In February, two staples of the Australian music industry dropped an album borne of friendship, experience, and a love of music that had previously been lost. Mama Kin and Spender joined forces to produce Golden Magnetic, a journey through experimental songwriting and interpersonal reconnection.
“Everywhere we go, we perform with a local choir,” Danielle Caruana AKA Mama Kin, explains. Their upcoming show at Howler is no different, with Caruana and Tommy Spender – who performs under Spender – keeping it in the family. The pair recruited their old friend Virginia Bott to bring the First Chorus Band of Singers along for a jam, Caruana adding that it’s a bit like “that one time on band camp” whenever they all get together.
Golden Magnetic can be easily described as an almost entirely community-based project; old friends Spender and Caruana at the heart of it, while they invited and encouraged other old friends such as Bott and the First Chorus Band of Singers, to get involved too.
“It’s about hanging with people you love and trust, which may be where the title of the album comes from; everyone we love is drawn like a magnet into the project, and they’re the golden ones,” Caruana says.
Mama Kin and Spender are already heavyweights of the Australian music industry, Mama Kin with two albums under her belt including the ARIA-nominated The Magician’s Daughter, while Spender released a critically-acclaimed EP and toured the festival circuit extensively. So what brought these two artists’ different paths together? The pair both felt the same way: having put in the hard yards in music for a long while, eventually they both felt that they had lost that romantic notion for the industry that new artists feel.
“We were both at that time in our careers where it’s a bit of a slog, and a bit of an effort,” Caruana says. “That being said, I think Tommy and I really had to go out and make our own music first. But you reach a point where you want to get away from that feeling of being on the grind: touring, selling tickets to shows, organising babysitting – all the arduous shit. We were set on not being outcome-driven with it; we agreed, ‘Let’s just be driven by the motivation to enjoy the craft again.’”
The album itself is a triumph of classical singer-songwriter prowess, though experimental writing techniques are at the heart and soul of the album. In fact, throughout the writing process Spender and Caruana signed up for the I Heart Songwriting Club – an online club that gives you a word per week to musically respond to for ten weeks. The duo then came together with 20 pre-written songs, and out came the album. The only song to have been completely co-written by the pair was ‘Air Between Us’, exhibiting Caruana’s strong vocals and Spender’s talent for harmonising.
The pair have now rediscovered the love of music that they felt when they first started out. That being said, Caruana refuses to become numb to the process, though she has every reason to be entirely sure of herself and her artistic decision-making.
“I’m still as nervous as I was when I was first performing, but just about different things. I’d be worried if I weren’t nervous. I know how much work it all takes, so I don’t take it lightly,” she says.
“In the end, nerves are just excitement, and they’re always required for you to be able to get up on stage and deliver your work with real presence.”
Though it’s only been about two months since the release of Golden Magnetic, Caruana and Spender are wholly invested in their Mama Kin Spender project and its continued creative endeavours.
“We’re keen to do more albums together; we’re already planning our next recording dates. Now we can say we love how [our signature sounds] sound together. We’re not ready to let go just yet.”
