INTERVIEW: Caitlyn Shadbolt talks her third album 'Bloom & Surrender': "I'm always keeping in the back of my mind, is this something people can have fun and dance to and connect with?"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Gympie native Caitlyn Shadbolt recently released her third studio album Bloom & Surrender. Set out as two halves, the album explores the two sides of Shadbolt the artist - the introverted and the extroverted.
Produced by Shadbolt with Matt Smith (Thirsty Merc), she also collaborated with fellow young country superstars Sarah Buckley and Melanie Dyer amongst others across the 10 tracks.
‘Bloom’ is the first half of the album and represents Shadbolt’s extroverted, party side. “Forget trying to be serious, let your inner child out for a moment and dance,” Shadbolt says. Latest single ‘Monsters’ opens the album and is a warm, traditional country-rock track, while ‘Let It In’, co-written with Buckley, is an upbeat funky track that strays more into pop territory.
‘You’re Mine’ is joyful track that sways between acoustic sections and full on pop-rock as Shadbolt sings of her determination to get her crush. Her two collabs with Dyer close off the ‘Bloom’ side of the album - the smooth swagger of ‘Lost on Me’ and the riotous, carefree party tune duet ‘Dumb Decisions’.
The ‘Surrender’ half is the introverted side of the album and is naturally quieter, more introspective which Shadbolt began writing in 2020, mid-pandemic. “I felt like the word ‘Surrender’ really encapsulated the essence of them,” Shadbolt says. “Surrender to having no idea. Surrender to expectations and how you think your life will unfold. Surrender to how you really feel. Just let it happen.”
First track ‘Common Ground’ is a tender love song that sees Shadbolt comparing the ‘common ground’ between her and her lover, despite their different backgrounds.
‘Secret Stories’ is a beautiful piano & guitar ballad, with a discreet shimmering, electronic background, while ‘Run My Race’ is an album highlight, a gorgeous, pared back track guitar track which weaves in elements of soul and gospel. The album ends on ‘Fly On The Wall’, a beautiful yet confronting ballad that tells a story of a woman breaking down after being treated badly by a man. “There's nothing left in her tank / You drove her until she stopped / You kept the engine running / Despite warning lights going off…How dare you ask her if something is wrong / Are you that fucking blind?”
Bloom & Surrender is another delightful, moving and immersive collection of music from Shadbolt. She is an artist that is continually evolving and maturing, and her progress as a writer and artist is clear on Bloom & Surrender. It achieves what it sets out to do incredibly well and gives you the soundtrack for every life moment - your cheerful, party moods as well as the quieter, reflective moments. We recently caught up with Shadbolt to chat more about the creation of the album.
Hi Caitlyn! Bloom & Surrender. First of all, like Corker of a title, absolutely gorgeous. Before we deep dive into the songs, can you talk to me a little bit about the concept behind the album and the gorgeous title?
Thank you! As we all know, the last few years we've spent a lot of time at home, so we've had all this time to really sit back and reflect and do the internal work. And I found that when I was coming to the point of recording this next album, I was like, I've got these songs that are so beautiful, and intimate and vulnerable, but they don't match with the pop country fun radio friendly songs that I also have. So I wanted to find a place for them both, and I thought let’s just put them both on the one record, but do a Side A and Side B. It’s the extrovert and the introvert side of me - we had bloom for the fun, loving upbeat stuff, and then surrender for the more vulnerable side.
You came to our attention with very much this beautiful country pop and I'm loving hearing your sound develop, because I feel like you're experimenting more and more with pop sounds. Do you still feel like you have to maintain that to a point?
Yeah, to some degree. Because at the end of the day, if you're making music that no one really wants to listen to then where do you go? For me, I love playing festivals, I love playing shows and I guess you could say if ultimately I was doing anything, for one reason, it's for gigs - I just love playing live. So I'm always keeping that in the back of my mind, is this actually something people can have fun and dance to and connect with ultimately. So there's always that consideration.
Absolutely. Speaking of that kind of slick pop, ‘You’re Mine’ on the album has such a beautiful production. Can you talk to me a little about this track? I think it's gorgeous.
Thank you! It’s funny, that track was such a journey. When I think about that song, I'm exhausted! I wrote it literally just me in bed on a Saturday night, and I just had the time of my life writing it. I was like ‘this is great song. I've got to record this’, and I sent the acoustic demo to the label and they're like, ‘this is cool, this could be a single, good stuff’. So we went ahead and we recorded it, and it was the first song that my partner and I coproduced together in our studio, and so he's like, ‘it's got to be like this,’ and I was like, ‘no, that's not how I hear it’…there was lots of discovery between how we work! When we finished it, we sent it back to the label and they said ‘no, this is not at all how we imagined it would sound and it's therefore not going to work for us’. So we went back and forth a number of times just trying to find the right place for this song to sit, and ultimately it just ended up being one big fun party and interpret it how you wish!
Oh, that's gorgeous. I always love the stories behind the song, and it’s good to hear the frustrations of an artist in that situation because we can often think it is an easy, breezy process.
Yeah, it's not until you hit that breaking point that you literally have the breakthrough and then it all comes together.
Well, now you’ve got your exciting live set you can turn that song on its head as much as you want. Latest single ‘Common Ground’ you cowrote with the lovely Sarah Buckley, who features on a couple of songs on the album and you’ve collaborated with her before. This is such a beautiful song, talk to me about this one.
