Outright Vocalist Jelena Goluza On Powerful New Album ‘Keep You Warm’

Ongoing impacts of colonisation and racism

First Nations communities and people of colour are continually teaching us how deep inequality is entrenched and perpetuated in colonised societies, and forced removals in modern child protection policies have caused what is now considered a ‘second stolen generation’ event in Australia.

The song Tied Through Time was directly informed by reflections found in the 1997 Bringing Them Home Report, a landmark national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Yet the song also celebrates survival.

Elsewhere, the song Truth Teller, inspired by the Black Lives Matter and decolonisation movements, challenges the sanctity of imperial statues and rule when the history they glorify was never defined by truth, but power. However, resilience is just as entrenched in these proud people, and the track Breathless celebrates triumph through longevity. 

The gendered experience of negotiating power and safety

Women, trans and gender non-conforming people are conditioned to minimise and silence themselves to fit into the heteronormative patriarchy. In Fortify, we refuse to hide our light to scaffold those threatened by our presence and capability. On our first album single, The Hammer, we flip the whole structure over. Accountability isn’t the witch hunt – oppression, murder, exclusion and control is. We subvert the historical handbook on witchcraft, The Hammer of Witches, with a hammer of justice for all and send the abusers back to their own pyres.

Burn-out, depression and personal growth

Through personal experience, we use these songs as catharsis to try to express and redirect the pain and shame of mental illness into something better. The song Linchpin is a reminder that if we can self-sabotage then we can also self-heal. On an interpersonal level, Burn challenges the culture of burn-out - the very culture that conditions us to sacrifice ourselves for the comfort of others. On a societal level, we internalise harm and have to unpack the conditioning that makes us hurt ourselves and others in The Call. 

The manipulation of truth and nature for power

Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring in 1962 taught us about the environmental impact of pesticides. Instead of global action, carbon polluting industries learned to deny, delay and confuse any attempt to address their impacts. Here we are 60 years later, on the verge of climate catastrophe due to inaction, having learned nothing. In the same way, our apathy awards rich, powerful and morally corrupt old white men the resources to subvert facts for their own obscene agendas in Tyrants & Vultures.

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Outright

Keep You Warm Tour

Sat 22 Oct - The Lansdowne, Sydney
Thu 27 Oct - Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane
Sat 29 Oct - Vinnies Dive, Gold Coast
Fri 04 Nov - Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
Sat 05 Nov - Crown & Anchor, Adelaide