The beautiful and beautifully sad "Raw Stuff" by Didirri (Official Music Video)

"I skipped Christmas"

Raw Stuff by Australia's Didirri will hit everyone who hears it in different ways. Sure, this seems like a silly thing to say. I mean all songs and forms of art are impressionistic. Music are sonic Rorschach tests that we cast our own feelings on but maybe Raw Stuff amps up the emotional pliability. It maybe Didirri's voice that is so full of emotional gravitas as to be universal or maybe it is the melody and absolute clearness of the message. There is no vagueness, no poetry that is hard to decipher. Apart from the personal aspect, that Didirri's mirrored other is named Rachel... we all have a Rachel. The song feels raw with little production flourishes, stripped and bare with timeless reflections. It hearkens back to those kinds of sad pop songs, the stuff of early Elton John.
Beautiful and beautifully sad. See the Press notes below to know the back story.

-
Robb Donker 



THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

True to its name, “Raw Stuff” captures an unspoken, universal experience. It’s a song about a time when two people that, despite the closeness, are unable to open up to each other. Fortunately, the story and the song both find a resolution:

“For the first time in my life, I was skipping Christmas.

I was feeling very, very guilty about it. My passion for creative work had taken over too much of my life, so there I was, on the other side of the planet.” Didirri says.

“Though I was pursuing my creative goals, I was far from my family and friends. It was difficult to open up to someone I cared about back home. I couldn’t explain the mixed bag of emotions that was weighing me down so I gave up on the song quickly. It didn’t feel finished.

Two years later I’m in the studio… the phone rings and it’s the person I had felt cut off from that year I skipped Christmas. They said they had felt the same, and had found it hard to open up as well. And that they were skipping Christmas this year.

I instantly remembered the half-written song I never finished, and suddenly it all made sense. Part two.

Raw Stuff instantly falls into two parts. The first half is my side of miscommunication, and the second my reaction to hearing they felt the same.”

Raw Stuff was written and later recorded in Johanna, Victoria. In November, Didirri was drawn to return to the same space once more to shoot the music video. The stunning landscape around the house, provides a poignant depiction of the beauty of nature, the complexity of returning home, and the rawness we feel when landscapes and relationships once familiar are no longer the same.

"As we all watched our beautiful landscapes around Johanna, the sister towns not that far away were burning a few weeks after in December.

To hear of so many people losing their homes, of lives lost (both people and animals) broke our hearts while editing. We found that the more we went on, the more of that landscape needed to be included.”

Didirri will be playing SXSW and his debut headline shows in the US in March before touring Australian in April/May.

Didirri, indie folk, piano, Raw Stuff, Austrailia, Johanna Victoria, singer songwriter, relationship song, composer, folk