Adelaide-born pop sensation Sia Furler has rounded out an outstanding 2010 which saw the release of her highly-anticipated fifth album, ‘We Are Born’. Boasting constant rotation of hit singles, “Clap Your Handsâ€, “Bring Night†and “You’ve Changedâ€, the album was honoured with three 2010 ARIA awards – Best Pop Release, Best Independent Album and Best Video – from an epic seven nominations! Such events truly confirm what was inevitable: Australians have fallen in love with the homegrown songstress turned global star and media personality.
Sia’s ‘We Are Born’ is bold pop record of unwavering consistency, depth, finish, and pleasure. Produced by Greg Kurstin – the man behind recent efforts from Lily Allen, Kesha, Britney Spears, and Ladyhawke – the album is fourteen dazzling songs, full of finessed immediacy and stark power and kinetic rhythmic motion. Yet they sacrifice none of the raw emotionality that distinguished Sia's often more inward-leaning and languorous work, both with the cinematic U.K. duo Zero 7 and on her own previous recordings.
"'We Are Born' is the album I've been wanting to make since 'Colour the Small One'," explains Sia, referring to her 2004 album. "But I wasn't allowed to." She is talking about her former record company's wholesale refusal a while back to accept music from her that left the downtempo universe then at its height of fashionability, and she mentions her earlier albums. "I'm really impressionable about music," she begins. "When I was hanging out with hip-hoppers I made 'Healing Is Difficult' in 2000. When I was hanging out with Zero 7, I made "Colour the Small One'. In 2008 I made 'Some People Have Real Problems' -- because," Sia sniffs, "apparently I was a downtempo artist exclusively.’We Are Born' is the album I've made when I've been hanging out with myself." As a result, ‘We Are Born’ references an eclectic cross section of artists from Blondie and Talking Heads to The Cure and The Pretenders. It even features The Strokes’ Nick Valensi on guitar!
All across ‘We Are Born’, Sia showcased her rich and sometimes slightly distressed soprano. She skats and swoops seamlessly through "The Fight", soothes and gallops in deliriously happy dancefloor number "Clap Your Hands", testifies and charges on "You've Changed", and, in a remarkable interpretation of Madonna's "Oh Father", builds off-hand narrative urgency into kitchen-sink ariatic soul.
From acid-jazz ecstasies to downbeat atmospherics to international pop; from Kate-Moss-on-the-guest-list! to Hollywood and HBO; Sia is a woman of phases. Certainly their vibrant combination got her to the big bold distillation that is 'We Are Born'. "They were real," Sia says of her earlier recordings. "They did happen. They were important to me. They represent real times that I went through. I just try to move out of the way and let whatever happens happen as wondrously as possible. I control nothing."
Described as “bracingly joyous†by The Age and “brimming with originality†by mX, ‘We Are Born’ debuted at #2 upon its release in June. Sia was one of the first to be nominated for Triple J’s coveted JAward, which will be announced on Australia Day 2011, and was the only independent artist to be nominated in 2010 for key ARIA categories Album Of The Year, Single Of The Year and Best Female Artist.