Mallrat Goes Deeper Into The Machine

Mallrat Goes Deeper Into The Machine




By Gabriel Aikins


The ascension of Mallrat has been a long time coming. The Australian pop songwriter place on Earth Grace Shaw honed her work religiously over three EPs in the late 2010s. With each of those assignments — 2016’s Uninvited, 2018’s In the Sky, and 2019’s Driving Music — the scope of her ambition and skill grew, as Shaw evolved as a producer, expanded her own musical tastes, and matured as a songwriter. Her first single of 2022, “Your Love,” represented a higher level to her art, a biting mix of hip-hop and pop unlike anything she’s created before. The result of this refinement is her long-awaited debut album Butterfly Blue, which incorporates new sounds into Shaw’s pop framework. This is the exact album she wanted to prepare, and no one was going to stop her.


Butterfly Blue started to take shape around the release of In the Sky, on which Shaw added more detailed and overlapping synths into her production on tracks like the sonically packed “Groceries.” Immediately after Driving Music was released, Shaw buckled down and spent the next a couple of many years largely in Melbourne crafting her debut, a lengthy process she’s grateful for in that it allowed her to craft and tinker to bring her vision to life. “It meant that I did not have to compromise anything about the album. I had and more than a few time to create it exactly how I wanted,” she tells MTV News.


Shaw wanted to explore more sounds, so she did. “Your Love” combines blaring synths with snares and hi-hats and features a sample from Memphis rapper Gangsta Pat’s 1995 track “Killa, Part 2.” Shaw introduces guitar riffs with a lot of chunky distortion, like on the aptly named “Rockstar.” In group not to allowance herself in the directions her songs may go, Shaw enters into the writing process with an open mind. “I don't generally have things that I'd like to achieve before I write a song. I just begin the song and then make it as good as it might be,” she says. Alternatively, she notes more general musical ideas and textures she adores as elements she wants to incorporate throughout production. She became interested in the contrast between “really distorted, aggressive sounds, and really cute vocal samples,” as noticed on the hook of “Heart Guitar,” which combines a gently sung melody with a gruff looping guitar riff.


Butterfly Blue is both cohesive based on the pop elements Shaw has used as Mallrat before, although unrestrained by any idea of what a pop song can or cannot be. Single “Teeth” is a growling punk track with vicious riffs and chaotic climaxes, and “I’m Not My Body, It’s Mine” shifts from piano and guitar to billowing vocal harmonies and electronic distortion in the blink of an eye. Being able to take her music wherever her mind wanders is the point. “I don't think I may do it if I had to compromise even a little bit bit,” Shaw says. Since Butterfly Blue is her debut album, she doesn’t feel the weight of expectations about what she’s supposed to sound like, something she’s grateful for. “I hate being told what to do,” she summarizes with a laugh.


As such, the album fits snugly into the present moment as pop becomes more and more experimental while standing on its own merits. This was a key focus for Shaw, who says she wants to keep her music “timeless.” She stays up to date on trends and new production methods, nevertheless routinely with an ear towards making them her own, like on the exciting waves of electronically enhanced vocal harmonies and fuzzy electro-pop of “To You.” “I don’t pull up a recent popular song that we like and mention, ‘How can we reconstruct this?’ We just make something that's cool,” she says.


Her collaborators help keep the energy exhilarating. She points to fellow Australian producer Styalz Fuego — who has worked with a span of artists from Imagine Dragons to Tinashe — as someone whose artsy meticulousness matches her own. This also extends to singular, often controversial rapper Azealia Banks, who joins Shaw on “Surprise Me.” As another creative with a unshakable vision of their work, Banks served as an organic partner. “She put so much care into her verse,” Shaw says. “She recorded it a few times, like, ‘This can be better.’ And then she's sort become a bit of a mentor to me in the process.”


Shaw’s diligent approach to writing follows her into her production, an area she maintained a constant presence in throughout the recording of Butterfly Blue. “If I'm not involved in production on a song, I get very bored,” she says. One of her preference production choices that she added to the record was the huge assortment of vocal harmonies and the integration of her main vocals into the instrumental mix in a way that complements both. This is heard completely on “Obsessed,” where Shaw’s sung melody and instrumental backing weave in past each other at the best of the mix. Shaw says listeners (including her) identify with voices instinctively based on human nature. Piece of it comes from a favorite in her demoing process: Her early general vocalizations and gibberish often morph into vocal backings on the finished songs. “I don't typically record lyrics that I hate,” she states plainly.


As Butterfly Blue arrives and more of the world starts to discover Mallrat, it’s with the knowledge that the music they’re discovering was made on her own terms. The drive to prepare exactly what’s in her head has led to her working hard to habitually ensure she’s putting out the ideal possible work she can be overjoyed of. “That is an attitude that I think has carried through much of the album,” she says, “and it's something that I'm going to take with me.”









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