A background in Australian soaps offers a wealth of opportunities, most notably a dalliance with Europop and juggling a career between panto and Saturday morning television. Neither appealed to the canny former Neighbours star Natalie Imbruglia. Instead she has spent the past year working with former Cure member Phil Thornalley and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, to develop her own fresh rock sound which will astound those critics who'd labelled her just another pretty face. "If the label had tried to make me put on some hot pants and sing pop I just couldn't have done that. It's not me and my voice wouldn't suit that," she says. Thornalley, who wrote her addictive debut single Torn, out on October 13, says, "Natalie was someone who was trying to do something other than another pop/R&B/soul record. There are so many artists doing safe pop so it was refreshing to find an artist wanting to do something with attitude and produce a more organic record." In the three years since disappearing from the TV screen as Beth in Neighbours, Imbruglia has deliberately taken time out to allow her profile to die down. Now as removed from her past as she could probably get, Imbruglia's image will be fully reinvented when she tours her country-tinged songs about twentysomething womanhood ­ most of which she has co-written ­ with a band she is currently putting together. Imbruglia, who counts Columbia folk-rocker Shawn Colvin among her favourite artists, adds, "I think I'm an entertainer, but then I think describing it all is bollocks. Creative people are creative people. We're all in one basket. This album is where I'm at. I just want to get on with it and keep getting better. I'm not doing it for any other reason." Always genuinely into music, Imbruglia started out as a singer and rejected a record deal before acting. "It took me a long time to shake off that soap thing and be given the space to do what I wanted to do. At first I didn't think I could really get away with it. Then it's like the opportunity presented itself to me and did I have the balls to do it?" She met her now A&R consultant Mark Fox while searching for collaborators more than a year ago while he was creative director at BMG. "I listened to what she was saying; she wanted to be a developing artist rather than just a singles artist," he says. Fox introduced Imbruglia to Thornalley, whose lengthy career also includes producing Duran Duran, mixing Ash and playing bass for Edwyn Collins. He in turn brought in Godrich Fox, who made Imbruglia his first signing when he moved to RCA, adds, "I've built my own agenda for her. It was never a case of getting a single out; I've been the publisher and the A&R man. It was a case of bringing writers and music to her which would counteract her overwhelming star quality." Imbruglia adds she had interest from a couple of labels but had been most impressed with RCA. "RCA's not seen me as a puppet on a string. They've been behind me 100% and encouraged me to grow as an artist. I've heaped the pressure on myself. I have to," she says. Godrich says the tracks he mixed are not comparable to his previous work with Radiohead.
"It's not really what I do. It was light relief. It's definitely a pop record; very commercial and marketable and with the whole Alanis Morissette thing companies are trying to come up with something for that market." Other connections saw Imbruglia working on tracks in LA with Mark Goldenberg (Eels), in Nashville with Matt Bronleeee and in New York with Mark Plati (Bowie, Dee-lite). With such names involved, the surprisingly distinctive feel of the album, and Imbruglia's profile, it seems she could become as much a household name as Kylie .As Thornalley explains, "I still think of it as a pop record. Just because it has got attitude does not mean it isn't pop. So often you just think of Stock, Aitken and Waterman as pop. It's just that times change. Maybe that's good."
By: STEPHEN JONES

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