Tori Forsyth Finds Beauty in the Mess on Self Preservation

Sometimes the best records come from the hardest places. For Tori Forsyth, Self Preservation wasn't so much about protecting herself from the world as learning to live with everything it throws at you.

 Bringing together her country roots, rock & roll instincts and a willingness to confront some uncomfortable truths, it's a deeply personal album that finds strength in imperfection.

There's something about Tori Forsyth that has always set her apart from the crowd. She's never been particularly interested in fitting neatly into country music or rock & roll, preferring to move between the two depending on what the song needs. Her voice has that unmistakable rasp, her writing rarely takes the easy way out, and there's a rawness to her music that makes you feel she's telling you something she actually means.

On her new album, Self Preservation, that honesty takes on a whole new significance. It's a record shaped by some extraordinarily difficult experiences, but rather than making an album about simply getting through them, Forsyth has created something that explores what it means to be human — the contradictions, the mistakes, the anger, the love and those moments when life doesn't turn out anything like you expected.

The road to making it was anything but straightforward. Since releasing her ARIA-nominated All We Have Is Who We Are in 2024, Forsyth has faced a serious car accident, the death of her dog, the end of a long-term relationship and the possibility of losing her father. It's the sort of run of events that would leave anybody questioning where to go next, and for a while she was ready to abandon the recording altogether.

A conversation with longtime producer Scott Horscroft changed that. Rather than walking away from the studio, he suggested making the record might be exactly what she needed. Forsyth decided to go ahead, although she admits the process was confronting and, at times, brutal. Somewhere in those difficult sessions, however, the music began to offer a way forward.

The result is arguably her most confident record, although confidence here doesn't mean pretending to have all the answers. Quite the opposite. Self Preservation is built around accepting that life can be messy, that people are complicated and that trying to present some perfect version of yourself is probably a losing battle anyway.

That idea runs through all ten tracks, beginning with I'm Not God, a striking opener that places Forsyth's weathered voice against piano and swelling strings. It's both delicate and intense, setting the tone for an album that isn't afraid to leave space around the words. From there, Notice The Roses brings things back to acoustic country territory, offering a reminder to pay attention to the smaller things that can get lost when life becomes overwhelming, while Greener Pastures heads further into Appalachian-inspired sounds, complete with the distinctive twang of a jaw harp.

There's a natural connection between these songs and the country and folk traditions Forsyth has always drawn from. The instrumentation might change, but the storytelling remains at the centre. On You And Me, she finds beauty in accepting a relationship for what it is rather than what somebody thinks it should become. It's tender without being sentimental, carrying both happiness and sadness in the same breath.

Elsewhere, the writing becomes more confronting. First Born Daughters Are The Toughest Damn Sons explores the expectations placed on women to be strong, dependable and capable of carrying more than their share, while Dear Me turns inward, offering a reflective conversation with herself. These are songs about identity and the roles we find ourselves playing, sometimes without ever choosing them.

And then the guitars get louder. Guns And Little Girls brings Forsyth's rock instincts to the front, using distorted vocals and heavier production to explore her frustration with the internet and the way it can twist our understanding of the world. Today I Woke Up And Chose Violence pushes that energy further, with rolling bass, bursts of synth and an undercurrent of anger that feels deliberately uncomfortable.

But Forsyth understands that even the darkest subjects don't always have to be delivered without humour. Satan In A Sunday Hat finds her poking fun at her own contradictions, while the closing Nothing Wrong With Me brings the album back to some of its central questions about blame, responsibility, mental health, religion and the complicated business of understanding yourself.

It's a lot of ground to cover on one record, but the different musical styles feel less like changes of direction and more like different sides of the same person. After all, nobody feels the same way every day, so why should every song on an album sound like it came from the same emotional place?

That willingness to move between sounds has been part of Forsyth's career from the beginning. Her 2018 debut Dawn of the Dark established her country credentials and earned a Golden Guitar nomination, while 2021's Provlépseis leaned heavily into rock. By the time All We Have Is Who We Are arrived in 2024, she had found a way to bring those influences together, earning an ARIA Award nomination along the way.

Self Preservation feels like the next step in that journey, only this time there's even less interest in drawing lines between genres.
Recorded over two weeks at The Grove Studios, the album reunites Forsyth with Horscroft, whose production credits include Silverchair, Paul Kelly and Birds of Tokyo. Her longtime band — Matthew Newton on guitar, Zachary Miller on bass and Reece Baines on drums — are joined by Andy Mak on keys, giving the record the feel of musicians working through the songs together rather than trying to polish every rough edge out of them.

That collaborative spirit became particularly important given the circumstances surrounding the recording. Forsyth arrived at the studio carrying the weight of everything that had happened, but found herself surrounded by people willing to help bring the songs to life. The imperfections weren't necessarily problems to fix. Sometimes they were the very things that made the performances feel real.
“When you listen to these songs and this record, you can feel it in the imperfections, the lyrics and the delivery,” she says.

It's a philosophy that makes sense when you listen to the album as a whole. The quiet moments need the loud ones, the humour makes the darker songs easier to understand, and the country influences sit comfortably beside the rock without either having to take a back seat.

Forsyth has also spent plenty of time taking that music beyond Australia, touring extensively through the United States, including an appearance at Nashville's CMA Fest, while back home she's shared stages with artists including Jackson Dean and Wade Forster. Alongside her ARIA and Golden Guitar nominations, she's also collected a Queensland Music Award for Sometimes, her collaboration with Shane Nicholson.

Those achievements are impressive, but Self Preservation feels less concerned with career milestones than with something more fundamental. It's about rediscovering the reasons for making music in the first place, particularly when life has given you every reason to stop.“Making this record reminded me there is beauty in being human, beauty in the mess, the contradictions and everything else in between,” Forsyth says. “Once again, music has saved my life and I hope people listening can hear themselves somewhere within it.”

There's an old idea that great music comes from suffering, but that probably gives suffering far too much credit. What matters is what an artist manages to make from the experience, and whether they're willing to let the listener see something of themselves in it.

On Self Preservation, Tori Forsyth doesn't pretend everything is fine, and she doesn't offer easy answers. She simply lets the songs be as complicated, imperfect and human as the life that inspired them. And that's what makes the record worth hearing.