Performance

Tag Along: Scott Spark in The Studio

TEDxSydney 2014 · 26 April 2014

Scott Spark sings “Tag Along” at TEDxSydney 2014 in a special appearance in The Studio. Scott debuted new songs from Muscle Memory at the Sydney Opera House for TEDx. It’s a gut-punching emotional wallop of an album, driven by old-world piano and strings, set to the backdrop of living history. Scott Spark sings about strategies for outsmarting death, love, wanderlust at Christmastime and life’s variety of screw-ups, while plinking the keys of anything that has them. As showcased on his albums, Fail Like You Mean It (2010) and Muscle Memory (2014), his sound is the impossible love child of Harry Nilsson, Fiona Apple and ELO. Shortly after being unearthed by triple j in 2010, Scott Spark released his debut album Fail Like You Mean It — mixed by Grammy-nominated Tucker Martine (Laura Veirs, Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists, R.E.M., My Morning Jacket, Spoon) — via Sydney-based indie label Other Tongues. Tracks were spun on triple j and community radio stations countrywide, were named Single of the Week (Inpress, iTunes, Rage), and the album made it onto several Best of the Year lists (The Courier-Mail, Rave). He spent the rest of the year playing more than 50 shows throughout metropolitan and regional Australia, including residencies in Melbourne and Brisbane, a special performance at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), and tours with ARIA Award-winning artists Washington and Tim Rogers (You Am I). In 2011, he received the Grant McLennan Memorial Fellowship, enabling him to work on new material between Brisbane’s summertime floods and New York’s Occupy protests. Then in 2012, Scott went on to record his sophomore album, Muscle Memory, in Los Angeles with US-based Australian engineer and sound producer Ben Tolliday, who has worked on productions with Alanis Morissette, Wolfmother, the London Symphony Orchestra and Guy Sigsworth (Björk).

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