLEN about gaining confidence as a songwriter, life changes and how, on new album 'Heart That’s Pounding', she was determined to live up to a compliment from Canadian singer Feist.

It’s not as if the New Buffalo guise wasn’t working for Sally Seltmann: she released two albums in North America on Broken Social Scene’s house label, Arts & Crafts, and supplied Feist with her biggest hit in the Sesame Street-endorsed ‘1234’. But in a gesture of renewed confidence, Seltmann’s third album, Heart That’s Pounding, has been released under her own name. It’s also the first album she’s made since having a little girl with her husband, Darren Seltmann of The Avalanches. Recorded with composer/producer François Tétaz in Melbourne, its lineup of guests include Jens Lekman, Ned Collette, The Middle East, and members of Jessica Says, The Lucksmiths and Architecture In Helsinki.

What’s more, Heart That’s Pounding is a punchy, heavily embellished affair that counters Seltmann’s introverted two albums as New Buffalo: The Last Beautiful Day (2004) and Somewhere, Anywhere (2007). Informed by tried-and-true classic pop formulas and her own brush with fame for co-writing ‘1234’, it’s her best album to date.

Why did you record the new album in a few different Melbourne studios?
Well, we wanted to get a couple different-sounding pianos on the album. At Adelphia they have a really old, upright, family-sounding piano, so we worked on some stuff there. And we recorded at Sing Sing because we wanted to have live drums and bass and piano all played together. They had a brand new grand piano, which at first we thought we wouldn’t use on anything. But it suited some of the songs, so it was good to have.

When you write songs, do you use keyboards or a piano?
These days it’s usually piano. Or we have an old Wurlitzer electric piano from the ’70s. It’s really little and really cute. It’s a nice instrument to write songs on.

Do you ever write on something but envision the song played with something else?
Sometimes. I will occasionally write on guitar or pick up some old organ. That’s what’s quite good about the piano: you can write a song on a piano but really imagine it with different instruments.

That seems like it could be quite freeing.
Yeah, when I wrote ‘The Truth’, it was this really standard sort of slow piano ballad. What we did is add lots of overdubs, like the beat and the crazy delayed organ. We really played with that song.

There’s a huge cast of guest singers and musicians on the album. How’d that come together?
I think part of that is because I co-produced the album with Franç Tétaz. We’d work away on things and then one of us would [suggest] group vocals and ask some friends to come sing on it. With the last two albums I did as New Buffalo, I was working on my own all the time and I was much less inclined to make the effort to call in lots of different people. But I think it’s worked really nicely with this album, especially having the male vocals.

There are often overlapping vocals and harmonies working towards these dramatic builds. Was that what you were imagining with the guest vocals?
Yep. I’ve always really loved lots of harmonies. I wanted that to be quite a big part of the album. It was pretty daunting. Songs like ‘On The Borderline’ took hours and hours doing the vocals because there’s so many parts.

The list of guests is a real cross-section of talented local musicians.
They were just friends, but with The Middle East, they were just a band I really like. So I approached them to sing on a song [‘5 Stars’]. And my best friend Lara [Meyerratken] lives in LA and sings on ‘On The Borderline’. We just sent her the files online.

Mark Monnone of the Lucksmiths played bass for you, and I read that he played “unconventional” percussion on ‘Dream About Changing’.
That was him slapping his bum. [Laughs]

“I’d been cooking in my kitchen and listening to classic radio, where they churn out the classics nonstop, like Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon.”

So how does it work when you play these songs live?
Well, we just played at SxSW [South by Southwest] with me on piano, my husband Darren playing drums and Mark on bass. And I usually have Jessica Venables [of Jessica Says] play with me but she had an accident so I had to have someone fill in for her. She usually plays cello and lots of the samples and keyboard parts and extra percussion. We’ll also be having a guitarist as well and maybe someone else playing trumpet or flute. It can be tricky because quite a lot of the songs on this album are really filled with overdubs. There’s heaps of double-tracking. We have to rework some of the songs and try to make them work really well live.

Did you do any other shows around SxSW?
We did two shows at Canadian Music Week in Toronto and then three at SxSW. We’re going back in June to do a tour in America and Canada.

There’s a theme of renewal on this album. Is that to do with having a baby or no longer using the New Buffalo name?
I think that just kind of happened and towards the end of the album we realised that. That’s when I decided to do the album as Sally Seltmann. I think the last few years have been a time where I’ve overcome a few things. Definitely having a baby was really amazing for me because it’s something that I always wanted to do. And I co-wrote that song [‘1234’] for Feist that did really well. I think that made me believe in myself more as a songwriter. It felt like suddenly all these good things were happening to me. [Laughs] I tried to make some good music that other people can enjoy.

There are a few references to playing music in the lyrics, and ‘Book Song’ mentions a nightclub.
It’s funny you say that, because I try not to do that too much. I try to write in a way where I’m not feeling overly self-conscious. I’ll just write what I’m thinking and come up with a song. That song where I say, “This club is soulless”, is how I feel sometimes. I feel a bit a bit weird singing it to people, because I don’t feel like that all the time.

Both times I’ve seen you play were in nice places that weren’t traditional bars, so it’s funny to imagine you in some seedy club.
Lots of the tours in America … sometimes the venues will just be a bit stinky and dirty. I think it’s just me whinging a bit and romanticising about how other careers in the arts are more glamorous and less dirty. I just have always admired writers and wished that I could write a book.

The singles ‘Harmony To My Heartbeart’ and ‘On The Borderline’ have a classic pop feel. Is that something you’ve been wanting to try?
Yeah. I wrote both songs around the same time. I’d been cooking in my kitchen and listening to classic radio, where they churn out the classics nonstop, like Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon. I was going through a phase of really getting into that. I like to question why a song is loved by so many people. A similar thing happened with ‘1234’, where so many people seemed to connect with it, and it made me wonder why. So I was just really interested in that world and that phenomenon. And also, Feist had said that I write classics. I thought that was a really nice compliment and I wanted to try to live up to that with this album.

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Heart That’s Pounding is out now through Shock.