INTERVIEW: Fletcher on the creation of her second album 'In Search of the Antidote': "It’s a deeper self-reflection than anything I’ve ever put out before."

Interview: Emma Driver
Images: Sebastian Faena

If you were to compile a list of artists who are leading music into the next generation, Fletcher (full name Cari Fletcher) would be somewhere near the top of that list.

First releasing music in 2015, she has surely and steadily built up a massive global fanbase with every release, alongside growing critical acclaim and becoming a role model for the LGBTQIA+ community. A charismatic and magnetic performer, her music connects on multiple lyrics, from her relatable lyrics of love, sex and heartbreak through to her soundscapes that move between rock, electronic-synth-pop and indie.

After the success of her debut album Girl of My Dreams in 2022 which peaked at number 15 on the US Billboard Albums chart, she has just released her second album In Search Of The Antidote. Inspired by the desire to explore “love in all its infinite manifestations,” the album is an introspective look at Fletcher’s relationships, desires, hopes and insecurities.

“Over the years, I’ve looked for the antidote in so many things: women, the road, the stage, fans, spirituality and self-reflection,” she says. “Making this album was an excavation, a deep dive where I asked myself what would truly heal me, and my ultimate realisation was that love is the antidote. From the Finding Fletcher EP to you ruined new york city for me to THE S(EX) TAPES to Girl Of My Dreams, love has always been my muse. But before now, I don’t think I’d ever really looked at love through all the different lenses and angles and discovered all its infinite manifestations. That’s what this album is about for me.”

Three singles preceded the release of the album, the rocky ‘Eras Of Us’ and ‘Lead Me On’, with ‘Doing Better’ taking a slower, slinkier beat as Fletcher uses false confidence and her success to prove she is over her past relationship, before acknowledging it is all a front: “But my tummy still hurts / Why does better feel worse?” There is also a sublime reference to her 2022 hit ‘Becky’s So Hot’ which references her ex-partner’s new girlfriend: ‘Your girlfriend never thanked me for making her go viral / Fuck it, I’m her idol.’

The tone becomes moodier on the track ‘Ego Talking’ which moves from gentler moments into thumping beats, it again explores the conflicting emotions when a relationship ends of wishing someone well but never wanting to let them go. ‘Hope my lips haunt you for life,’ she sings, and the song ends on just Fletcher’s voice and the poignant lyric ‘And you'll never love anybody else, right?’ that is filled with pain as she tries to both convinces herself the words are true while also realising they aren’t.

‘Two Things Can Be True’ is an album highlight and brings in an electronic, experimental pop sound. There are delicious melodies and a moment where the song breakdowns into just heavy beats and repeated vocals. The lyrics deal with accepting an ex-girlfriend can love her new male partner while Fletcher can still remain in love with her at the same time.

‘Joyride’ is a soaring, pop track which has gorgeous, pared back moments and a story that sees happiness and love come back in Fletcher’s life - although it comes with moments of self doubt. “You were in my dreams / Now I'm in your bed…Now I'm just forgetting all my exes / I think she's out of my league and I'm out of my mind.”

The album ends on ‘Antidote’, another standout track, that has a tinge of country in its guitars. There is something special about the emotion in Fletcher’s vocal on this track, combined with bursts of backing vocals. Add in a distorted instrumental break and the quiet winding down of the track at the end, and you have the perfect closer to the album, which also sums up the message of the album: ‘You're my dopamine state / You're my sanity dose…You're the medication I wanna take / You are my antidote.’

In Search Of The Antidote is a remarkable album and a powerful statement of Fletcher capabilities as an artist. An album that speaks of heartache, loss and questioning yourself that ultimately ends on a message pf hope and joy, it is a collection that pulls at many emotions but ultimately leaves you with a sense of peace, calm and love. One of Fletcher’s finest works to date, we recently sat down with her to chat all about its creation and her upcoming Australian tour in July.

Hi Fletcher, and congratulations on In Search of the Antidote, just released on Friday. How are you feeling?

Thank you – it feels so good to have it out! And it’s an honour that I get to talk about my music in so many ways, with many different people.

So tell me about the idea of the ‘antidote’ in the title. You have the closing track called ‘Antidote’, but what kind of cure are you searching for across this album?

In my creative processes, I never really set out with, ‘Okay, now I’m gonna go in and I’m writing for the second album.’ The music reveals itself to me; the album reveals itself to me because it is something that already exists inside of me. Obviously, there are the [writing and studio] sessions, but the songs just kind of reveal themselves. ‘Antidote’ was one of the last on the project, and it was through that song that I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what this whole time has been.’

The antidote for me has been many different things. Over the course of my life, it’s been women, and the road, and relationships, and fans, and stages, and tequila. And then I got quite sick last year and was on a pretty intense health journey. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. So last year, the antidote was very different. For me, it was healing. It was looking for the literal answers and medicine – that was the search. So the album was all of that. It was the search of finding my true self, my true emotions, my feelings, my healing. And it felt like it just perfectly encapsulated the record.

There is a lot of seeking on this album. Do you think you’ll ever stop the searching? Do you hope to find the antidote?

I think what I found is that the ultimate antidote is love and all of its infinite manifestations. Ultimately, it’s self-love. In the past, a lot of my worth has been through external validation and external applause and external things. And I think on all my other records and albums in the past, I’ve always been exploring myself through the lens of relationships, kind of pointing my fingers in a lot of ways [outwards] – ‘You did this’ and ‘You knew this’. On this album, the finger is pointing back at me. And it’s a deeper self-reflection than anything I’ve ever put out before. That’s when you really begin to find the real healing – when you ask yourself those questions that just get you closer to the truth and core of who you are and why we’re here.

