It took an oath to spill hidden secrets, files shared and trips across oceans with producer Ben Fletcher, and almost three years to birth Lisa Caruso‘s debut album In Feelings.
Unleashed on the world today, In Feelings is a powerful long-player. Recorded in the midst of a long Crohn’s disease relapse, Caruso has laid bare her physical and emotional ailments and turned them into something truly beautiful.
Naturally, no one can tell the story on how the record came together and what exactly inspired it better than Caruso herself. In the following track-by-track, Caruso details the emotional rage of ‘Dream Lover’, the instrumental romance on ‘Moonshine’, the ’60s surf rock on ‘A Holiday’, and so much more.
Check out Lisa Caruso’s debut album In Feelings:
IN FEELINGS – TRACK BY TRACK
1.SHAKE BABY SHAKE
This was the first of my songs that Ben (producer) and I worked on together, so it also set the instrumental tone that we were to play with on the album. I fell in love with the Baritone guitar and Fender Jazz which married perfectly to that bit of nostalgia I had in my mind for upright piano and a replicated tight 90s drum
machine sound. We recorded most of the track in the UK studio with Matt Ingram (Laura Marling) who lay down drums, and the vocals were later recorded back in Oz.
‘Shake Baby Shake’ is also the first single that I released off the album. It had been a little while since my last lot of releases because of ill health, so it made the most sense to come back with something that I resonated with fully. First shedding light on the crappiness of living with an invisible illness, the choruses lean into an optimism and then jerks into the bridge showing fight.
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2. DREAM LOVER
I wrote ‘Dream Lover’ whilst in a bit of an emotional rage. It’s essentially a one sided argument in a lovers quarrel. The chorus screams ‘What about me?’, so we took the sentiment further with some pretty aggressive sounding guitars; Ben was all over it- a very exciting time in the studio. Take it to the bridge and it dramatically falls apart into a sort of dream state where vocals and organs ring out, and my breakdown fantasies are made.
This one is probably my favourite to perform live. It’s fun to sing and is hard to escape the role play. I owe the speak-say influence to empowering ’60s pop queens like ‘The Shangri-Las’, and the gutsy truth to my first femme inspiration Martha Wainwright.
Unrelenting as it goes, we wanted the instruments to follow suit to the annoyance and aggravation I was feeling at the time of writing it. I guess sometimes heartache pays off.
3. TO CALL YOU MINE
‘To Call You Mine’ is another recount of an event I digested through songwriting. I medaled with these literal lyrics for a while, but in the end nothing else really stuck, so away it went.
I had been listening to a lot of indie rock queens at the time and loved the idea of an edgy palm muted intro. It’s subtle, but I think it’s nature possesses a sort of passive aggressive style of delivery that I wanted the story to tell before things got crazy.
Being a vocalist, arranging the backing vocals on this album was my favourite part of the recording process. I spent the majority of my teens singing a harmony to anything I could before someone told me to hush, and I love a gang vocal. It felt very natural to sing the ‘I’d be dead’ chants in this chorus. Maybe another subconscious exemplar of the support I was craving at the time.
4. MOONSHINE
This song always takes me back to the Sydney apartment I was living in at the time I wrote it. I felt the most inspired in that bedroom with almost all of the songs off the album starting there. My bedroom had a huge window that I would love to stare out of at night to catch the moonlight. Or maybe it was just a street light.
Either way, this song is about waiting for all things to turn in and for the moon to rise. As the lyrics go, it’s a lot about anxiety and the long process it is learning how to take hold. Another day gone and another opportunity to look inwards.
Surprisingly to me, this is the only 6/8 dance that made the record. I love the romance and sway of a song in 3. There was a awesome harmonium at the UK studio we couldn’t go past, so we started with that, and then layered up! Onto a theramin, and later a vibraphone which also appears in two other tracks. The voice you hear at the top is Matt Ingrams before hitting record.
5. BORROW MY BODY
I’ve always been attached to this song, so it took sometime to find the right arrangement to do it justice. I had ideas to make the chorus playful, but it in the end, it turned into the slow burn that it called for.
I kept my original arpeggiated guitar line, Ben layered a heap of shimmery guitars, we added my favourite Baritone, added some keys, some guitar feedback and soft cymbal hits before a triumphant tom drum mallet ending. Treating this track gently, vocals were the last that we lay down. It was a pretty lovely experience being in the booth with cans full of lush sounds.
