“Time is on our side” sings Natalie Walker on the track “With You” from her album of the same name, and time is indeed on Walker’s side. Walker moved to Philadelphia from the Midwest to be in critically acclaimed trip-hop group Daughter Darling, but her fortunes changed and Daughter Darling disbanded soon after the release of their Portishead inspired 2003 album Sweet Shadows.

Walker moved on and in 2006 released her solo debut, Urban Angel. Angel featured the song “Quicksand,” which was remixed by the Thievery Corporation and found a home everywhere from Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette to television shows such as "Ugly Betty" and "Grey’s Anatomy". After the success of her debut, Walker needed to up her game on With You and she greatly succeeded. The electronic flourishes of Urban Angel are still present but under a more new wave sound. The sound of Walker’s voice is haunting, beautiful and reminiscent of another female indie rock sensation, Maura Davis of Denali, while being all her own artist.

Songs like “Over and Under” bring out the big hooks to catch mainstream listeners while “Pink Neon” sounds like VNV Nation sequencing electronics to go with post-rock legends Elliot with a heavenly female voice as the cherry on top. With You has something for everyone, and sooner or later everyone will know. We talked to Walker about her move to Philadelphia, the breakup of Daughter Darling and what it’s like to use music as therapy…

Phrequency:  I read that you answered a web ad for a singer wanted. What was it like journeying from Indiana to Philly?

Natalie Walker: I was very naïve when I moved here. Indiana’s obviously extremely different from Philadelphia. There’s a lot of simple minded people. I hate to generalize, but my upbringing was very simple, and there was never any kind of conflict occurring that I had to deal with really. Then I moved here, and people on the east coast in general are quite cold at first I find, and I was very sensitive to it when I first moved to Philly, cause it was in the winter and everyone around here is miserable in the winter anyway, you know the city just kind of shuts down and people get bored. So I hated Philly at first, for probably a good 6 months I just wanted to leave, I didn’t like it. But then I just started to appreciate how people are here, cause it’s very real and people come from all different walks and people have different issues in their lives and it’s okay not to be all happy-bubbly all the time. So I’m certainly a converted Midwestern girl to being absolutely 100% east coast minded and I’ll always be like that. I feel like I’m a Philly girl, which is really cool.

P: So it’s 2003, you’re in Philly, working with two strangers and you record Sweet Shadows. What was that like to be here and working with these people that you met over the internet?

NW: It wasn’t like super-natural. It took a lot of hard work. Travis Fogelman is an atheist, and that was difficult, cause I still considered myself to be spiritual and religious, that’s not something you just do away with, so when I moved here I was still fresh out of Christian college, and he’s like “I don’t believe god exists” and he’s very passionate about his views on atheism, and there was definitely a conflict there.

But musically if kind of worked, I feel like we got pretty lucky with out differences as far as personalities are concerned. We pulled together and made this record happen, but it was strange.

P: Were you in school before your move to Philadelphia?

NW: I was in a really tiny private college in Kentucky. I was raised in a really religious home, and I started to doubt my upbringing, I started to doubt organized religion altogether, and I wanted to go to college and study what I was brought up to believe, cause I thought I didn’t quite understand the philosophy of it. So I went to college for two years and left. I dropped out because I got really fed up, and decided that what I was raised to believe just was not who I am, and I was really lost, I didn’t know where to go from there. So I moved to Philly to just get away and start completely over.

P: What did you grow up listening to?

NW: Bluegrass, gospel, a lot of classical, I wasn’t allowed to listen to pop music so that was out, I was allowed to listen to country. I love bluegrass music, it’s in my blood. My dad plays the banjo; Allison Krause is one of my favorite singers, so I grew up listening to all that stuff.

P: Was your family strict?

NW: Very, yeah. It’s not like I didn’t have a great childhood. I had a lot of fun, we had a big yard, a field behind our house with horses. I just spent a lot of time outside playing. My parents just wanted to raise me in the church, so we went to church 3 times a week. They carry those beliefs and they wanted us to. I had a good childhood; it was very much like a sheltered childhood though.

P: So what led you to disband from that part of your life and discover a new career?

