RECORDING a concept album based around the idea of home left Suze DeMarchi with no end of possibilities.
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The Perth-born singer, best known as the voice behind Australian rock band Baby Animals, had a handful of songs in mind for the covers album Home - which is her second solo release - but found herself faced with a countless list of choices when she went to Google for ideas.
"There's hundreds and hundreds of them," DeMarchi says.
"I had a few that I was always going to do like the Sheryl Crow one [Home] and I'd always liked the idea of doing Stevie Ray Vaughn [The House is Rockin' featuring Diesel and Jimmy Barnes] and The Clash [Safe European Home which pairs her with Dallas Frasca], and then I Googled.
"I just Googled songs about home and that opened up a whole can of worms, I was just like 'Whoa, where do I start?'."
Opening the album is a cover of the Crosby Stills Nash & Young track Our House, with Russell Morris on guest vocals ("It was incredible working with him, he's such an iconic singer"), which sets the tone for the record's theme alongside DeMarchi's take on songs such as Adele's Hometown Glory, Ryan Adams' Come Home and Get Home by British band Bastille ("I hadn't heard of them, so that was a new discovery for me").
DeMarchi, 51, first developed the idea of Home about five years ago when she moved her life back to Australia.
"I just thought 'There's so many great songs about home' that I thought it would be really nice to record some of them."
Sydney is home these days but DeMarchi had previously spent 16 years living overseas, mostly based in Los Angeles, where she raised her two children, Bebe and Lorenzo, with husband Nuno Bettencourt (guitarist from US rock band Extreme).
When their marriage ended, Demarchi yearned to return home, not only to be closer to her family, but to give her children the upbringing she had in Australia - and to get back with Baby Animals.
"Definitely, I really missed it [the band]," DeMarchi says. "So that was one of the reasons but mainly I wanted to get back home and get my kids here and give them something other than a Hollywood Boulevard upbringing.
"I really missed the culture, the humour, you know, that whole beach vibe. It's just so laidback.
"Hollywood can be really fun but it can also be just so bleary. Australians, they just don't buy into that sort of stuff, so that was a big thing. I wanted that. That's what I was brought up with, so that's what I know."
DeMarchi is arguably one of Australia's best rock singers. She started out performing in bands in her hometown before heading to London at 21 to pursue a career in music but returned to Australia after becoming dissatisfied with the pop direction in which she was being pushed.
A rocker at heart, she formed Baby Animals in 1989. The band released its debut self-titled album in 1991, topping the Australian charts and producing the now classic songs Rush You and Early Warning.
The band toured internationally with the likes of Bryan Adams and Van Halen, and released a second album Shaved and Dangerous in 1993 but split three years later. It was a missed opportunity for the band which seemed destined for big things.
DeMarchi released a solo album, Telelove, in 1999 but says she has always been a "band girl" rather than a soloist. Even though Home is released under her name, she considers it a collaborative project having recorded with a band (which is also touring with her) and producing the album alongside Shane Nicholson. "I don't like the whole solo thing. I'm not really up for it, I'm definitely a band girl. But I look at this [Home] as a band situation. I don't really consider it a solo record."
She will tour the album in between playing gigs with Baby Animals which is writing songs for its next record.
Baby Animals, Demarchi says, is "like home to me as well". It's something that I know so well and we've had a lot of success with the band and we've got a lot of amazing fans and it's just a really good place to be and I never wanted to give that up," she says. "I always wanted to keep playing but it's sort of hard to manage things from afar so it's just a great thing do have. I'm very lucky that I have this band because people come to our shows still and to me that's just everything. That's how you can stay afloat, how you can keep working and getting inspired."
Suze DeMarchi performs solo at Lizotte’s on October 2 and returns to perform with Baby Animals at Live At The Foreshore in Newcastle on November 1.
