featured artist: princess one point five
One of the first things you are likely to notice about Sarah Jane Wentzki is that she is quite short. I would rarely start an article about someone’s low centre of gravity (at least, not one that wasn’t about height generally), except that the ‘One Point Five’ in her band name pertains to just this: her height in metres.
Formalities out of the way, I meet Sarah Jane and partner (in life/band/crime), Richard Andrew, in Adelaide Airport just before their flight back to Melbourne and am quickly forced to reveal that I am merely a creative writing student dressed in journalists’ clothing. Not only have I forgotten my voice recorder, but I am also without any kind of writing implement. Fortunately, this rookie error has occurred with two of the least pretentious musicians I’ve met, as well as some of the nicest.
Princess One Point Five started as Wentzki’s solo project after realising she wasn’t quite avant-garde enough for the media/arts degree she was doing. Her second realisation that her skills as a producer were suffering from ‘option fatigue’ came shortly afterwards and thus it was sometime around 2004/5 that she came together with Richard Andrew (incidentally, it was also around the same time that they started going out, which Wentzki describes as both kind of sappy and hopelessly romantic), whose input fused a perfect sound.
Despite their many successes, such as being shortlisted for the Australian Music Price in 2007 and winning the Qantas Spirit of Youth Award for music in 2005, not to mention the fact that they have just released their fourth album, What Doesn’t Kill You (which, when you consider how many bands put out an EP and then split up, is quite the feat), both members of P1.5 are modest and even self-deprecating about how far they’ve come.
‘We probably should’ve made it by now,’ laughs Wentzki, as Andrew adds that they’ll probably be famous after they break up.
They emphasise the community that has been fostered by the music industry and the friends they have made seem a far, but perhaps also far better, cry from the wrecked hotel rooms and smashed guitars that are often glamourised as the supposed dark side of touring. But this pair doesn’t appear to have any desire for this kind of lifestyle, instead being happy to crash couches and merely hope for a sustainable income and career doing what they love, rather than to be able to hire ‘minders’ to constantly tell them how wonderful they are.
With their recent re-discovery of Andrew’s old vinyl collection, who knows what they’ll come up with next. We may be waiting a while for another album, but with far reaching influences and such an obvious love for writing songs, there’s no doubt that Wentzki and Andrew’s next creation will indeed be wonderful.
Read a review of What Doesn’t Kill You here.
