Australian artist Montaigne on creating their latest album, ‘Making It!’

“I had it on my bucket list to collaborate on something with David Byrne, but I never imagined it would be for my project…”

Sydney artist Jessica Cerro, known to many by their stage name Montaigne, has been making music for over a decade and in that time has accrued some pretty impressive achievements, including winning an Aria, being a contestant on Eurovision and collaborating with some of Australia’s biggest artists (Hilltop Hoods, Alice Ivy and Urthboy, just to name a few).

This Friday, the 27-year-old is dropping their third album after a long three-year wait. Making It! features a track list of 10 songs that run the gamut from electronic to art pop, with smatterings of Charli XCX-esque PC music moments.

Get better acquainted with our favourite artists at FJ’s Music section.

Made and produced at the height of the pandemic alongside Dave Hammer – who’s worked with the likes of Genesis Owusu and Lime Cordiale – Montaigne explains that this new anthology is a “product of the period” with almost nothing played live, creating a sound that’s both familiar yet disparate to the music they’ve released previously.  

“It’s far more electronic than anything I’ve done in the past. I mean, Complex [their second album] was sort of heading there, but this one is planted firmly in that ground,” says Montaigne.

“In Glorious Heights [their debut album], I was grappling with really weird relationships – intimate relationships – and they were all really bad for me. At the time I was not fully aware of that.

“Complex was a similar vibe, like dealing with heaps of shit mentally and interpersonally… and now I feel like I’ve sort of crested that hill and I know myself very well and know what I want and need.”

Making It! continues Montaigne’s tradition of musical collaborations, this time with a smattering of iconic international artists, including Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne, who Montaigne expresses undying love for.

“It feels very lucky that there is a legendary music artist out there that will just reply to your cold email having never heard of you before,” Montaigne tells me.

“I had it on my bucket list to collaborate on something with David Byrne, but I never imagined it would be for my project, I thought it would be doing something like theatre or a play… it’s just extremely cool.”

Throughout the production of Making It!, Montaigne and their producer Dave created a more than 10-hour-long playlist featuring every influential track and song that came to mind.

“Dave and I have this big Spotify playlist of every song I’ve ever mentioned while we were doing Making It! that was either a reference or that we were just enjoying together,” they explain.

“It’s very eclectic, there is so much going on there and there is so much that is different from each other, but I think it does sort of make that album make sense though because as cohesive as I think the sound is, it is still extremely eclectic, both in like the sort of energy that each song carries and also the production.

“We were just stuck in our houses and couldn’t go anywhere, and we were just really enjoying this music that was made to be danced to, so [we said] let’s do that [on the album] but in pandemic conditions.”

Montaigne gave fans a snippet of what was to come when they released the single ‘Now (In Space)’ in 2021. Since that time, they’ve released four more singles from the upcoming album, with ‘Gravity’, ‘Always Be You’, ‘Die B4 You’ and ‘Make Me Feel So…’, which features Icelandic artist Dadi Freyr.

One of the standout tracks on Making It! is ‘Sickcrydie’, a hyper pop bop spawned from a depressing concept. “It actually started with a Tweet. I remember saying something like ‘I want to write a song called “Sickcrydie” about having a panic attack and just like the terrible bodily, visceral feeling you get when it happens, but I want it to be a hectic dance track, like something really pumping’,” they recall.

“I took the idea to Dave and was just like ‘This is the vibe, I want it to sound like having a panic attack but funny’ because that’s the only way to, you know, cope. You need to either take the piss or see the humorous side of it.”

For someone so young, Montaigne’s career has already seen them navigate some incredible highs and lows, but it seems they’ve now landed in a place where they’re more sure of themself – and their art – than ever before. 

“My tastes have changed but I am more or less still into the music I listened to when I was 18, but now I’ve sort of added this new palette and this new taste to my interests, stuff that I previously shunned I am now fully into and embracing and that’s contributed to the sound of my record now, absolutely.”

Listen to Montaigne’s new album Making It! here.