I love this song too. I love writing with Sarah Buckley, when you come across a writer that you just fit, the writing session is that easy and you always walk away with great songs. This was just another one of those scenarios, Sarah had this chorus melody, and thought that just sounds so timeless, and just amazing. We had this concept you could say the love story of myself growing up in a country town and my partner growing up more by the ocean. His childhood was surfing, and mine was cows and chooks! But together we both love music and we find common ground in that. I also love that you can also interpret it if you wish as just people in general in society. It's really easy to look at someone and find all the differences, but it's also really important to take the time to say, ‘I want to get to know you and I think we'll actually have a lot of common ground, despite our differences.’
You’re an artist that really collaborates. We have Sarah Buckley, you also have a track performed and written with Melanie Dyer on this album. I imagine these are your crowd because you've all got this country sound. Is that your more or less approach to life, as long as we're making music, it doesn't matter where someone's background is, let's just see what this sounds like?
Yeah, absolutely. And in some ways too, it's great to work with people that are really different to you, because they bring something else to the table that that you don't have. It's cool just to meet anyone and everyone and work with people, creatives especially, because at the end of the day, we've all got something in common. And it's usually a creative, quirky little flair.
With this album, we talked about the dichotomy there, the bloom and surrender, and those little introverted elements of you, and how to bring that out into country music. Have you found just through gaining confidence and years as an artist, that you've been able to experiment more with music?
Yeah, I think so. I think naturally everyone has their progression of just growing and evolving, and like you say, the more songs that you write, the better you get, and even just with instruments and understanding music a little bit more. The more life you experience, the more you have to say, there's more content there.
Genres are not completely a thing of the past, but they really bleed into each other so much more now. Over the last few years I've been really hearing country play in worlds that you never would have before, you've now got country and hip hop tracks, you know? How you found that in Australia? Are you working with different artists and genres and shooting ideas around?
Yeah, it's really interesting because like you say the lines of genres now are so blurred. Why bother putting yourself into a box? But what I've also found over the last few years is that people are seeing this little spark in country music and rather than us knocking on their door, they're knocking on our door, to say ‘I want to go country, I love these festivals, the crowds are so amazing, let's do something together’. It's pretty cool, because when I first started out, it was always me trying to see if I could merge into the pop world, but I feel like the pop world is merging more into country. And that's pretty cool.
When people come into the country world, it's just different. I haven't spent a lot of time in the real, mainstream pop world, but I know that in country music, there’s really no ego. The crowds are just so loyal and it's just like one big family. I just feel people tend to be drawn to that, because it's such a great energy. So why not?
Your previous album Stages, that was a lockdown self produced album, you were like the puppet master throughout the whole thing. And that was an incredible album, so beautiful. How has approaching an album that way affected the way you applied yourself to ‘Bloom & Surrender’?
I feel like that last album was such a stepping stone to this record. It really put me outside of my comfort zone, which in hindsight is great, because I learned all these new skills. I still had a producer who was in Brisbane, but we obviously couldn't see each other,. so I did all the vocals and the acoustic guitar in the spare room. Being thrown in the deep end I was like, ‘how on earth can I do this? But oh, look at that, I can do it’. So then it was this process of if I can do that, why not do the whole thing? I couldn't have created this record in the same process if it wasn't for that previous album and the way it was recorded.
Gorgeous, and I guess you just come through that with this extra strength. Do you hear that within your music, do you hear a shift in confidence when you perform and write?
I think so. Just over time, the more you do something, the more confidence you have. I do find that more on stage and vocally. If you chip away at any skill for long enough, you’d like to think you’ll get better!
There's a track on this album that I absolutely love, and it’s ‘Dumb Decisions’, your duet with Melanie Dyer. It's so funny, and so much fun. Talk to me about this track.
Gosh, this was such a fun song to write. Mel and I have been friends for like years. We've written songs in the past, and we've we've played shows together, so this was just like us hanging out before we played a festival together and literally just chatting and reminiscing about all the chaos on the road, really, and the dumb decisions we've made, but how they make for such good stories. So many times when you're backstage or in a greenroom or after a gig or something, so much of the conversation is like ‘Do you remember when you did that?’ That’s really where the song came about. So we we made ourselves a cheese platter and a cocktail and we hung out in the studio, and quite frankly talked crap for hours and hours and came up with a song! We just had so much fun and thought we'd be crazy not to release this track. For me, it was great because I hadn't released anything for a while, so I was like what a great way to step back in with a collaboration with Mel.
Absolutely, I feel like there's a sense of joy in country pop music that I actually think is a credit to the women in country music, they have brought the fun into it. I think in the days of old people would think country music is just sad cowboy music, and now we just get this element of so much fun. I love that you've been able to put that on the album. Obviously we have this gorgeous album Bloom & Surrender out now,, you're going to be playing a lot of songs live. What else is coming up for you?
I feel really lucky that I've got some great shows coming up. I'm on tour with Brad Cox at the moment supporting him. I've just done a run of shows in Queensland and up next I’m doing some pretty venues in New South Wales, from Newcastle to Thirroul. And then I've got The Big Red Bash and the Mundi Mundi Bash and off course, the Gympie Music Muster. There's a festival I'm playing Country On Keppel on Great Keppel Island, which I'm like, ‘How is this work?’ I don't know, but I'll take it! And then there’s a new festival on the Sunshine Coast that's popping up in July. I've got a bunch of stuff happening, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Bloom & Surrender is out now via ABC Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Caitlyn Shadbolt you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
Caitlyn Shadbolt live dates
22 June - Newcastle, NSW (Brad Cox support)
23 June - Sydney, NSW (Brad Cox support)
24 June - Thirroul, NSW (Brad Cox support)
4-6 July - Big Red Bash, Queensland
14-16 July - Country On Keppel, Queensland
17-19 August - Mundi Mundi Bash, NSW
24-27 August - Gympie Music Muster, QLD
