MELODY Moko is approaching the release of her third album Suburban Dream with trepidation.
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And not because of any lack of quality.
In fact, Suburban Dream is undoubtedly the finest work of the alternative-country artist's career.
Given that her 2020 album Two Kids & A Radio received rave reviews and its single Like Hank Would earned Moko a maiden Golden Guitar for best new talent, its a compliment of substance.
Rather it's the raw subject matter on Suburban Dream that has the former Newcastle musician nervous.
"I was frightened writing it, I was frightened recording it and I'm still frightened now with the idea of releasing it because it is so super honest," Moko says.
"Also the possibility of it being divisive is there, because it's brutally honest to a point of maybe turning some people off. But as an artist we have to make a decision somewhere down the line whether we care so much that some people won't like what we do or we want to be really honest with what we do and our fans will come along for the ride."
Moko's prediction proved true. Following her interview with the Herald, the video for the second single Jesus Year was banned in the US. The video depicts Moko bleeding profusely while wearing a crown of thorns.
All but two songs off the 11-track album were written in the space of a week as Moko battled post-natal depression following the birth of her third child, Maisy, in March 2021.
After experiencing the heights of her Golden Guitar success there was the comedown. The stresses of raising three small kids, and without opportunities to perform due to COVID lockdowns, created a sense of claustrophobia in her suburban Brisbane home.
"I wasn't writing, I wasn't performing, I was just trying to get better but there didn't seem to be any light," she says. "I wasn't getting better."
"My husband [Michael Muchow] said to me, 'I think you need to write and spend a week writing your feelings down'. I did and it was the catalyst for getting better.
"It was a really tense time and I think you can hear that on the album. It's tinged with darkness as my view of the world at the time was pretty bleak."
While songs like the pedal steel-tinged Jesus Year and the folksy Not A Child directly addresses the personal anxieties Moko was experiencing, elsewhere she clinically dissects the unfulfilled aspirations of building a middle-class life of home ownership in the safe and conforming suburbs.
It's brutally honest to a point of maybe turning some people off.
- Melody Moko
On Suburban Dream, Moko sings of the monotony of domestic life, "Seven days in a suburban dream/Seven days wishing I was seen," while The Outskirts is a lament and a celebration of a bad neighbourhood where KFC packets litter the train line and the council doesn't mow the medium strip.
However, Moko's most savage moment, is also the album's finest. On the closing Great Australian Dream, Moko channels a young Martha Wainwright with rage and humour.
"If I'm gonna die here at least there's lots of things to buy here/ I'm gonna get me a big TV screen and die in the Australian dream," she sings.
Moko says suburbia is often overlooked by songwriters in favour of romanticised notions of rural life and the outback in country music and by the fast-paced excitement of city living in rock and pop music.
But she says "there's so many stories in suburbia" where the majority of Australians live.
"I wanted to write something that people I'm friends with and are in my world could relate to," she says.
"I think we're brought up to accept that we have to live this life of buying a house, working a nine-to-five job, having two-and-a-half kids, two dogs and the things.
"There's so many problems that come along with that dream and chasing and accepting that dream as the only way to live your life. It can really affect your mental health when that's the focus in your life and you don't question it.
"That song [Great Australian Dream] to me is about being able to question why that's important, the great Australian dream, and what are we willing to sacrifice to have those things?"
Music has always been a key part of Moko's life. However, she was a relatively late-bloomer as a recording artist, releasing her debut album The Wreckage in 2017 at 29, while she lived in Newcastle and owned the former The Peppertown Coffee Bar in Mayfield.
The Wreckage was well-received, but the 2020 follow-up Two Kids & A Radio opened the doors of Tamworth and to a larger audience.
Since then she's supported the likes of Troy Cassar-Daley and Ian Moss, which helped further build her fan base.
That new-found confidence helped Moko tackle the more honest and challenging territory on Suburban Dream.
"If I've got a platform, don't I want to be speaking my absolute truth?," she says. "It gave me confidence to do it.
"But with that confidence and being so honest it created some fear as to whether people would accept that? It's a double-edged sword.
"With this record I stopped pandering to what I thought people wanted, and wrote what I wanted."
Melody Moko releases Suburban Dream on Friday. Catch Moko on tour at the Servo Food Truck Bar, Port Kembla (March 24); Stag & Hunter Hotel, Newcastle (May 5); Flow Bar, Old Bar (May 6); Megan Hall, Dorrigo (June 9) and Let's Wing It Festival, White Park, Scone (June 9-11).
