D’Arcy Spiller
With a burgeoning canon of songs that embrace and attempt to verbalise her experiences, Melbourne-based D’Arcy Spiller’s music isn’t just a means of communicating, but a way for the singer-songwriter to make sense of the universe as a whole. “I’ve always found music to be a tool that helps me describe emotions and stories that In any other way I have a hard time explaining,” she begins. “It’s also been a means to talk about my understanding of the spiritual world, which is to an extent a big part of who I am.
Having spent a fairly nomadic childhood moving between various suburbs and cities of Australia, interspersed with a period in New Zealand and a gear-shifting three years in the US, D’Arcy’s youth may have been filled with change, but music and the arts had always proved a constant. Taking vocal lessons from the age of six, picking up a guitar a few years later, and beginning to write songs aged 12, she speaks of the lifelong compulsion as something she almost had no choice in; “I knew very early that this was what I was supposed to do.
D’Arcy began to tap into a feeling of hyper awareness to the spiritual and non-physical world around her after having relocated from small town Smeaton, Victoria to Minneapolis aged 15. The huge change in her surroundings and social life prompted a shift both in her musical ambitions and sensitivity to her intuition.
D’Arcy is aware that her experiences are ones that might not be universally understood, but over her past two EPs ‘Little Demons’ and ‘Disarray’ – and her most recent body of work heralded by new single ‘Crave’, she’s prioritising an increasingly honest lean into all facets of her personality. She describes her debut as a reckoning on the past and a way to get a host of “unresolved feelings” finally tied up and put to bed. ‘Disarray’, meanwhile, was born from a solitary lockdown that led the singer down some dark paths of personal exploration.
“I really found that I had some inner secret feelings during lockdown. Being by yourself for so long, you realise things about yourself, and I felt like it was important to put that out there and normalise it,” she says. “It was basically about the shadow self, deeper desires and darker feelings – going to that place that you wouldn’t generally reach with all the distractions that go on in normal life. It was interesting to tap into and I probably wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for lockdown.”
D’Arcy Spiller crashed back into our ears in 2022 with new single ‘Curveball’, the fierce follow up to gentle ballad ‘Milk & Honey’ An emotionally potent love ballad at its core, and rock anthem ‘Crave’. Written and produced alongside Dylan, and Rob Amoruso, ‘Curveball’ drips with the venom, a woman scorned, D’Arcy’s rough epic vocals cursing the relationship that inspired her pain.
D’Arcy explains, “I was stupidly listening to my American ex’s podcast with his band, where he mentioned he’d travelled to Australia a while back. His band mates were confused, and I realised some of his closest friends had no idea he’d travelled across the world to see me. That hurt. He decided to avoid that part of his life. He decided to avoid the discussion of me. He threw a curveball I never saw coming.”
D’Arcy’s massive single ‘Crave’ made a splash in June last year, with its striking video premiering on The Music and Women In Pop describing the songstress’s music as “earthy, primal, raw and with the ability to connect deeply with your soul”. ‘Crave’ hit the #5 most played track on triple j and earned spots on indie and alternative playlists locally and in the US and Europe, before making its live debut when D’Arcy took to the stage supporting indie-pop darling Jack River in Sydney and Melbourne, and during D’Arcy’s own headline Northcote Social Club show in September 2022.