Light hit my face like a straight right
While searching for a title for her second album, Mallrat kept coming back to a line in the song “Pavement”: “light hit my face like a straight right.” “I chose it because I noticed there were a lot of lyrics about light in the album, or using light as a metaphor or simile,” the Brisbane artist born Grace Shaw tells Apple Music about the project, which was recorded largely between Melbourne and Los Angeles. “So I thought it would make sense to have something related to that as the title. And it was my favorite lyric, because in boxing, a straight right is like a power punch. So,” she laughs, “*Light hit my face like a straight right* is just honestly really clever.” Given the album’s textured, minimalist electronic approach, it’s no surprise she lists Buddy Ross (with whom she worked on “Pavement”) as a production influence. Shaw also singles out SOPHIE and Hudson Mohawke, praising their minimal yet colorful and bold sounds, characteristics that resonate through songs such as “Hocus Pocus” and “Hideaway.” Perhaps less predictable is the influence of British shoegazers my bloody valentine on the doom rock of “The Worst Thing I Would Ever Do”; also surprising is the impact of country artists from the ’60s and ’70s, with Shaw pointing to Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” as a favorite. “The things about that style of music I try to emulate are the warmth and beautiful lyrics,” she explains. “Especially all the warm textures.” Here, Shaw takes Apple Music through *Light hit my face like a straight right*, track by track. **“My Darling, My Angel”** “It’s about feeling love, but not necessarily for other people. In the last section of the song, the lyrics are, ‘Felt that I was fleshless/Anchored by my necklace/Now my eyes are sparkling/Thinking ’bout my darling.’ To me, the song is more about feeling alive and like a zest for life.” **“Pavement”** “I wrote the first seed of the idea when I was walking home in the rain with my friends. The line ‘Oh, the light on the rain, on the pavement’ was sitting in my phone for a little bit. I wrote the verses and the hum melody with Buddy Ross, and then I left certain sections blank because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I kept hearing this Cub Sport lyric \[from the song ‘Beg U’\] in that pre-chorus section. They’re my best friends, so I got the a cappella and I arranged it. Then I also brought in this DJ Zirk sample \[‘Born 2 Lose’\] as the other hook, and it worked so perfectly.” **“Something for Somebody”** “This is my one of my proudest songs, from a lyrical perspective especially. I wrote most of the song on the first day in the studio, and I kept rewriting it because I had this idea and I wanted to execute it as well as possible. The song is about pretending to have moved on, in quite a not nice and almost creepy way. I was really excited to disguise that in such pretty melodies. If you didn’t listen to the words you’d be like, ‘Oh, this is a lovely song.’ Listening to the lyrics you’re like, ‘She needs to seek fucking help.’” **“Virtue”** “Casey MQ works on this song, and also the interludes ‘Love Songs / Heart Strings’ and ‘The Light Streams in and Hits My Face.’ He showed me this Finnish a cappella group, Rajaton, and I was like, ‘Oh my God. I would love to sample this.’ And he goes, ‘I already kind of did, let’s rework it.’ The lines ‘Sweet is the touch of your newborn wings/We fly in circles and play with the sun,’ that’s from the Rajaton song ‘Butterfly.’ It’s from the perspective of a butterfly. And butterflies only live a day or two. So all of the lyrics of that song follow a butterfly being born, or emerging from a chrysalis throughout the day, then what happens as night begins.” **“Defibrillator”** “‘Defibrillator’ is my favorite word, and I have been wanting to use it in a song for the longest time. I started this one with Lonelyspeck, a producer from Adelaide. The first bit that really made sense was, ‘Oh defibrillator/Had to try to hate ya,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll build \[on that\].’ It all started because I wanted to use the word ‘defibrillator.’” **“The Light Streams in and Hits My Face”** “Casey and I composed this song so that it would perfectly flow in to ‘Hocus Pocus.’ It’s exactly half the BPM of ‘Hocus Pocus,’ and it’s in the same key. Then the last lyric of this song sets up the first lyric of ‘Hocus Pocus.’ It’s designed to introduce it.” **“Hocus Pocus” (with Kito)** “This song changed a lot from the day I started it. It was originally this really bouncy thing, like bouncy piano chords. I remember writing the lyric ‘I can’t help but notice/You’ve been falling for hocus pocus’ and laughing out loud, and then saying to Leroy \[Clampitt, co-producer\], ‘I’ve just written this lyric and it’s so silly, I wonder if I should change it.’ He laughed and said, ‘No, it’s good, because karaoke songs have silly lyrics.’ So maybe this will be a karaoke song one day. I kept working on it with Kito, and then brought it back to Australia and worked on it more with Styalz \[Fuego\]. It was just a case of slowly chipping away at it.” **“Hideaway”** “I started this with Japanese Wallpaper, who is one of my best friends. I love Two Shell, they make really fast, bright dance music. I wanted to make something that was in a similar world and at a similar pace. It’s about having a massive crush on someone.” **“Love Songs / Heart Strings”** “This samples ‘The Light Streams in and Hits My Face.’ And also, this ties together ‘Hideaway’ and ‘Ray of Light.’ So it starts at the same BPM as ‘Hideaway,’ then, when the kind of siren sounds happen at the end, the BPM slows down to be the same BPM as ‘Ray of Light.’ It’s another case of wanting to make an interlude and tie in some ideas that I think are interesting.” **“Ray of Light”** “My favorite lyric in this song is in the second verse: ‘Look outside, the day begins/A golden orb above me spins/A pair of wings catch in the silk/Invisible threads hold her still.’ I really like it, because a golden orb sounds like the sun, and it is about the sun, but I was thinking about a golden orb spider, which is a really common spider in Queensland. I was imagining a butterfly or a moth getting stuck in the web, and really feeling like that butterfly or moth. \[With the line\] ‘I’m a moth and there’s a glow around you, babe,’ it’s just feeling so stuck or enchanted by a situation and not sure how to possibly unstick yourself.” **“The Worst Thing I Would Ever Do”** “Part of the reason this song exists is because I’d never properly listened to my bloody valentine. But then when Buddy Ross and I were working on ‘Pavement,’ he showed me the *Loveless* album and I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool.’ So that’s one of the things that kind of made this song happen. To me, this song feels like the end of the world. Like in a movie or something. It’s like the world is about to end, and they’re either gonna save it or they’re not, but they’re just accepting that it’s out of their hands.” **“Horses”** “The main reason I wanted it to be the end of the album is because at the end you hear Annika \[Schmarsel\], who I made the song with, take her foot off the pedal of the piano. And because you can hear that pedal sound, that’s what made it feel like the end.”