I have spotted Oh Deliah playing beautiful music around Adelaide a few times over the last year, chances are you might have heard her too. Oh Deliah, aka Becky Althorp, describes herself as a ‘quiet old soul’. Growing up in the Adelaide Hills, she listened through her parents’ vinyl collection from an early age. Oh Deliah remembers listening to all sorts of music growing up, but says that she has always loved Paul Kelly’s records, in particular Spring and Fall.
The way he writes his lyrics has always fascinated me, and I still read a lot of his works. He expresses so much human emotion with simplicity and honesty and makes it so relatable to people of all walks of life.
If you haven’t heard her music before, Oh Deliah has the most beautiful voice and writes melodic indie pop with fuzzy guitar. But she didn’t always sound like this.
I remember sitting down one day, playing around with different chords and it all started to naturally unfold. It was a bit awkward at first, I wrote a few songs that were utterly awful.
Now she is in her groove. Oh Deliah is releasing her first EP in a couple of weeks at the Grace Emily. She says that the writing process has been an interesting one.
Some of the songs were written very recently and others were a little bit older… one of them from nearly four years ago! When I started, I began collecting the songs with common threads. I ended up pulling them apart, stretching them out, and sewing them back up again.
These common threads are often relationships.
I write music for the lonely, the heartbroken, the lost and the hopeful. For the people who need to have their stories told…
When I was younger, I remember being intrigued by other people’s stories. I’ve also experienced some emotionally intense situations, and I think that in some ways it has helped me … tap into those emotions for songwriting.
[The song] ‘Pitiful Ones’ … speaks of unrequited love in the purest form. The yearning of belonging and the agony of separation. It’s honest and tells of two lovers not meant to be, a sweet salvation of their final moments in unison. I wrote it in a couple of days, [it] really poured right out of me. It encapsulated a precious moment in time.
What’s next? There’s no giving it away. There are exciting things in the works, but Oh Deliah is keeping her lips tightly sealed. Until then, catch the EP launch at the Grace Emily on Saturday 18th May. More information here, tickets here via Moshtix, and listen to her single ‘April Sun’ here.
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