Mallrat On Creating Her New Album: ‘It's A Beautiful Way To Process Something Tricky’

It’s a hot summer’s day, with sunlight streaming through the windows, when Mallrat (real name Grace Shaw) hops onto the Zoom call with The Music, eager to discuss all the details of her upcoming sophomore album, Light hit my face like a straight right.

“A straight right is a boxing term, so a straight right is generally a power punch,” the Brisbane indie artist explains. “I do a lot of boxing and kickboxing. I guess I've absorbed it into my personality at this point. So I guess it makes sense that it comes out in stuff that I make.”

Though boxing itself doesn’t make much of an appearance in her latest work - aside from the album title itself - the concept of light definitely does.

“I feel like I didn't set out to talk about light so much,” Shaw confesses. “It's just a nice characteristic to give someone or something that's kind of like a compass to you. I feel like it's often a nice reference point lyrically.

“I love the image of, like, a moth flying into a lamp over and over and over again, just because they're drawn to it, and they really shouldn't be doing that. And I also go on lots of walks, and I love, in the morning, going past a certain shrub, and seeing that the flowers are all facing this way, and then when I come back in the evening, they're all facing that way, or they're closed, or there are some flowers that open up at the night time. I don't know how to tie it into anything more than that. I just find it interesting to watch how it changes the things around it.”

Though she assures us that the LP isn’t a concept album, light is the reigning theme, featuring references on at least three of the tracks: Ray Of Light, Pavement, and The Light Streams In And Hits My Face.

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Mallrat’s music videos also lean into the whimsy of light, pulling viewers into a world of surrealism - jam-packed with giant CGI animals residing in the mundane.

“All of the visual world that I'm building to go along with [the album], all of the videos and the photos, I wanted to have the magical realism in Australian suburbia,” she explains. “The best references that I can think of for that are Boy Swallows Universe and also Petra Collins, who's a photographer and director. I always find I'm drawn to their work, and I think it's largely because of how they find beauty and magic in, like, quite gritty or mundane or ugly situations.

“The director Tom [Carroll] and I were talking about our imaginary worlds that we build to fill the spaces around us, or the loneliness in these places. And so a lot of those animals are like the imagined friends to keep us company.”

When asked if her lyrics also play into this fantastical world, Shaw replied, “I don't think about it necessarily like that, but I do think that a lot of my lyrics are kind of about imagining what-ifs. It's like you're imagining that this thing that's happening is like something else because it makes more sense, or it feels more like a beautiful way to process something that's tricky.”

Shaw herself had to process an awful situation just after finalising this album - the passing of her younger sister, Olivia. Though the grief of this loss didn’t influence Light hit my face like a straight right, it has left a bittersweet tinge on the LP.

“I finished the album at the beginning of the year, and then my sister passed away a month or two later, so all of the music was finished, and it actually just made the album feel less important,” Shaw muses. “I do talk about my sister in Horses, and I write about catching the train home from school with her and missing her and feeling like I'd lost her already, but yeah, I wrote that before she passed away. So, it's funny how things take on a new meaning with time and circumstances changing.”

Horses isn’t Mallrat’s only track about her familial relationships, she confesses. After she jokes that she disguises songs about her family to make them sound like love or heartbreak songs, I ask if they’re one of her biggest influences. She pauses.

“I don't know. They definitely have shaped me, but it's hard to say.”

Shaw can list off a few of her favourite musical influences though, ranging from country all the way to experimental EDM.

“That type of Lana Del Rey, Johnny Cash, a lot of folky country songwriter-y, indie, quite sad, thoughtful lyric style of songwriting is one of my biggest influences. And then stuff where the vocals are really artificial sounding, and often it's really fast, and it sounds pretty crazy, that kind of dance music as well makes me really excited to make music.”

But she doesn’t stop there. Shaw also explains that her grandparents, still very connected to their Irish roots, used to watch Riverdance with her. And now, a lifetime later, she’s starting to draw inspiration from that music.

“A couple of years ago, I was doing a bit of a YouTube wormhole deep dive looking for different choir sounds, because I love playing with vocal textures in production, and choirs can be really fun to chop up sometimes. And then I found this choir called the University of Dublin Choir, and they perform traditional Gaelic and Celtic music with the most stunning choral arrangements, and I became really obsessed with them. I listened to them almost every day, and I think that style of melody that's really traditional has kind of bled into the way that I write melodies now, honestly, just because I listen to it so much.”

