The Australian musician talks about creating her aching, jagged new album of solo piano compositions in the wake of chemotherapy
At the beginning of 2016 Heather Shannon of the Jezabels felt as though “someone had pumped cement into [my] veins”. Her ovarian cancer – diagnosed in 2013 while the Jezabels recorded their second album, The Brink – had returned just as the band’s third album, Synthia, was due to be released. Her chemotherapy treatment scuttled their six-month international tour.
“It was basically the worst day of all of our lives when we couldn’t do that tour,” says Shannon, from her home studio in Coogee, Sydney. But the break from the Jezabels gave the classically trained pianist time to reconnect with her instrument and took her from bed-ridden “cabin fever” to Iceland’s fjords.