Camille Trail River Of Sins CD

There was one word off the table when Camille Trail went into the studio with producer Shane Nicholson to record her debut album: pretty. She didn’t want it anywhere near her rootsy country folk. Didn’t want it said, or even thought. “I don’t like pretty things. He’d play a guitar and say is that too pretty and I’d say yep, too pretty,” says Camille. “I don’t like shiny things, I like it to be raw and vulnerable and I wanted to make my debut album a bit more of a statement.” And that statement was in line with songs that might haunt you, that will certainly leave a mark on you from what she calls “a sit down with a whiskey kind of album”, full of hurt and sins.

If keeping the pretty away was key, so was busting up a few other expectations. While she’s a country singer who actually grew up in the country, on her family’s cattle farm a couple hours out of Rockhampton, if you’re expecting songs about utes, boots and tractor chutes, you’re on the wrong beast. Instead the music she grew up with was Chuck Berry (“I was obsessed with him and that era”), Credence and Fleetwood Mac; the music she fell in love with was Shane Nicholson, a whole lot of blues, and then gospel.