That definitely comes out through the album. Between Girl of My Dreams and this album, I can hear an evolution in your sound. There’s a warmer vocal production going on – it feels more intimate. Was there a conscious evolution in your sound?

Making this album, I was navigating so much with my body, and my voice was changing a lot … And I’ve been classically vocal training since I was, like, five years old. And so I’ve always been really obsessed with the technicality, and singing perfectly, and the notes – and I didn’t have access to that. And so I had no choice but to sing from my heart. And so the vocals sound more wild than they ever have, and kind of a bit more untamed, and more upfront and close and centred. I wrote most of this album in my hometown in New Jersey. And so I just wanted it to feel up close in your ear, like an old sweater – like your favourite sweater.

It’s interesting that you say that you were navigating the body, because while you’ve always been so good at exploring feelings in your songs, there’s a real physicality on this album, in songs like ‘Crush’ and ‘Joyride’. In your writing, do you set out to sort of make sense of what your body does, and how it works together with your feelings?

I think because I’ve been on such a journey and such a search of what was going on with my body over this last year, it has brought me so close to my body, being hyper-aware and hyper-attuned. I’d pushed it so far past its breaking point that I was like, ‘No, we have to listen to this thing, to this vessel.’ And so I’ve just become so hyper-attuned to feelings and emotions and the way that we store energy, we store emotion, we store feelings in our body, and when we don’t feel those things through and process them, they get stuck. And they fester physically – I really believe that. And so for me, through the songwriting process is the recognition of the feeling, is giving it the space. It’s me going to the studio and being like, ‘Hey, my ego needs the mic on this on this today – I’m feeling an insecurity and feeling like an icky jealousy, and I need to just verbalise it.’ And then ego gets to have the mic and writes [the song] ‘Ego Talking’.

That sounds like it would be a really useful thing in the studio?

Oh yeah, my body always tells me what I want to write that day. I have to feel it. There has to be a certain feeling that I get, whether that’s from a chord progression or a melody, and I get this hit, and then I know. It hits my body first.

That physical impulse definitely comes through the songs. A song like ‘Crush’ works on so many levels …

It’s one of my favourites on the album.

Oh great! Can we talk about it? It has so many layers: it sounds like it’s going to be about having a crush on someone, but you’re actually singing about a physical crushing, and you want that too. That is fascinating …

Yeah, I have such a fascination with the fine line where pain meets pleasure and pleasure meets pain, and the ways that they’re kind of two sides of the same coin. You know, love is the most beautiful, magical, dopamine-and-serotonin-releasing thing in the world, yet it can also be the most soul wrenching. Losing love is the closest thing to death that we can experience while we’re still alive. It’s the most intense thing. And so I have such a fascination with the full range of all of it.

I was just thinking about the ways that, as I’ve been on this healing journey, I found myself missing that intensity and that toxicity that I have felt in like earlier loves and earlier relationships in my life, and I was sort of romanticising that. Like, ‘Whoa, I want you to crush me under the weight of your body. You know, I put you above me, I want to cry when you fuck me, I want your kisses to cut me when you love me’, and wondering ‘Why won’t you crush me?’ It’s that fine line of pain meets pleasure. And when does it become toxic, and when is it not? And that’s been a question I’ve asked myself through this journey as I navigate healthier relationships and healthier love, both with myself and with others. And I was like, ‘Oh, I still need that hint of toxic energy here.’ It’s not even a toxic thing. It’s just the processing of that emotion.

It’s an intense feeling. And I feel like that same intensity comes out in ‘Maybe I Am’, the first track on the album. In that song you’re sort of saying ‘Maybe I am messing myself up, but I’m choosing to do it.’ There’s so much going on in that song – can you talk a little about where it came from?

‘Maybe I Am’ was one of the first songs I wrote for the album, and it is really representative of the arc, the storyline, for me. I remember I was reading a bunch of stuff about myself online, all over the internet, reading articles and comments and opinions about me, and I just remember thinking to myself, ‘What if I believed what the world had to say about me? What if I believed everyone else’s narrative? What then? What if those things were true? Maybe I am a fucking psycho narcissist bitch. Maybe I am? I am intentionally lighting a match up to my life to see what’s left. Maybe it’s self-sabotage. Maybe it’s a rebirth?’ It’s the two sides of the same coin – the fascinating duality.

There’s never passivity in your songs. There’s always action and thought. Now, to your upcoming tour – Europe, Australia, the US. Is this the biggest tour you’ve  done in one go?

Yeah, this is the biggest. I’m in South America right now. I’m on tour in Argentina and Chile and Brazil. And then I head to Europe for a European headline. And then I’m in Australia and New Zealand, and then I’m in North America at the end of the year. So that that’s big. And yes, it’s amazing. Performing live and writing the songs are my two favourite parts about all of this. So I can’t wait to come and just bring this record.

Is there any particular aspect that you’re particularly looking forward to? Any particular shows or venues or new things you’re doing on stage?

I mean, I just live for hearing Australian accents singing my lyrics. That to me is my favourite thing on the planet. It is! So I literally will intentionally take my in-ears [headphones] out so I can hear it. So I’m looking forward to that.

In Search of the Antidote is out now via Universal Music. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Fletcher on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.

Australian Tour Dates
Tickets on sale now here

16 July 2024 - Perth, Metro City
18 July 2024 - Brisbane, The Fortitude Music Hall
21 July 2024 - Byron Bay, Splendour in the Grass
23 July 2024 - Melbourne, Festival Hall
26 July 2024 - Sydney, Hordern Pavilion