Promises kept.
Today, August 15th marks the arrival of Promises, the powerful new full-length creation of Mama Kin Spender, the ARIA Award-nominated combo of Danielle Caruana and Dingo Spender.
A concept album, a “coming-of-age/coming-of-rage” collection, Promises explores love’s optimism, decay, rampage, and transformation — the often-overlooked stuff that binds us all.
“These are songs hewn from real life journeys,” shares Caruana. “Bruises, shame, rage, desire, contempt, bad behaviour. Death by a thousand cuts of carelessness, small unkind moments, projections, stacked up and smothering the innocence of love’s true desire — to change the very shape of us.”
Promises is the follow-up to 2018’s Golden Magnetic, shortlisted for Best Blues and Roots Album at the ARIAs.
The multiple WAM Award winners will support the new release with live shows through September and October, along the way visiting Pomona, Murwillumbah, Brisbane, Melbourne, Archie’s Creek, Belgrave, Sydney, Milton, and Dashville.
Then, premiering in early 2026, a special theatre show Promises & Wild Beasts, led by multi-award-winning director Craig Ilott, will bring those songs to life through live music, design, movement and storytelling.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of metal, rock, indie, pop, and everything else in between.
The storytelling starts here, as Caruana breaks down each track on Promises below.
Promises Track by Track:
“Arrows”
This is the slow creep of weeds into a once-verdant veggie patch. Thorns and brambles show the neglect of a once-precious thing. These weeds, on the surface, are the odd, shitty comment. But below, they suck and drain nutrients and moisture, strangling the root systems of the once-soft, delicious things we nurtured.
“Arrows” is about veiled words shielding real meaning: potshots, underhanded digs, bickering, complaining, eye-rolling… and slowly, connection is traded for control. Passive aggression at its most poisonous. Comfort becomes contempt. “Don’t look at me like that… take what you said back…” but you can’t… you can’t take it back. The arrow has flown, and it has hit its mark.
“Bleeding Out”
This song is the itchy, inflamed hotspot in a relationship, where needs, desires, outsourcing, and co-dependency become a writhing tangle. It’s the sore spot in a relationship where we mistake being loved for making someone responsible for the parts of ourselves we refuse to claim. Yet, in the tantrum of our unmet needs, we miss how often the other is trying to reach us. Somehow, we become invisible to each other in our projections, and in that haze of unmet needs, we become obsessed with being “right” rather than being kind.
This is a futile return to childish behaviours, seeking to assign blame rather than looking for how to take responsibility for our own needs. “It’s a need-greedy kinda grind, tryna win fake convos in my mind… I’ll phrase it so, and then you’ll see it was you, not me.”
“Promises”
This is the volcano erupting! The lava that spills from her mouth is a fury that claims and lays waste to everything in her path. Rage and fury! This song is the release of catharsis after the numb limbo of rumbling, rolling, unmet, unexpressed energy; however, in this case, this song is more of “a fire in the belly” than a “burn the whole fkn thing down.” It’s tempting and can feel like the most obvious thing to do with such a glorious, mesmerising flame; however, the light was more interesting than the ashes, and so that rage lit up the shadowy corners of the world.
We had to accept the parts of us that had died trying, give them a respectful burial, and then go about letting the soil rest quietly before considering the next crop. Metaphors aside, this is the part in a relationship where new shit comes to light, the realisation that this version of “us” is over, and we have to grapple with how we got away with treating each other that way for so long. It is rage and relief, poison and prayer.
“Desert Rain”
Inevitably, between what was and what will be is the aching stretch of the unknown. A death. A void that in itself is the most important engine of transformation. The goo of the caterpillar in its cocoon before it becomes the butterfly. There is no rushing the desert. Timeless and ancient. And no, you cannot force the sky to rain, but only humbly wait and accept that there are no guarantees. “There are no guarantees.” In the desert, we are faced with the reality of ourselves and our projections, stripped bare of ego and its intricate devices. In the desert, you have no name, no place, just the comfort you can find in the centre of your own scarred chest.
“We Are the Water”
The turning, the re-turning, the realisation that love was there all along. The “one-ness,” the “us-ness.” And the realisation that our separation from love is only ever a figment of our imagination, because love is unconditional, universal, natural, and it is beating in our chests and running in our veins. Love is a river made from our tears and our laughter, washing away the sharp boulders of life and its inevitable pains. This song is the celebration, the baptism, the first drink, the first rains, the full lapping tide — all inevitable yet wondrous and unexpected.
“Dance with Me”
The beginning is the end — the end is the beginning. And to think that this might be a circle. That all good stories are a circle. That the fullness of love’s intoxicating, giddy embrace would ever find us again… this song is the reason we start and where we hope to end up. This song is joy leaping out of our chests, wearing an irrepressible smile… “We got quick fast steps moving side to side, while our shoulders do a shimmy in the golden light…” the blinding optimism that love can, in fact, save us all.
“Love That Will Not Die”
This song is the polished, soft gold badge of honour worn on one’s breast after returning from the triumph and tragedy of love. This is the expanse. This is the endlessness. This is the enduring truth — that we are loved eternally, and that love is an energetic field beyond our wildest imagining. That love seeks to make instruments out of us to harmonise with each other. There is nothing to seek, for what we seek is inevitably seeking us. It is beating in the chest of the ones we leave behind.
BONUS TRACKS:
“What’s Wrong with Me” (Remixed and Remastered)
This is a song that was written as part of a body of work called Are You Listening? — songs that deal with the aspects of listening and being heard. This one deals with what happens when we stop listening to ourselves, and the knowing in our own guts, our internal guidance systems, becomes dulled after years of ignoring blatant truths.
“Blue Belle” (Remixed and Remastered)
This is a song about coming to terms with forgiveness. Accepting that when we ask for forgiveness, we must ask the other and ourselves, and that means taking full and complete responsibility for our role in the breakdown of a relationship. “And I stand in the wreckage of the boy’s made mistakes, but the man comes of age when the boy’s heart breaks…”
“The Road” (Remixed and Remastered)
This is a song about the generosity of sitting beside someone’s pain and just holding the silence with them, reserving judgment and advice, leaning into the discomfort of their anguish and not looking away, not distracting, just being with, sitting beside, allowing a person’s own intelligence systems to fire up, or even to offer them just a moment of rest from having to hold the entirety of their grief or shame on their own. Sometimes silence is the most generous act of love.
