INTERVIEW: CXLOE releases debut EP 'Heavy Part 1' - "It's honest and that's always what I want my music to be"

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: She Is Aphrodite
Singer-songwriter CXLOE has been one of the most buzzworthy artists to emerge from Australia in the past few years since the release of her debut single ‘Tough Love’ in 2017 and today she releases her remarkable debut EP Heavy Part 1.

Known as the princess of dark pop, the EP continues the sonic journey she started last year - with singles such as ‘Devil You Don’t’ - and glistening electropop dominates the soundscape. Where Heavy Part 1 works so well is the range of sounds and emotions CXLOE imbues the listening experience with. Opening track ‘Heavy’ is full of dark, industrial beats that details a once happy relationship that has gone off the rails., while ‘One & Lonely’ is a more stripped back electro ballad lamenting the time spent away from her partner. ‘!2 Steps’, the first single released from the EP, explores the devastating effects of addiction, the raw lyrics interspersed with jittery, at times frenetic beats. ‘Swing’ is a more gentle track with a hint of tropical beats and explores the ever shifting ‘swing’ of moods and emotions, while the final track on the EP ‘Creature’ builds into an absolutely joyful track with hand claps and thoroughly addictive random musical tics swirling in the background. Perhaps the highlight of the EP is fifth track ‘Plans’, which sees CXLOE in a light, loved up mood singing about finding your soulmate and relishing spending time together: “Going out makes no sense / Got no plans, you’re my plans.” With divine melodies, a 1980s synth pop vibe and multiple hooks that grab hold of your ears and won’t let go, it is an incredible rush of a song that effortlessly switches between quiet reflection to dancefloor banger.

Heavy Part 1 is intimate, complex, light, dark, vulnerable and essential listening. CXLOE has always been an artist that has blazed her own path, deliberately unrestrained by any expectations of genre or sound, and that confidence has only grown and become more impressive with this EP. We recently caught up with CXLOE to find out more about the creation of her first body of work.

CXLOE, what an absolute treat to chat to you. How are things with you?
Good. They've been very busy. Things have been actually quite busy, which is good because for the first couple of months when everything happened, it was quite quiet, but now everything's just like double time. It's like, now I need to make up for the time that I was lounging my pyjamas for the first couple of months of COVID.

Exactly. I want to thank you for releasing such a killer EP, Heavy Part 1, I love it. How do you feel about this collection of heart and soul gems?
I'm really happy with how it's turned out. I've been collating all the songs over the past couple of years, a lot of them have been sitting with me for a while. Holistically, I just feel like it is very me and what I'm experiencing and what I have been experiencing over the past couple of years. It's honest and that's always what I want my music to be. It's cohesive in the sound, but there's also a few different sounds that I haven't really dabbled in before. ‘Plans’ for instance is a lot lighter, which is cool for me because I want to release all different types of sonics while staying in the same world. I'm really happy with how it's turned out. There were a lot of songs to choose from, so that was hard. That process was hard.


You're like the poster girl for dark pop sounds, you as you mentioned you are exploring new sonics and even lighter sounds. Is it something you have to consciously do, having to push the boundaries of your own musical expectations, or do you just naturally chase what you're into? 

It's funny you say that because I've been thinking about that over the past couple of weeks. I always want to push boundaries and I want to keep experimenting with sound and I want to keep putting out fresh songs. But I find as women, there's a lot of pressure on us to constantly reinvent ourselves, to keep everyone interested. With sounds but also with image and what we look like. We constantly have to keep putting new looks and stuff in front of people to keep them engaged, which I don't see in a lot of male artists. I do feel that pressure sometimes. I'm like, ‘alright, well I need to keep people interested so I need to keep reinventing my look’. Naturally I always want to push the sounds and keep putting new songs and sonics out there, but It's an interesting process. 


You want it to come from a place of your own experimentation as opposed to something that's been put upon you by society
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I love the the fashion and the styling and that's all part of being an artist, but there does come a bit of pressure. It's like, ‘cool, well what do I do next to keep people interested?’

I wanted to talk to you about my favourite track on the EP, ‘Creature’. 

Oh, you love ‘Creature’! Oh, great. I'm so happy you like that because lyrically and conceptually it's definitely one of my favourites.

It's so good. It's like this longing kind of crawling that then leads you to this club floor filler. And your vocals. go from that powerhouse to an almost whispered falsetto. I honestly think we need more pop tracks like this in the world. Can you please talk me through this track?
Well, I had this concept up my sleeve for a while. A lot of the EP is things that I've internally struggled with and grown up with as part of my personality and I feel like I am a creature of habit. It's good as well, but I think there's also some negatives about it where I find it hard to get out of the things that make me comfortable and stepping out of that is really quite hard sometimes. The song is quite animalistic as well, which I love. It reminds me of the middle of the night, so that's kind of how I pitched it. I was in a writing session, I was like this is the idea I have, and this is where I see it. I see it like in the middle of the night and all the animals coming out of where they've been laying low all day. Andy, the producer, has done a really great job at bringing that to life.

