When it came time to record Down Rounder – and after plans to self-produce in the cabin studio she shares with her partner unexpectedly halted due to a mould issue – Cat Clyde immediately sparked with producer Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney) in Los Angeles’ famed Sound City Studios. Together they laid down the entirety of the album in six days flat, striking listeners with an intimate, livewire electricity. Her malleable singing voice and contemplative, poetic lyricism espouse an essential connection between our spiritual centre and the natural world that surrounds us.
“Connecting with the natural environment around me inspired a lot of these songs, and sonically I feel like this record is very grounded as a result,” Clyde says while talking about the album’s thematic bend, “I wanted these songs to sound raw and rough, but also placed-together in a way that created—a simple beauty, like the changing seasons or a setting sun.”
Cat Clyde has established a special link with so-called-Australia across her impressive catalogue, having supported Paul Kelly across Canada and the US, the country being her third highest streaming territory globally, and support from triple j, Double J, Triple R and Music Feeds among others.
Down Rounder is Cat Clyde’s third proper solo album and fifth release overall, joining her debut Ivory Castanets (2017), the spellbinding follow-up Hunters Trance (2019), Good Bones – a set of acoustic reimagining from Hunters Trance (2020) – and joining up with fellow Canadian country singer-songwriter Jeremie Albino for the stellar collaborative album Blue Blue Blue (2021). She’s racked up tens of millions of streams across platforms, setting the stage for Down Rounder as her widest-reaching album yet.
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