I was looking forward to setting imagery to this one. Whilst there’s a strong sense of comfort in the song, the film clip expands on the sinking loneliness that this track also up-hears too. Coming home late, meandering about, ‘Borrow My Body’’s sentiment lies first in the simple complexity of two humans intertwining.
6. PATIENCE
So, I started to write this one on a family vacay. And as family vacations can sometimes go, patience is something that you need, and is definitely in the top 5 most important traits to pack.
The word circled my mind as I tried to get better at practicing it, and then somehow it didn’t matter anymore and the song turned into a raucous romantic affair turned possessive love song instead.
My friend and lead singer of the most excellent Sydney band The Maladies joins me here, weaving in and out of the melody whilst my guitar holds time with all else building to it’s grand end.
On first listen, it felt like the guitars were emulating a season final episode of Stranger Things. Noisy and chaotic, feedback rings after what sounds like I’ve pushed Daniel down a well; ‘Patience’ is an emotional and gut full ride.
7. A HOLIDAY
“A boat away from a holiday”; a stemming reference to the appreciation of immigration and growing up in an ethnic household. Speaking of the ideal of marrying your first love, this song wakes up to a tradition not always working out in a new generation. As life evolves and cultures intertwine, here lay my opportunity to scream out a frustration held by many. Still, I love where I have come from, so approached the topic lightly, ending up with this ’60s surf rock vibe.
‘A Holiday’ was recorded as a lone star. Ben was in town for a couple of days one summer so we decided to tick another track off the list. I remember it being so hot the day we did the demo and think that it served us well. The energy was great, and we felt in the mood for a fast one. Backing vocal parts were improvised, and in the end, the lead vocal we used was the one on the demo. A sticky and productive couple of days.
8. JONI
I wrote this song about a dear friend of mine around the time that Trump was elected President and whilst going through another of my Crohns (disease) relapses. My world, and the bigger world around me seemed a mess, so I wanted to find solace in focusing in on the good. My friend, who in this song I call Joni, had always been a beautiful support to me, and someone I had admired for having the softest heart and the most thoughtful soul.
I always hoped for this song to lead by the emotion, so we treated it gently. We lay down the guitars and icy keyboards and added the drums. After a little break from it, we knew that it needed more. Feeling a bit stuck, my engineer Matt slot in a thunderstorm he had previously recorded. Along with the rain and sparse sounds, a reversed guitar effect was put in and the song was complete. You can sometimes just tell when things are as they’re meant to be, and we finally got there with Joni.
9. I FEEL
‘I Feel’ is the last song on the album before the final reprise sums up the In Feelings journey and the time spent on the record. I was quite unwell in moments but with the support and love that surrounded me, I found strength through resilience making this album what it is because of that.
A couple years back, I’d planned to go on a writing trip but wound up in hospital for a week with another Crohns relapse. Luckily, I wasn’t in the worst shape I’d been, so I took some time to relax, reflect, and I ended up writing this track.
The melody came to me in bed as I sat up across from another patient. She was battling with some mental health problems and was in the very early stage of diagnosis. As the album goes, I found optimism in the situation and felt grateful for all that I was in control of. Grateful to be able to channel all that I have in song, and hopeful that this young girl was in the right place and was going to be okay.
10. ONTO THE FIRE
To close the album is ‘Onto the Fire’. It’s one of the oldest songs I’ve written, and is still one that I like to to play live. We had recorded 9 tracks, and that was going to be it until I realised that the LP was going to be the last opportunity to record this particular one, and I’m so glad that we did. The song had gone through a few arrangements over the years, but ultimately we realised that the sentiment is best kept on my own, and so we recorded it live in a room.
‘Onto the Fire’ is about experiencing hardship and coming out stronger at the other end. Whilst it might sound like a love song, it’s the relationship I’ve had with myself and this auto immune illness I’ve learnt to grow with.
“I’m bitter, I’m bitter and I’m strong, strong ‘cause of you, this aching is through. Oh I’ll breathe, I’ll breathe in full, and feel myself good, this aching is through”.
LISA CARUSO SHOW DATES
16th October
The Vanguard, Newtown, NSW
17th October
Create or die
Marrickville, NSW w/ livestream on Facebook