So, with a range of influences set to feature on the album, how would Shaw describe her forthcoming LP?

“These songs are secretly folk songs dressed up as pop songs,” she laughs.

When asked which of those songs she likes the most, she struggles to answer.

“It changes every week. I think that it would be specific moments in the songs that I get really excited about, like in Defibrillator in the last chorus, that's one of my favorite moments. But then, sometimes, it'll be, like, all of Pavement. But, also, I love Horses, and seeing how much it has connected with people since it's come out has really made me feel very appreciative for it.”

Horses was produced and co-written with Melbourne’s Alice Ivy, while Pavement was worked on with LA’s Buddy Ross. In fact, Mallrat has a plethora of collaborations under her belt with a wide range of artists. But, by far, the most notable of these is her 2022 release, Surprise Me, featuring U.S rapper Azealia Banks, for Mallrat’s debut album, Butterfly Blue.

Though Shaw tells us the experience was a “bucket list collab”, we have to ask about the friendly fire she received from Banks just last October. In a rant to X, the famously anti-Australia rapper wrote, “Like it's no shade but if I can collab with fucking mallrat, I can definitely do a song with doechii and doja [Cat] and just give the gworls what they REALLY want. Lol nobody asked for a mallrat collab. All tea no shade.”

In a follow-up post, Banks continued: “Whatever happened to mallrat? SIDEBAR: I really do pity Australian artists they are always like SO LATE to the global table. That death metal graphic design aesthic mallrat had was like 4 years played out by time she had it and it did not even match the sound of her music at all.”

The rant went on to criticise the Australian market, dollar, and music industry, saying, “Their music industry really is B market territory… The AUD is in the trash can and they culturally are so far left behind and barely have any exports to compete in A markets.”

When asked about her take on all this, Shaw starts to smile. “I think I got off pretty lightly. She said that my graphics didn't match my music, which is kind of the point. So I was honestly quite happy with that, and I still love her,” she giggles.

Shaw continues: “She made a lot of points that I agree with. She also, I think, once mentioned the Australian dollar, and I think that because we're in Australia and we just accept the Australian dollar for what it is, we forget how much that affects the way that international artists view touring in Australia especially. I think sometimes, when we talk about festivals not working, we forget to kind of discuss the global economic factors at play - and part of it is that the Australian dollar is so weak, so it's less enticing for international artists to come here and play. To be honest, it's pretty grim.”

With one bucket list collaboration fulfilled, I asked if Shaw has any future aspirations when it comes to singing with bigger artists - and, to my surprise, she said no. Instead, she wants to lean more into the writing and production side of things… and she definitely has aspirations for that.

“I think I used to have very clear dream collabs, but I don't anymore. Performing and singing doesn't make me feel like I'm adding much to the world, but when I'm making a song, I feel like I'm contributing something that could be special sometimes.

“I would love to write for Rihanna. That would be, obviously, very cool. And I would love to contribute some production to, like, a really interesting rap album. Like, one of my favorite rap albums is Big Fish Theory by Vince Staples, and I think that I can imagine myself one day working on something like that.”

Don’t worry, though. Mallrat isn’t hanging up her microphone and heart-shaped guitar just yet - however, her next work may not be in a genre we expect.

“I've started working on a few other things for after this album comes out, and some of them are quite different to each other. So, I don't know what direction I'll take yet,” she teased.

But, for now, Shaw is focused on prepping for her tour, which kicks off this April. She’ll be hitting Sydney, Melbourne, and, of course, her hometown of Brisbane - which, Shaw tells me, she has a “complicated” relationship with.

“I feel like when I talk about Brisbane, I feel like I'm talking about my family. And you know how you can kind of rag on your own family a little bit, but if anybody else does this, they’re out of line? So it's like, if I'm in Melbourne, I'm only saying good things about Brisbane, or if I'm overseas, I'm only saying good things about Brisbane. But if I'm with my friends from Brisbane, we'll be more candid and be like, ‘Man, how lame is XYZ’, you know?”

Despite this, Mallrat is still consistently referred to as “the Princess of Brisbane” - there is no queen, I did ask her - and she happily claims that title: “It feels really good, and it's a duty that I don't take lightly.”

Mallrat’s ‘Light hit my face like a straight right’ will be released on February 14 via Dew Process/Universal. Tickets for her upcoming tour are on sale now.