Winten on the Sounds and Spaces that Inspired 'Waving To My Girl'

Winten’s debut album, Waving to My Girl, is one of the year’s most moving and heartfelt surprises. The Melbourne/Naarm singer-songwriter released her debut single ‘Anything You Like’ in November 2022, introducing listeners to her composed navigation of complex emotional territory. It’s one of several singles to appear on the album, alongside ‘Bad Ones’, ‘Violet Town’, ‘Holidays’ and the title track.

Winten will head to Meanjin/Brisbane in early September for Jet Black Cat’s Sonic Boom festival before Waving to My Girl gets its official launch at Collingwood’s Gasometer Hotel on Thursday, 21st September. Here, Winten discusses the experiences and phenomena that inspired and shaped her debut album.

Winten: Waving to My Girl

Sounds

Bridgette Winten: I listened to Adrianne Lenker’s Songs and Instrumentals a lot while working on the album. Her music feels very meditative and raw and I love her freeform, sprawling approach to lyrics and instrumentation.

A song I also had on high rotation throughout the writing and recording process was Angel Olsen’s ‘Sister’. I’m so inspired by this piece of music – I could listen to that chord progression and melody until I die. I also can’t get enough of the unravelling instrumentation towards the end of the song.

Voice memos are a big one for me. I have about 50 cursed and non-cursed song ideas going at all times so it’s safe to say these were referenced a lot and haunted my dreams constantly.

Spaces

Winten: It seems to be a consistent habit of mine to find a comfy nook out front of each house I live in to make my thinking spot. I lived in an old Brunswick sharehouse when I wrote most of these songs and would come home from late night cinema shifts and sit at the wrought iron bench just outside my bedroom window. Lots of song ideas started there.

Not long after, I moved into a new house with a ground level balcony attached to my bedroom. There’s a mandarin and magnolia tree as well as bunches of wildflowers in the front garden. They were really beautiful to look at while thinking about my recording – and life – intentions.

I worked at a beautiful, old cinema in the city at the time most of these songs were written. All the rooms had different coloured walls and red velvet seats. I loved the romantic and calming feeling of walking around the building late at night after everyone had gone home.

The Thornbury backstreets/suburbia will always have my heart. I love looking at the silver princess trees with their slinky branches and firework flowers and generally how life moves around me when my mind needs a bit of grounding.

Objects

Winten: My beautiful 1966 Guild Starfire that I bought a month after we started tracking for the album. I immediately fell in love when I played it for the first time – it sounds like honey and has a huge amount of character. I think it really helped me to connect with myself.

Consolations by David Whyte – a friend recommended this book to me and it’s been a primary navigation device in terms of processing heavy/intricate emotions and trusting the universe throughout the writing, recording and releasing stages.

One of my favourite excerpts is, “Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given; gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.”

I brought a lucky rhyolite stone with me to every recording session – though, I never told anybody about it for fear of killing the magic. It’s said to assist with self-confidence and inner strength, but if nothing else, it was a calming ritual to turn it in my palm whenever I felt overwhelmed.