New Buffalo Issue #25

Love for music — not Aussie stardom — is what drives Sally Seltmann on her U.S. release, The Last Beautiful Day

By Emili Vesilind
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 4:05pm

In her native Australia, Sally Seltmann, a.k.a. New Buffalo, is already somewhat of a star. Her first full-length endeavor, The Last Beautiful Day, was named one of Rolling Stone Australia’s “Top 50 Albums of 2004” and she is hitched to Darren Seltmann of the electro-sample band the Avalanches (who helped record her first LP, About Last Night.) But stardom is the last thing on the 29-year-old chanteuse’s agenda. “Celebrity is not why I’m driven to do this,” Seltmann says. “I really love making music.”

Seltmann recorded The Last Beautiful Day — a pretty amalgamation of Juliana Hatfield-style indie rock, dreamy electro beats, and big band samples gleaned from her husband’s vast collection of old records — by herself, in the couple’s spare bedroom-cum-recording studio. She was adamant, this time around, to record on her own — without her husband’s help — to dispel rumors that she is not some geniusly sampled creation of her husband’s. “I think that’s why I produced it on my own,” she says, “to prove that I could do it.”

Talking with Seltmann, you get the sense that she has been through a thousand similar conversations in the past week. But if she is precociously jaded, it may be because she has been one of Australia’s “Next Best Things” for years — only now having the opportunity to make good on all the pesky hype. Her first EP, About Last Night, was released on Modular/EMI in 2001 and took her to Los Angeles to record with one of Björk’s producers, Jake Davies. British label Heavenly was funding the excursion but lost interest in the middle of the collaboration, scared off by flagging sales of the EP in Britain. It’s been widely reported that Seltmann was dropped by the label when, in fact, she was simply being courted by them when they pulled out. “Heavenly released my EP, but that was it,” she says. “When they decided not to work with me, I found that it gave me confidence and made me want to prove myself.”

She first became enamored of the 1930s and ’40s music she judiciously samples on The Last Beautiful Day in high school, having been introduced to the now-quirky genre by a favorite teacher. “While making this album, I was listening to Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, and Marilyn Monroe — I like the arrangements and all that crackly,” she says. “And I’ve always really loved bands like Pavement and the Blake Babies.”

Seltmann grew up in Sydney, but moved to Melbourne, where she lives still, after marrying Darren. (“Come Back,” a delicate, guitar-and-vocals track on the album is Seltmann’s ode to her hometown. “It’s about being in love with a place,” she says.)

Though performing live used to unnerve her, Seltmann says she now enjoys the dynamics. “When I first started, I was a bit shy,” she says. Now I play solo and also with a bit of a band.” Seltmann is touring the states this fall, after Arts & Crafts releases her album in the U.S. on August 25.

Despite the hard knocks in the industry, Seltmann is as sincere and hopeful as she is guarded. When asked how she concocted the name New Buffalo, she admits, “I really like that song by Neneh Cherry, ‘Buffalo Stance.’” Her songwriting process starts in her head — to be worked out later on a keyboard. “I write songs a lot when I’m walking on the beach,” she says. “I imagine the instruments and the parts they will play.”