You recently released the single ‘One and Lonely’. I must say that line ‘You'll always be my one and lonely’, I kind of wish I wrote that! Can you talk me through your idea for that track because you listen to it, and it's one thing, and then you read the lyrics and it's something completely different, which is a theme with a lot with your music.
My favourite type of music is dance-cry music or songs which you can dance with but then also ball your eyes out too. I don't know why, I just love that. It just hits a chord in me and that's kinda where I lean to. I had that line ‘one and lonely’ because it's essentially a love song but it's also quite sad. I've been with my partner for seven years now and I have been back and forth from LA a lot and it's really, really hard. A lot of the time we both get really lonely so I wanted to write a song that was sweet in that way of ‘you will always be my one and only’, but giving it that little twist and that edge of changing it to lonely because that is how we feel a lot of the time. It's my favourite song on the EP.

It's beautiful, and it follows the gargantuan ‘12 Steps’, which is dance cry and a half. 

Yeah, I know. It definitely is. I love where it sits, there are two contrasts of lyrics and production and they are really juxtaposed against each other. That's what I love. ‘12 Steps’ goes hard. It's quite heavy. 



‘12 Steps’ goes very hard. You said you love a song that you can dance to, but then tears you down. Do you think that comes from that innate songwriter in yourself that, you know, a song is not a song, unless it can just be acapella or with a piano?

Yeah, one hundred percent. There's the Nashville rule or the Nashville test think it's called, And if you can't strip a song back and play it on guitar or piano, then usually it's not going to stand on its own. So having a song that is emotional, but then the production brings it to life, that's important. And that's where I think the cry comes from and then the production is where the dance comes in.

Your first single, ‘Tough Love’ was released in 2017 which you followed with ‘Show You’. I'm just interested to know how do you feel like your sound has developed since those first releases? 

It's funny, it's been quite a journey because the first one I put out was quite dark and that's still one of my favourite songs. I would love to rerelease ‘Tough Love’ one day. It's interesting, the journey for songs are really just dependent on how you're feeling and what time of your life you're in. I think my songs have kind of taken a journey from dark pop to a bit more brighter. But now I'm back in kind of that raw dark lane. Just because I'm… exploring how I'm evolving as a person and my traits and my calling and why I am the way I am. That's essentially what Heavy Part 1 is. I've done a full 360 back into that dark pop lane, which is just raw and honest. Music… it's hard. Being an artist, everything's just so self-obsessed, it's always about us. So I just want to do music where I'm people can listen to this and be like ‘now I don't want to feel so alone or like I am an alien because I feel this way [too]’.

It's always nice to hear that from the artists because obviously when we're devouring a track as a listener, we put our own things onto it, but it's always interesting to hear that you're thinking of the listener, not in a sales perspective, but more in a will this resonate kind of thing.
That's what fulfils me. It's great seeing songs doing well and streaming numbers and stuff like that, but that's so surface level. When I released ‘12 Steps’, I got so many messages from people who were like ‘I've struggled with ABC, whatever, and this connected with me.’ And that is enough for me. That's kind of why I do it.

We know that you spend your time between LA and Sydney and you have done since you were a teenager. What are your thoughts on the pop industry in Australia, particularly for women who are creating and trying to get themselves out there as singer-songwriter, given that Australia for so many years was just one big dude show?

I love Australia. Australia has given me my platform to do what I want to do. I started releasing music on Triple J and that's where ‘Tough Love’ took off. So I really owe my success to Australia. But it has been hard releasing pop music here just because for so long pop was a dirty word and it still does have a bit of a connotation to it. It's not cool or stuff like that. And so that's kinda why I went to the States because it's way more, I don't want to say accepted, but people are doing more pop music there. I definitely struggled with that in some sense, because ‘Show You’ is such a pop song and I was so nervous to put it out in case it flopped, because a lot of the time Aussie pop acts really aren’t being elevated. So that's been a challenge just tapering on the line of ‘is this too pop or do I just not give a fuck about it and just put it out?’

Do you think you've personally also changed your perception of what pop is or like you mentioned earlier it used to be a dirty word, but maybe the world is waking up to it and going hold on, it is just short for popular and popular is good.
Exactly, popular is good. And I think so many people are taking more risks with pop. It's not just bubble gum anymore. It's so experimental, it doesn't have to be happy, it can still be sad and pop. I like seeing people waking up to that.


You're releasing this EP in the year that we don't speak of and you are quite the tourer as well. You've supported some global heavyweights as well as creating your own incredible shows. How have you felt personally about that build up between releasing the EP without the possibility of touring it?
To be honest, it sucks. The song is one thing, but the show and the creatives and the costuming and the makeup, that's all another big part of it and as important as the song. So, without that, you're missing out on such a big aspect that fulfils myself as a musician, being able to perform and I love performing. That's my favourite part about releasing music. So that has really sucked. I've done some live streams and stuff, but it just doesn't even come close to how you feel because you don't have the audience there to bounce off. That’s why we do shows because of the feeling we get when we see other people connecting. I'm trying to find ways to fill that gap. We are luckier here, especially in Sydney. I'm trying to book in a few intimate shows, essentially they’re my favourite type of shows anyway.

Just have everyone turn their webcam onto their face when you do them. 

Yeah. When you finish a song on a live stream and there's just silence, you're like ‘Oh God’. There's just no vibe. There is just nothing!

Lastly, CXLOE, what is on the horizon for you for the rest of the year?

We've got a few more singles to be released, I've just finished shooting all the music videos. So that's been wild. But after that, Heavy Part 2 comes out. It's not going to stop, I'm excited. We do need art right now and a lot of artists are starting to put out lots of music, which hopefully will make this time a little bit more bearable.

Heavy Part 1 is out now via Sandlot Records/AWAL. You can download and stream here.

To keep up with all things CXLOE you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Image & artwork: Ash Lim