‘WATCH ME’
AT THE AGE of 18, Tash Sultana was given a high school assignment to list lifetime goals. As it turned out, the young Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist had it all mapped out. “‘I want to get a record deal, and I want to headline music festivals around the world,’” Sultana recalls writing. “And all of that happened by the time I turned 21.”
Before that, though, Sultana busked on the streets of Melbourne and played open-mic nights long past teenage curfews. But this was no solo folkie affair. Sultana — who identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronouns they and them — complemented their dramatically expressive voice with a penchant for gnashing, big-time electric guitar solos, and perfected a dazzlingly fresh approach to rock and R&B by using looping pedals to create hypnotic, guitar-based soundscapes. “I just wanted to rip through things with my own flair,” Sultana explains. “There’s no point trying to copy somebody, because it just wastes time. You’ve heard that all before. I was always set on the idea of being my authentic self, and I didn’t really need any other musicians to do my thing. My sound was my truth.”
That singular
