Melbourne-based singer, songwriter, producer and actor, Grace Cummings has released a striking cover of the 90s Fatboy Slim hit ‘Praise You,’ originally written by Camille Yarborough. Grace said,
“No matter what happens, I’ll never get sick of this song and it will never get sick of making me happy,” Grace shares. “I’d never try to out do Camille Yarborough or Fatboy Slim… there’s no point. But to combine the two into a soul groove was something kinda our own and hopefully joyful in its own right.” The recording is accompanied by dance video directed by Gil Gilmour.
‘Praise You‘ is Grace’s first release since her second album entitled Storm Queen. Following an incredible SXSW debut, Cummings toured across the U.S. with Ezra Furman and Europe with King Gizzard and V**gra Boys.
True to its title, ‘Storm Queen’ is a body of work with its own unruly climate, governed only by the visceral quality of Cummings’ spellbinding and devastating vocal presence. With most songs captured within the first few takes and featuring unexpected flourishes by Cummings’ peers in Melbourne, the album showcases a vast and volatile emotional landscape from one of the most captivating folk artists to enter the scene in years.
Cummings got her start as a drummer in a series of high school bands whose repertoire largely consisted of AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix covers. As she began writing songs of her own, she mined inspiration from artists like seminal Australian singer/songwriter Paul Kelly, Bob Dylan, and Spiritualized frontman J Spaceman, as well as from the traditional Irish folk music her father often played at home.“Irish melodies are some of my favorites; they go to such dark and dramatic places,” she says.
Soon after striking out as a solo artist in the late 2010s, Cummings landed a deal with Flightless Records (a Melbourne-based record label founded by former King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard drummer Eric Moore). Having attended drama school, she’s also spent much of the past decade performing in the Australian theater, and recently played the lead role in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Joanna Murray-Smith’s Berlin. Noting her eternal fondness for Shakespeare—“If anyone wants me to play Hamlet, I’ll do it”—Cummings has found her lyrical sensibilities indelibly informed by certain literary influences. “To me poems and stories are sometimes more of an inspiration than music, because they don’t give you a melody: you have to just imagine your own,” she says.
In the making of Storm Queen, Cummings reinforced the self-possessed naturalism at the heart of her artistry, ultimately distilling her vision down to its most elemental essence. “In the past there were times when I’ve let other people’s opinions affect me too much,” she says. “But with this record I learned that I’m allowed to influence myself instead of taking in anyone else’s ideas. I learned to completely trust what I see and hear in my head, and I stuck with that and just focused on creating what I love the most: something real and raw and ugly and beautiful.”
