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Grace Cummings has never sounded particularly interested in making herself smaller, but Bloodhorse! feels like the moment she stops entertaining the possibility altogether. Speaking with Kyle Meredith, the Australian singer-songwriter digs into reuniting with producer Jonathan Wilson after 2024’s Ramona; pushing toward the new record’s theatrical scale; and following a trail of childhood memories, animals, violence, humor, and outsized emotion wherever it happened to lead. Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts.
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For Cummings, returning to Wilson meant getting back into a studio where instinct could outrun self-consciousness. “I knew that I had gained a certain comfort to be myself with someone that could let me be myself,” she says, describing their sessions as two “children” chasing whatever strange idea appeared next. That freedom coincided with a larger personal realization about authenticity and the old voice telling her she was too much or too sensitive. “The only thing that you can kind of give the world that it doesn’t already have is your authenticity and your perspective on things,” Cummings explains. With Bloodhorse!, she approached the work as though it might be the last record she ever made, not out of doom, but as permission to leave nothing safely tucked away.
That philosophy leads directly to one of the album’s funniest detours: a deliberately synthetic bro-country song dropped beside music made by an army of actual musicians. Cummings says the joke grew out of conversations with Wilson about AI music and eventually became a perfect foil for the painstaking craft surrounding it. “You have something like 138 tracks on that song,” she says of “Bloodhorse,” pointing to the real players, real tape, choirs, strings, saxophones, and sheer physical labor behind the recording. Then comes its computerized opposite, with Cummings feeding prompts into the machine and repeatedly asking it to get dirtier. “It’s ironically the catchiest fucking song on the record,” she laughs.
Listen to Grace Cummings talk about Bloodhorse!, working with Jonathan Wilson, AI bro-country, and more in the new episode above or by watching the video below. Get tickets here for Cummings’ upcoming tour dates, including shows with Rayland Baxter and Tyler Ballgame.
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