NW: The writing process with Daughter darling was grueling, it took so long, it just took forever to do anything, and I just wanted to get it moving. I didn’t want the next album to take a year, a year and a half to write. I also wanted to go solo. I wanted complete independence from being in a group, and it just wouldn’t have worked. You have a major conflict of interest with someone, and you’re supposed to sit down with them and write, or work with them. It’s just kind of a recipe for disaster, and I just wanted to end it before it got really nasty.

P: It seems just kind of unnatural, to just push yourself in that way.

NW: What we did was good, and it worked, and we were really proud of it and it was wonderful. I just wanted to end it on a happy note, it was like “okay, its awesome that we did this, let’s just not do a record together.” It was totally my decision, they were really unhappy about it, but I had to do what was best for me.

P: What do you think the advantages of working on your own have been?

NW: There are a lot of advantages. I have total creative freedom, I can make decisions for myself, I can create an image, I can just focus on my career and not have to worry about involving a bunch of other people who want to be in a band and want an even slice of the pie.

With that being said I do have a band, and we are starting to write together and it’s awesome, but I’ll always stay a solo artist because I’ve established myself as a solo artist, and they’re all totally cool with that. I’ve always been really fair with my producers, I’ve always been a 50/50 split kind of girl, like “if you put in the work, I’ll give you your fair share.” I’m not one of those people who are like “I’m the solo artist so I get 90% and you get 5.” You know? It’s really important for me to keep the people who are in my life and my career happy, and to keep them engaged and interested in progressing with me. But that being said, at the end of the day I need to keep my best interests in mind. Which is sometimes hard in some circumstances.

P: This is a really hard business

NW: Yeah, I mean, when you don’t like what somebody’s doing you get rid of them and I’ve had to do that on a few occasions, and its never fun. That’s why I’m a solo artist, I don’t have to ask other people what they think I should do, I have to just go with my gut.

P: What are some of the challenges you face while you’re steering the ship on your own?

NW: The biggest challenge has been just paving my own path musically. Trying to reach a point of originality, and a point of making music that just touches people beyond what I could imagine. I want people to barely be able to stand when I perform. I want my music to control people’s emotions when I’m performing. And that’s something massive to aspire for because it’s so hard to create music like that.

Not very many bands have been able to pull it off, and I intend to pull it off eventually. I’m 26, so by the time I’m 30 I’d like to be a really well respected artist in the industry. I want a lot of people to be like “that chick is so rad,” I want to be able to stand on my own in the indie rock climate. Right now I’m getting towards that, I’m moving towards that.

P: So genre wise that’s where you wanna be?

NW: It’s frustrating to get pigeonholed in a genre. People have to understand I moved to Philadelphia when I was 18 years old, I had barely just been introduced to the secular world of music, let alone genres. The genres I had been exposed to at that point were very limited, because I haven’t had that much time to explore what was out there. So I moved to Philly with the fresh influence of Portishead. I feel like Daughter Darling came out with this record at the tail end of the trip-hop movement. I listen to back to it, and I’m like ‘oh my god I was so young.'

I met up with the owner and CEO of Durado and we were talking about what made sense for me if I wanted to go solo. Electronica of course, why not? Jumping from a Daughter Darling album to a solo indie rock album was just not going to be a good thing for me.  It just wouldn’t have made sense. So I made Urban Angel. Then for the next album I was creating more commercial type music just to do it, just to say that I had some tunes that were catchy and fun. I was in a lighter spot in my life, where I was just like “screw it, I'll just make some stuff that’s more lighthearted.” I felt like Urban Angel was pretty heavy, just like lyrically kind of heavier and really thoughtful.

So half of With You is catchy, poppy, and the other half is like Urban Angel, like pretty, organic, but electronic still. But very deep, thought provoking stuff or at least very personal. I moved on to finding what really moves me, which is indie rock, with very simple song structures, really strong melodies, strong climactic points in the songs. Sigur Ros type stuff. I just had to find a formula that gave me the feeling that I was trying to get. It takes a long time to do that, some people get lucky and get it right off the bat, but its taken lots of work for me to perfect the sound that I want for the rest of my career. But I consider myself kind of lucky that I’m dipping into that now and I’m still pretty young, so maybe ill be 50 and still releasing records.

P: In terms of the records you've put out, you can call it electronic, you can call it catchy or poppy, but they’re all intense and kind of dark. Do you ever find yourself exhausted when you’re finished recording or writing?

