Magnetic art-pop alchemist Georgia Fields conjures a mesmerising spell of love and longing on her third album Hiraeth, out now. The record takes its title from a Welsh word with no direct translation, which is understood to mean profound yearning for a home you can’t return to as it no longer exists.

From stories of motherhood, infidelity and death, to rapturous anthems of healing and home – at its core, Hiraeth is an ode to the many languages of longing. Fields’ distinctive vocal brings to mind the piercing, understated clarity of Metals-era Feist, and the shoulders-back power-stance of Sharon van Etten.

The album opens with lead single Find Your Way Back, and it’s hypnotic, low-fi vocal loop. Fields’ percussive “shk-shk-shk” was a demo placeholder intended to mimic a tambourine, but when drummer & percussionist Josh Barber came on board to produce, he convinced Fields that it should remain. This collaborative and experimental crafting of sounds became a signature palette of the album.

Hiraeth arrives hot on the heels of five singles released over a 12-month period – each track showcasing Georgia’s razor-sharp songwriting craft, as well as the symbiotic creative partnership between Georgia and producer Josh, which spans the broader album.

Find Your Way Back depicts a childhood characterised by constant moving, where a sense of belonging is perpetually out of reach. Persuasion follows close behind, with it’s smouldering, soulful slow-burn and fuzz guitar. Strident synth flourishes further elevate the warm, rich and rock-solid rhythm section. The band provides a sense of gravity, anchoring Fields’ insouciant sense of mischief as she sings – with tongue planted firmly in cheek – “I’m looking at him but I’m thinking of you”. Fields’ vocal consistently steals the show, sashaying from a smokey, velveteen purr to a powerfully commanding wail.

Persuasion is about the magnetic pull of desire; the rubber-willed heart that coaxes us, despite our best efforts, back to that person we know is trouble. The singer-songwriter explains: “I have plenty of songs about getting my heart broken, but I’ve done my fair share of misbehaving. I wanted to write an anti-hero pop song.”

Hiraeth was recorded over a 6-month period in producer Josh Barber’s own studio – a 1930s converted church at the back of his rural property in Mollongghip, Victoria. “When you arrive, you walk up through the veggie garden, past the pine trees”, Fields recounts. “I swear to god: on my first visit, a golden-brown hare lolloped out from behind a rose bush. It’s like a postcard.”

Fields and Barber performed almost all the instruments across the album, with Jules Pascoe (Jazz Party; Husky) contributing bass guitar, and the Andromeda String Quartet making an appearance on three tracks.

“Collaborating with Josh was a dream, because because he brings a huge breadth of skills to the table”, she says. “He’s a world-class drummer, a highly creative multi-instrumentalist, and a meticulous sound nerd. And because we were working out of his workspace, rather than hiring an external studio, we had daily access to his entire cache of drum sets and percussion.”

That playful approach to crafting sounds and layering rhythms can be heard right across Hiraeth – from Persuasion’s odd-ball bridge which pulses with castanets, cowbells and chimes… To the ghostly terracotta garden pots on Holding My Hands Out. Otherworldly, immersive and lush, Holding My Hands Out is about that primal desire we all have to be held. In Fields’ words, “it’s about reaching your hands out for comfort, but grasping at shadows.”

Shadow and light, blood and water, are recurring motifs. A striking solo voice & guitar performance, Water to Water details Fields’ experience of miscarriage with astonishing candour, inspired by Mizuko Kuyo – a Japanese buddhist ceremony to mourn deceased foetuses. On In My Blood, Fields explores notions of desire, compulsion, and intergenerational trauma. How A Girl Becomes A Puddle is a haunting vignette of relationship breakdown, and album closer I Saw It Coming (which features a gut-wrenching performance from the Andromeda Quartet) depicts the mesmerising nature of grief. Fields describes heartbreak “like a moon rise on the ocean / a car crash in slow motion… I couldn’t tear my eyes away / I didn’t want to miss the display”.

While many of Hiraeth’s songs peer unflinchingly into darker pockets of the psyche, there is also humour and light. Write it on the Sky neon-lit self-love anthem. Tigress is a joyful and fierce-hearted love song, whose punchy drum-pad samples evoke a hint of buoyant 80s nostalgia. Brimming with effortless, radio-ready hooks and an instantly singable chorus, Tigress has all the hallmarks of pure pop ascendancy. And yet it started as a humble tribute to two friends.

Fields explains: “I wrote Tigress as a gift for my mates Holly and Lauren – essentially this song is their love story. At some point I started slipping the song into my live set, and I began to get comments about it pretty consistently after each show. It felt like the story went beyond Holly and Lauren, and became something more transcendent: the vulnerability yet ferociousness of a Tiger-hearted devotion.”

Hiraeth was released on all streaming platforms in November 2022.