How hurt, healing and a hospital piano shaped Emma Louise's best album

Singer-songwriter Emma Louise's first solo album in almost a decade reckons with suffering and salvation. (Supplied: Sam Kristofski)

Emma Louise has been writing music since she was 12 but sharing it with the world hasn't always been easy.

"I've always found the releasing of albums really stressful," she admits to Zan Rowe for Take 5. "But it's different now because I'm happy with who I am."

That's something of an understatement regarding her fifth album, Sunshine For Happiness, a record born from a harrowing period of upheaval but signifying a profound artistic rebirth.

It features the most deeply personal, emotionally revealing songs of Louise's career, processing a period in which she got married, became a mother, got divorced and underwent an intense mental health recovery.

The Australian singer-songwriter selects 'Before and After' tunes to align with her cathartic new labum.

Songs like Beggar and Medicine examine an unhealthy romantic desperation but delivered in gorgeously intimate vocal performances and understated arrangements — all swooning organ, muted rhythm section and swelling strings.

Dust is a folksy rumination on mortality; The Absence of You laments feeling abandoned by the spirit of creativity amid fragile vibraphone and ghostly harmonies.

Growing up in Far North Queensland, Louise achieved success early on.

She was 19 when she uploaded synthpop single Jungle to triple j Unearthed.

It won the 2011 Song of the Year at the Queensland Music Awards and became a breakout hit at home and abroad, charting across Europe thanks to a remix by Berlin DJ Wankelmut.

"My head is a jungle," went the song's hooky chorus. Fifteen years later, it feels like Louise has finally cut a path through the wilderness.

"Most people would laugh, but I didn't laugh, I was like woah. It affected me so much."

Sunshine For Happiness follows Dumb, last year's collaborative album with super-producer (and Future Classic labelmate) Flume, on which Louise explored her autism and ADHD diagnoses over warped electronics.

However, Louise's last solo album was 2018's Lilac Everything, where she boldly pitched her vocals to a lower, unrecognisable register.

The record was produced in Seattle with Louise's then-husband, Canadian artist Tobias Jesso Jr.

"I never wanted to be a producer 'til I heard Emma's demos," the Grammy Award-winning songwriter to the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Adele, Dua Lipa and Harry Styles said at the time.

But the stylistic decision to alter her voice masked Louise's deeper anxieties.

Living in Los Angeles, she became increasingly isolate