NW: Sometimes, a couple of songs. There’s only been a couple of songs that have been really like therapy for me. Not all of my songs are really emotionally draining. It’s kind of like just getting out and then I feel more of a sense of relief than exhaustion.

P: How did With You measure up to your expectations in terms of writing, recording, the effect it had when it was released?

NW: It was fine. A second album’s really difficult, its tough. Especially if your debut is really super-duper solid and does really well. It’s hard to write a second record. I’ve always been really adamant about keeping my feet planted and seeing things for what they are, and not expecting too much, cause I’ve done that before. Urban angel I was like this everyday for six months, I was like “what’s going to happen.” It takes so much patients and persistence and years sometimes that you can’t think about it, you’ll go crazy. I just made sure I released a record I stood by. Do I think the record is freaking genius? No, I don’t. Do I think it’s my best work that Ill ever put out? Absolutely not. But that’s the cool thing about what I do, cause I can keep releasing records until I get it right. I don’t take it too seriously, its all like pieces of the puzzle to my life. I stand by it, it’s great, it’s a fun record. I hope people like it, if they don’t I hope they like the next one, if they don’t like that one I hope they like the next one. You know?

P: That’s a good way to look at it.

NW: And eventually it would be great to get to a point where almost everybody has a favorite record that I did that they like, that they might not like the other one. I’d like to get to that point so I can expand my fan base beyond trip-hop and electronic listeners, but still keep them into consideration.

P: While we’re on the topic on distribution, you’ve been had really good luck getting your songs placed in television and film. How do you think that’s affected your career?

NW: It’s pretty grassroots, I’ve always had a pretty realistic view of it, I have to kind of keep things in perspective. It’s definitely  great exposure. A career maker? I don’t think so, unless you have a whole song played at the end of a really well hyped movie or something.

They’re watching their favorite show and they hear my voice, the brain remembers that voice it becomes familiar with my voice, even if its not Natalie Walker and my face flashing up on the screen.

The more people hear my voice, the more familiar they become, and eventually they’ll be like “who is that? I’ve heard her voice on Grey’s, Ugly Betty, it was on 90210, it’s been everywhere, who is that?” and I think that’s how every little bit helps.

P: Has Philly been a good breeding ground for what you’ve been working on, has it inspired you in any way or had an affect on the way you think and write?

NW: Yeah, just the atmosphere here is pretty awesome, and it’s so close to New York City, I spend a lot of time up in New York, it’s equally as inspiring. The east coast in general has helped develop me as a human being, and to see the world as it really is. I love it, I feel like if I were anywhere else I would be board and not really write the way that I can now. Philly’s full of amazing artists who show their support. I’ve had the pleasure of working with King Brit, he’s a friend of mine, he’s so supportive and he just stays in touch. We’re talking about maybe doing a track together, he’s done a remix for me, he’s great. Every artist that I’ve met in Philly has been pretty cool and pretty supportive. I don’t get out as much as I would like to in Philly to see shows and whatnot, but the amount of talent here is astounding and great. I think a lot of Philly artists don’t get the recognition that they deserve. There’s so many amazing artists in Philly that just deserve more attention.

P: What do you do in your free time around Philly?

NW: I’m really busy. I work a lot, I go up to New York a lot. When I’m home I have friends that I meet up with. I’m a mom, I have a 5 year old that goes to Green Street Friends in Germantown, so I have to stay close when I am home so I can pick her up and drop her off in the morning. I have a great support system here of other moms who are artists also. So that’s been amazing, we get together for coffee pretty much every morning after we drop the kids off at school and we’ll just talk about art and show support for one another.

We have dinners twice a week where we all get together with out 9 children in a small row home and let them run around while we drink a bottle of wine and cook dinner. It’s really cool none of our husbands can deal with it, so it’s kind of our time to get together and let our kids play and scream. They all have boys so my daughter is very spoiled, she has a bunch of boy-friends. Life is really good, I’m really lucky to have some really amazing friends in Philly, and it’s such a cool city, it really is. It’s easy to hate Philly when you’re in a bad neighborhood, but it makes it all the better when I can wander here and hang out.

You can catch Natalie's show at Johnny Brenda's on October 29th.