Melody Pool returns with long-awaited single Lost In Time and a fiercely independent mindset

If there's ever been a singer-songwriter who has encapsulated the classic tortured artist, it's Pool.

Across the Kurri Kurri singer-songwriter's two acclaimed albums, the Americana-influenced The Hurting Scene (2013) and it's fragile folk follow-up Deep Dark Savage Heart (2016) Pool has poured her heartbreak, her sadness and her battles with depression so vividly into her songs that it literally gives you chills.

In almost seven years of interviewing Pool I've never heard her as content as now. So at peace with her music and her life.

And unlike her previous albums, which were released by Mushroom subsidiary label Bloodlines, Pool's in full control of her career as an independent artist.

"Before I felt like I had all this pressure to never make a mistake, so I put all of my trust in other people," Pool says.

"Now I don't care so much about getting it wrong or perfect. I'm having so much fun having the complete creative control of doing everything."

The first taste of Pool the independent artist is the dreamy folk single Lost In Time, which will be released on Friday. A six-track EP will be unveiled early next year.

Getting to this point has been anything but easy.

Over the past four years Pool and her partner Christopher Dale have attempted to record her third album four or five times in their former home, which was situated in a rented tractor shed on a 160-acre property in Quorrobolong.

There was a rock album. There was an exploration with synths, and even fiery political songs like Listen For The Sound and Things Must Change. But nothing was ever completely finished.

"It just never sounded right," Pool says. "I was never completely happy with my performances on it."

The turning point came in July when Pool and Dale were preparing to move out of the tractor shed and it's makeshift studio. Pool decided she wanted one final crack to get the third record tracked.

"I ended up doing that and came up with six songs and they were mainly new ones and Lost In Time was one of them and none were songs I'd tried to put on the album," she says.

"They were completely fresh and from this year. I think that's what made the performances relevant."

Ironically after exploring various musical styles, Lost In Time presents a return to the acoustic folk Pool is best known for from her songs like Henry and Black Dog.

"I don't think I would have ended up there if I didn't go through that first," she says of her aborted albums.

But whereas Pool sounds heartbroken on Henry and at the end of her tether on Black Dog, on Lost In Time she's contented and wiser as she sings, "Love is not an inhale/ Love is an exhale."

However, Lost In Time still came from a place of frustration for Pool. At 31 and with her last album six years old, she feared her time was passing.

"It's hard when you separate yourself from the music industry purposely, but you do also look around and see everyone is releasing stuff around you and you do feel a bit like I am falling completely behind and getting a complex about it," she says.

"I felt stuck all the time. I didn't feel like I had the motivation to do anything, but I also felt I was losing all this time daydreaming about doing things."

In February Pool's father and country music stalwart Alby Pool was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain caused by his lung cancer treatment.

Alby was in ICU for a week and a half and hospitalised for three months before moving into a nursing home. While talking remains difficult, Pool says her father's health has improved greatly.

"He's come so much further than we were told he ever would," she says. "We were told he'd never walk again, that he'd never talk, but he does.

"He's kind of himself again, it's just like having a language barrier."

Naturally her father's health issues brought into focus what truly mattered to Pool. And that was performing and writing music.

"I think that's what has kicked me into gear," she says. "That's why I wrote Lost In Time because I felt I was wasting time all the time and now I feel dedicated to not wasting time.

"Not in a need to be productive all the time, but I need to be at peace with what I'm doing."

Pool has embraced all facets on the music business as an independent artist. Lost In Time was co-produced by herself and Dale and she edited the music video which was shot by herself and Madeleine Becker on iPhone around Newcastle at Glenrock, Dudley Beach, the Bogey Hole and other natural locations.

Pool has also edited all her publicity photos and posters and even screen printed her merchandise.

"I know how I want to be represented," she says. "I know what I'm about. Even if I get it wrong, I don't really care anymore. I'm having a ball doing it and that's more important, I think.

"It's my project. It feels like me now. It doesn't feel like a business. It feels like a creative project."