Solo Career (Body Type) Announces Debut Album, Shares 'Venus On Speed Dial' - "Hazy And Alluring" (PAPER Magazine)

Solo Career, the beguiling bedroom-pop project of Body Type’s Annabel Blackman makes a much-awaited musical return with new single and clip, ‘Venus on speed dial’. The synth-driven road song marks Blackman’s first release in four years under her beguiling bedroom-pop guise and comes with news of her debut album Interior Delirium, due Friday, July 11 via Dinosaur City Records. Stream/watch 'Venus on speed dial'. Pre-order Interior Delirium on limited-edition 12" recycled vinyl.

‘Venus on speed dial’ is about the discombobulations of desire, and how wanting someone can so often come at the expense of your own personhood: “This one is dedicated to being messed around by someone and going a bit loopy, and the experience of morphing yourself into whatever you think someone might like you to be,” says Blackman. The song revels in this claustrophobia with distorted synths, fuzzy guitars and Blackman’s disaffected drawl ("What's your idea? / What’s the appeal?”), which swaddles the song in both humour and tenderness.

Solo Career collaborates with director, Gus Macleod, for the song’s accompanying clip, which is a lighthearted extension of the Blackman-designed Interior Delirium album art. Shot entirely in Blackman’s garage – with her father’s help in creating additional backdrops and furniture – the clip repurposes a homemade window backdrop Blackman, too, created, embracing the intimate and slightly surreal nature of the song.

Macleod draws inspiration from his own colourblock crayon drawings and Abbas Kiarostami's short film Le Couleurs, a playful exploration of colour for children. This influence manifests in animated collages of collected snippets, visualised as “little flying bits of consciousness” representing shared experiences and transmitted ideas. While Macleod playfully questions its direct connection to the song, Blackman feels it perfectly captures the track’s themes of lustful dilemmas and stale drama. “It takes a loose enough grasp of the song's ideas to make its own kind of sense,” Blackman shares, “not to mention the outfits and scene changes, two Solo Careers in an Oscar-worthy back and forth about chameleon dating schemes and disappointments, with a Billy Elliot swan lake tribute to boot.”

nterior Delirium, the debut album from Solo Career, is a glorious and sly synth pop record about the absurdity of identity – how we perform for others and ourselves, the puppetry that plays out across culture, and the freak impulses that startle our sense of self. It’s fitting for a project that was borne from musician Annabel Blackman’s interest in the uncanny and reflective possibilities of persona. “The album revolves around awkwardness, earnestness, gripe-picking, lustful stewing, play and self-deprecation” says Blackman. If her first solo EP The Sentimentalist (2021) was a dreamy strut, Interior Delirium is an unruly waltz, where foggy, late-night longing merges with stomping, hilarious, cyborg satire.

Interior Delirium was made in-between tours and sessions for Blackman’s group Body Type, and served as a counterpoint to playing and writing in a band. She was able to explore a radically different mode of making music – where she was free to obsess and fixate, and let experimentation and imperfection be. As Blackman puts it: “Solo Career is part control freak, part embellished mess.” The album was performed, recorded and mixed entirely by Blackman (who also designed the album art) and marks the highly anticipated release of songs she’s been tinkering with for many years.

“I’d pick up an instrument, make a blip or blop and follow the thread until a song took shape” says Blackman. “I started one of the songs almost ten years ago, picked it up and finished it six years later, played it at shows for a couple years, and then got so tired of working on it by myself that I just let the jagged edges be, because polished stuff isn't for me anyway.”

Since the release of her debut EP The Sentimentalist via Dinosaur City in 2021, Solo Career has been met with critical acclaim from PAPER Magazine, NME, KEXP, WFMU and community radio across Australia. Her song ‘Movie’ was featured in Fader’s Best Songs of 2021, and her EP The Sentimentalist was included in The Guardian’s Best Australian Albums of 2021. Solo Career’s thrilling live sets – where Blackman combines the humour and theatrics of cabaret with her stylish, singular synth-pop – has seen her support Julia Jacklin, The Hard Quartet, Gum and Springtime, among others.

Solo Career Interior Delirium

Out Friday, June 11, 2025 via Dinosaur City

1. Beta

2. Venus on speed dial

3. Spring Drills

4. Neo Soul Jazz Afternoon

5. GWD

6. Splenda

7. Is That U?

8. Avatar (featuring Boba Lego)

9. Bed Knot

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