Asha Jefferies – Desire Is An Angel
Today, Australian songwriter Asha Jefferies releases her new album, Desire Is An Angel, via Nettwerk. Co-produced by Jefferies and Tom Iansek, the album showcases Jefferies’ sophisticated indie rock and folk-pop songwriting. Sonically ambitious yet intimate, it finds her balancing expansive production with deeply personal songwriting. The album will be showcased at headlines shows down the East Coast in November.
The release follows a landmark run for Jefferies, who was recently named Spotify’s EQUAL AUNZ Spotlight Artist for August, joining Spotify’s global EQUAL initiative celebrating and amplifying women in music, with editorial support across the platform and a billboard in New York’s Times Square.
To celebrate the album release, Jefferies shares the video for new single ‘Walrus’.
Speaking about the track, Asha says: “I was on a flight back from Melbourne and a friend suggested I read this book called Delta of Venus and I nearly threw up. It was really scary erotica but I kinda couldn’t put it down. It was like a car crash I couldn’t look away from. It made me feel equally terrified and on fire. I wrote Walrus about that feeling – I felt so dangerously and desperately deep in longing, it was like this heaviness weighing me down while at the same time, feeling so down for anything.”
After releasing her debut album, Ego Ride, in 2024, Jefferies toured the UK, Europe and the US, and supported Courtney Barnett, Soccer Mommy and Hana Vu. She returned to the UK to record Desire Is An Angel with producer Tom Iansek (Big Scary, #1 Dads). Co-produced by Jefferies and Iansek, the album is a showcase for Jefferies’ sophisticated indie rock and folk-pop songcraft. It’s both more sonically ambitious and more intimately personal than its predecessor.
Asha Jefferies wanted to make music that would soften her. As she started writing songs for Desire Is An Angel, Jefferies began listening closely to her desire. We tend to think of desire as stemming from lack, but on her new album, Jefferies depicts desire as an essential force in the development of our self-knowledge.
“It’s less about getting what you want, and more about understanding what you want and why you want it,” Jefferies says. Making the album was a transformative process, she adds, “It has taught me how to feel more confident and comfortable within what I desire. I think before, I was quite timid and hesitant to want things.”
Jefferies explores her former tendency to silence desire on the album’s first single, the symphonically-adorned ‘Backwards Baby’. A similar effort to stamp out desire shows up in ‘Cool Guy’, a crescendoing alt-country song that starts out sounding like an intimate voice memo and ends sounding like the sort of power ballad that could bring lighters into the air in a packed arena.
On the meditative title track, Jefferies draws attention to desire’s spiritual dimension. “Desire is an angel, I can’t turn it off,” she sings. On ‘Art of Suggestion’, one of the record’s most classic-sounding pop songs, Jefferies plays with the imaginative potential of desire.
On ‘Lilo & Switch’, a song that recalls the punchy and emotive indie rock of Soccer Mommy and Lucy Dacus, Jefferies illustrates how desire goes to the core of our being. “I wanna listen,” she sings. “Wanna reach some wisdom.”
At the centre of Desire Is An Angel is Jefferies’ voice, which never sounds formal or abstract, even when she flaunts her vast vocal range. Every line is delivered with emotive intent, with Jefferies occasionally attenuating vocal phrases or shifting into a conversational tone to better evoke the complex feelings being explored.
The album is by turns raw, sympathetic, elated and erotic. But the ultimate effect of listening to Desire Is An Angel is a softening. “It’s a way of processing my life as well, to digest what I really want and look at what that might mean,” Jefferies says. “I’ve learnt that I can give that to myself.”
DESIRE IS AN ANGEL TOUR DATES
Sat 7 Nov – Black Bear Lodge, Meanjin/Brisbane
Sat 14 Nov – The Bridge, Djaara/Castlemaine
Thur 19 Nov – The Evelyn Hotel, Naarm/Melbourne
Thur 26 Nov – OAF Gallery, Eora/Sydney
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