Melbourne singer-songwriter Riley Catherall offers a track-by-track breakdown of new album ‘The Light, The Beautiful Liar’
Riley Catherall’s latest album, ‘The Light, The Beautiful Liar’ arrived earlier this month, and even though we’ve had a few weeks to dive into its brilliance, we still can’t get enough.
We had a taste of the greatness to come with ‘South Of Somewhere’, the alt-country gem which follows the Melbourne singer-songwriter on a sleepless road trip with summery guitar melodies and a carefree groove.
“I realised pretty quickly that I had a lot of songs with the same theme,” Riley Catherall told us in an interview, “the kind of love that struggles with the stark reality of the morning.”
For an even closer look into how this artistry plays out, Riley Catherall took us on a track-by-track guide throughout ‘The Light, The Beautiful Liar’. Catch that below, and scroll down to listen to the new album.
Bark At The Moon
This was the first song I wrote after my first record. I was worried I didn’t know how to write songs anymore having had the business hat on for so long trying to release that record.
This was a real exercise in just letting the ideas flow without an editor’s mind trying to compare the writing or the standard of other songs I had written.
In that sense, it was written and recorded in only a couple of hours. The recording that was intended to just be a demo ended up becoming the final product.
It’s about looking back at a relationship and not necessarily missing the person but appreciating the time and the space they hold in your past.
Duty Free
I wrote this song on a long-haul flight from Melbourne to London to play some shows in the UK. I’m fortunate that I get to travel a lot with music: I love the opportunity to discover new places and cultures by day and play shows at night.
I spend a lot of time in airports and on planes and I find that time a great chance to trawl through the notes part of my phone or the voice memos which is where bad song lyrics go to die.
I wrote this song about how lucky I am to do this, but how it’s usually to the detriment of relationships back home. It’s about not knowing whether those things you’ve built, or people you love will still be there when you circle back around.
If It Makes You Happy
This is one of the more straightforward break-up songs on the record. It’s very direct and simple but one that I’m very proud of. Also thrilled to have Loretta Miller and her insanely beautiful voice join in in the final chorus.
Like A River
This was another one that came out of the ashes of a broken-down relationship. It’s about how you lose someone out of your life who you thought would be there forever.
You go to a place of refuge in your mind where you still exist in theirs. It references a real experience with a haunted train and stumbling along back country roads singing Glen Campbell’s Gentle On My Mind.
I am fascinated with this notion that salvation was an idea created by the church in the Middle Ages for the purpose of selling spots in heaven – an exploitation called indulgence.
This song is about finding some solace in the fact that perhaps you will see those you loved, again in the next life even despite your failings.
Lucky Ones
I often introduce this song by saying the first verse is about Ryan, my guitarist’s living room: “I have a friend, I think his lounge room’s stolen, yeah the chairs don’t match and the TV’s broken.
But he’s the one who’ll leave the door open for me”. More broadly, it’s about some friends I grew up with who’s house was a bit of a refuge for lots of people as teenagers.
They didn’t necessarily have a lot in terms of wealth, but their door was always open and the kettle on for anyone who needed a place to escape to.
This song is a reminder of what’s important when we inevitably get caught up with trying to make money, or further our career.
South Of Somewhere
The final single from the record, it’s about being perpetually tired and sleeping in shitty roadside hotels or McDonald’s car parks when touring. Living in a state of not quite awake, not quite asleep trying to distinguish memories from dreams.
Coming Down, Coming Over
This song existed as two different songs for a long while, before I frankensteined them together. I sent the song to a few people with mixed results of whether or not it worked. I put it out as a single, anyway.
It seemed too important because I knew I wanted to take the album title from the chorus.
I’d Give It All
A desperate love song, and about how I have somehow managed to live on or close to a Church Street for the last 7 years.
Nightcrawler
This was one of the first songs I wrote for the new record. I had a verse that I took to my friend Jess De Luca and we finished it together.
We recorded this song live with the band in a few hours after learning the song, playing it a few times and then just deciding the third or fourth take for the record.
These Nights
This is one of my most fond moments on the record. Again, we did this completely live with the full band, recorded in Gab’s living room. I had written the song on the same UK trip as Duty Free.
I spent a week in a hotel room in Brighton on the coast and it was miserably cold and bleak – perfect for songwriting.
I’d always romanticised the English Winter, and I was excited to be writing so openly from an unsteady place, both physically and emotionally.
It is about balancing your mental health, relationships and the different time zones whilst being away from home. You can hear my drummer, Alex, abruptly turn the snare on just before the band enters after the second B section.
Caf (producer) tried to eliminate the sound that bled into all the mics, but I opted for keeping it in. I love little imperfections like that. It reminds me that we were just humans, playing music in a borrowed room.
