MOURNING a loved one often gets harder before it gets easier.
Rather than dissipate, that awful feeling of emptiness keeps nipping at your heels as weeks become months, and the empathetic phone calls, letters and emails start to drop off.
Magic Dirt's Adalita Srsen has been doing it tough ever since her bass player and former beau Dean Turner died in August 2009, aged just 37. But before he trundled off this mortal coil, Turner helped Adalita through her first solo shows at tiny venue Palookaville in Fitzroy.
"I needed his ears and his perspective. He was always there. We were each other's sounding boards," she says.
"He was really sick, but he still came to my first shows and he came to the tracking for two or three sessions. By that stage he was terribly and seriously ill."
It wasn't long before Magic Dirt became Tragic(ally) Hurt.
"I had to do the mixing on my own. I had an inner dialogue between myself and what Dean would think. I was always checking back and referencing what he would have said," she says.
"Dean encouraged me to do my own record because he was privy to the songs that got put aside."
Turner shares production credits on the album, recorded at Head Gap studios in Melbourne. As lead singer, chief songwriter and mean-as-a-mercenary guitarist, Adalita has steered her band for nearly 20 years through eight albums and several EPs.
The Geelong band has outlasted grunge, Britpop and nu-rock. Songs such as Ice, Dirty Jeans, She-Riff and Rabbit With Fangs exhibit Adalita's seemingly endless penchant for razor-sharp riffs and howling banshee lyrics. When she sang, "If you touch me I'll kiiiill you!" you felt the threat was real.
But her self-titled solo album is a much more restrained affair. "I held back on the drum beat. When I tried to layer it up, I lost the intensity of the vocal and the guitar on its own," she says.
Consequently, the 10-song record conjures up a feeling of being stuck inside someone's house at 4am, empty bottles of whisky strewn across the room and that hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach that just won't go away.
J. P. Shilo helps out with bristling guitar, distilled and re-distilled to give the songs just enough texture and the eeriness.
"I've known J. P. since Hungry Ghost days. He understands me and we're on the same page. He provided the extra spooky bits," Adalita says.
Shilo adds violin to Perfection, drums on Jewel Thief, slide guitar on Good Girl, and film-noir guitar on Goin' Down and The Repairer. Adalita's unhinged Magic Dirt bandmate Raul Sanchez chipped in.
"Raul and I collaborated on (song) Lassa Hanta a couple of years back. The rockiest song is Goin' Down with that greasy, evil riff," she says.
HEAR HEAR Adalita (Liberation) out now
SEE Adalita, The Loft, Warrnambool, April 1; Bended Elbow, Geelong, April 7; Karova Lounge, Ballarat, April 8; Toff in Town, April 9
Adalita is touring nationally. Find the fill list of dates at
