We had the pleasure of interviewing Mallrat over Zoom video.

Mallrat's prized pop songwriting has become a beacon the Australian music industry will eagerly follow, and on her debut album Butterfly Blue, she embodies the spirit of its titular creature – but without the delicacy that keeps you at a distance. Over a dozen clever and open-hearted tracks, Mallrat – aka Grace Shaw – draws you in close and shows you the world through her wide, hopeful eyes.

On Butterfly Blue, a lifetime of collecting influences across genres – from folk, country, and Florence + The Machine to the moody noir pop of Lana Del Rey and Azealia Banks' bold and charismatic hip-hop – come together into one vast and tender debut, a compilation of Shaw's emotions as eclectic and cohesive as those soundtracks she pored over.

With combined streams topping 300 million, her trio of early EPs – Uninvited (2016), In The Sky (2018), Driving Music (2019) – are documents of an artist on the rise. In the process of making them, Shaw swapped the Brisbane suburbs for Los Angeles and toured both at home and internationally, including European and North American supports for Maggie Rogers and King Princess, selling out headline shows from London to New York, and collecting fans in the likes of Mark Ronson on the way.

Butterfly Blue solidifies Mallrat's reputation as a master of clever, timeless pop. Sweeping across vast, airy production is often surprising samples and sounds tucked under the surface: chopped-up Gangsta Pat bars, a flipped recording of a children's choir performing Lisztomania. Distorted effects were recorded from discarded children's toys – a sonic gift from Clams Casino's producer. Layered, like an instrument all their own, are her signature breathy vocals, more assured than ever, worthy of the same attention and fixation she once applied to Imogen Heap's.

Mallrat's journey to become the artist capable of making such an accomplished record has been a fascinating one – to watch and experience. Describing the metamorphosis of her favorite insect, she explains breathlessly: "The transformation they undergo is almost incomprehensible. They dissolve into goo and then reconstruct themselves – but hold onto the memories of their time as a caterpillar."

She could just as easily be describing the next phase for Australia's rising pop princess as she prepares to unfurl her wings and show you how she's grown.

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