With a past full of achievements and a future full of big plans, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Paula Punch had the time to sit down with me and chat about creativity, becoming yourself, and her imminent album.
Anyone who ventures out to look for coffee in Sydney’s leafy inner-west suburb Annandale would be spoilt for choice. On every corner of its gridded streets is the potential for a hole-in-the-wall specialty or esoteric establishment. The main shopping corridor Booth Street is lined with cafes, clothing boutiques, take away shops, and the North Annandale Hotel. It’s a welcoming place, perfect to spend an afternoon in and feel middle-class, even if you’re not.
On a sunny late-spring afternoon in 2018 I stopped in on a café on Booth Street with a friend, on our way back from a day at the beach. While we were waiting for our takeaways, I noticed that there were racks of clothes and tables of accessories laid out on the basement level. I ventured downstairs and was greeted by Paula Punch, Inner west-based entrepreneur, owner of The Urban Underground, musician, and, as we worked out, mother of two men I went to university with. That afternoon I purchased her self-published album, more as a way of appreciating the kindness she shared with me over the course of about twenty or so minutes. On my drive back Southwest, I popped the CD on. She was actually good. She was actually really good.
Three years later, Paula Punch’s latest single “Full Moon Rising” is in its third week in the Top 10 of the Country Music Charts, pinching the no. 4 spot from Troy Cassar-Daley’s “Back on Country”. I mention this not to foster competition, but to emphasise the power of Paula’s track, reaching the same height as someone attached to a major label, with their marketing engines and connections to DJs. The cover of “Full Moon Rising” signals its overt country roots, featuring Paula dressed as an elegant highwaywoman photographed by Tim Bauer. Musically, the song is grounded in that same sound, driven by Hammond-style keyboards, a jangling acoustic rhythm line and punctuated by a reverb-heavy guitar. The lyrics speak of transformative change and rediscovering personal power, to spite or perhaps in spite of pressure and heartbreak: “Last time you saw me I was older / Now I’m lightning on the shore”. While it’s laden in coastal imagery, the track evokes a long night-time drive across rolling hills, hopefully moving far away from your problems, or a problematic ex.
“I’m a storyteller, I love telling stories,” Paula tells me, picking at a slice of banana bread. As one would expect from someone who has decades of experience in the fashion industry, she’s impeccably dressed. “I create this whole story from a slither of an idea, but the slither is real. It’s coming from an authentic spot.”
We’re in another Annandale coffee shop, appropriately but coincidentally Western-themed. Of course, things are very different to 2018. The Urban Underground has long shut, and thanks to Covid-19, most of Paula’s stock is piled up in the hallways of her family home. Sydney’s on-again off-again shutdowns and lockdowns last year gave her the opportunity to finish off her upcoming album Song to the Trees at Electric Avenue Studios, the Punch family business. According to her website, Song to the Trees has a lot of stories to tell, listing “metaphors that speak of change, cycles, disruption, decline, growth, birth, rebirth, love, and metamorphosis.” Paula speaks of nature as the through-line passing between all these concepts. “It’s about expressing who I am and how I feel in music, and that I suppose is that metamorphosis, that change, and that blooming. Everybody blooms at different times. Some people bloom in their twenties. I feel as if I’m blooming later in life, and that feels good.”
As Paula recounts her journey to music, it becomes apparent that nature has enmeshed itself in more than just Song to the Trees but has been a reoccurring motif in her biography. She received her first guitar in primary school, learning to play Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” and The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” soon after. She was a prolific poet performed in school productions. When she starred as Dido in her school’s performance of Dido and Aeneas, the teacher tutoring her in opera warned her against going into pop music, insisting that it would ruin her voice. Paula’s opera career took her all the way to perform at the Sydney Opera House and undergoing training with the late Peter Seymour. Paula was being encouraged on many fronts to follow her considerable talent into opera.
However, when Paula went into the studio to record demos of some of her favourite songs—ironically one of them being Linda Ronstadt’s “I Never Will Marry”—she met a man she would later marry, producer Philip Punch. “He was giving me tips about singing, saying ‘where’s your natural voice?’ And I replied ‘What? This is my natural voice!’ And he said ‘That’s your head voice. Where’s your throat voice?’ I blame him,” she adds with a laugh. “He ruined my opera voice.”
Opera’s loss was to be everyone else’s gain. Paula split her time up between studying biotechnology and microbiology, developing a passion for the natural world, and studying fashion design at night, all while carving out time to play with her university band. Unhappy by the selection of jobs in science available to her after graduation, Paula turned to fashion and worked in several positions from buying, to wholesale, and later quality control. It was only when her employer, Grace Bros., went to Melbourne and she took some time away to start a family that she finally married her poetry and music and began to write songs. Her passion for the environment and desire to contribute to its protection were brought into sharp focus at this point. “When you have children, you become very aware of your environment around you and think about their future,” she tells me. “You’re in a creative mode. Everything about the world you live in becomes important.”
When David Jones was acquired by the South African Woolworths Group in 2014, Paula says she was faced with a decision. Instead of continuing to work in big retail, she decided to step away from the corporate ladder. “After leaving DJs I decided to do my own thing. In other words, I decided to be creative,” Paula tells me regarding the establishment of the Punch Park brand, which today covers not just her music (published under the Punch Park label) but also multiple fashion and accessories brands. “But, again, as soon as I stopped [working] full-time, the music came up, and to the detriment of my fashion.”
After plugging away at live gigs for years, Paula released Don’t Look Down in 2018, produced by former Electric Avenue sound engineer Robin Gist. Gist, of 80s and 90s pop group Girl Overboard, has since gone on to perform on co-produce Song to the Trees. Don’t Look Down was followed by 2019’s EP Lost Horizon Sessions. Featuring Paula’s vocals and a lone acoustic guitar, Lost Horizon Sessions takes on a more melancholic tone, even if its lyrical content is not exclusively broadcasting doom and gloom. While it could be read as a pre-emptive glance into the bleak isolation of 2020, the EP was recorded ten years prior to release, before Paula started her own business.
Paula has also organised and contributed to a community of Sydney-based singer-songwriters through the Punch Sessions, performed at Marrickville venues Django Lounge at Camelot and The Gasoline Pony. It was at Django that Paula launched the first single from Song to the Trees (“Fire in the Hull”) in December last year. She’ll return to Django on the 15th of April 2021 on a double bill with The Marvellous Hearts.
I ask Paula what’s next after her gig, and she overflows with plans. They’ll be one more single from the album, a re-recording of a previous track called “We Fall Apart”. Following that, Song to the Trees will launch with a live event. She says she has a lot more material to record and release, enough to keep her going for quite some time. She hopes to open a retail/creative space soon, stocking not only Punch Park merchandise but also allowing room to showcase other designers, reintroducing the teaching and mentoring elements that have had a presence in her professional life for a long time. She’s also interested in producing other artists at Electric Avenue Studios, which sounds like it’s just got some hot new kit in that she’s excited to play around with.
When I left Paula that afternoon, she encouraged me to come along to her gig at the Django Lounge. I’m extending that invitation to all of you. As I walked back to my car, the bright Annandale sun shone down on the small suburban gardens, and on hundreds of flowers, all at different stages of blooming.
Paula will be performing at the Django Lounge @ The Camelot on Thursday 15 April, 2021. Tickets can be found here.
Paula Punch’s music can be found on her website, Spotify, and YouTube. She can also be found on Facebook and Instagram. You can shop Punch Park online and find it on Instagram. Electric Avenue Studios can be contacted via their website.
definitely something. 