The Guardian<\/a> has previously described Cummings\u2019 voice as both appearing \u201cto spring from a deep well connecting her diaphragm to the massive tectonic plates below\u201d and \u201cpowerful enough to pound granite into dust\u201d.<\/p>\n\u2018The fucking coolest thing is to care. And I do care, so much\u2019 \u2026 Grace Cummings. Photograph: Charlie Kinross\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Recorded in Topanga with producer Jonathan Wilson (who has also worked with Angel Olsen and Father John Misty), Bloodhorse! is named after the kind of thoroughbred that is a nervous wreck by temperament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really find it hard to quieten down,\u201d Cummings says. \u201cI grew up thinking that there was something wrong with me, or I was difficult, or too sensitive, or too much. The peace that I found in music is a legitimate lifesaver.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since releasing her debut album, Refuge Cove, in 2019, Cummings has had success both in Australia and overseas, playing international festivals including Glastonbury. Though she is a sure-footed songwriter whose last album, Ramona, was shortlisted for the 2024 Australian Music prize, Cummings has spent a lifetime trying to better fit people\u2019s expectations \u2013 ever since that formative night-terrors incident.<\/p>\n
In her track The Magnum Opus of The North is a Cowboy Boot, she describes the kind of man \u201cwho cosplays as tortured poets or cowboys, pretending to be disaffected\u201d. Recently she\u2019s come to the realisation that she has been a bowerbird in her relationships, borrowing opinions, taste and values and assuming them to be her own.<\/p>\n
\u2018Now I want to live my life the way that I am,\u2019 says Cummings, pictured at the Commercial Club hotel in Melbourne. Photograph: Charlie Kinross\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been mirroring people\u2019s behaviour in order to please them,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m autistic and I didn\u2019t really realise what that meant. Now I want to live my life the way that I am \u2013 in a way that I would probably be burned at the stake for a couple of hundred years ago. I only want to do things that teach me something, or help somebody. The fucking coolest thing is to care. And I do care, so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
The aforementioned cowboy theme pops up a few times, including in an abbreviated, highly sexual AI country banger with a male vocal (it\u2019s as surreal as it sounds), and in the video for My God, shot at The Lawrence Rodeo in Maclean, New South Wales. The rodeo becomes a physical manifestation of the hatred she describes in the song, the kind of hatred that people direct at strangers online. \u201cThe rodeo is this fucking strange environment where people have a bloodlust,\u201d Cummings says. \u201cA real depiction of us just sitting and watching something that\u2019s quite awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
My God, the first single from the album, has a percussive urgency with its uh-huh-huh refrain. When recording it, Cummings had pneumonia, which forced her to experiment with her breath \u2013 picture the sound you might make when jumping into freezing water. \u201cI\u2019m leaning more into vocalisation without words, and this was primal sounding,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s the way that some people soothe themselves and their nervous system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cummings has never paid herself a wage as a musician and works as a disability care worker. Photograph: Charlie Kinross\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
With her track FAKE, she wants the listener to feel as though they are being dragged under water. The line \u201cif you would just be a good girl\u201d is so offensive to her that she has omitted it from the official lyrics and uses a glottal stop to make it almost unintelligible. In the video, she chokes on viscous black blood when singing it.<\/p>\n
Seeing Cummings live, there\u2019s a similar feeling of purging, as if watching a seance or someone speaking in tongues. \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a milking of catharsis going on, but there\u2019s no acting in it,\u201d she says. \u201cSometimes I have no idea what\u2019s going to happen and my band are like, fuck. But then you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh well, I guess that was there and needed to come out at some point\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the coming months, Cummings and her band \u2013 Miles Brown, Louis King, Tex Keane-Cullen and Tommy Brooks \u2013 will tour Australia, the US and Europe. Cummings has never paid herself a wage as a musician and works as a disability care worker (\u201cwhich I love\u201d), so it goes without saying that she thinks the arts are undervalued in Australia and undervalued as an export. \u201cMy managers are the most incredible, generous people ever, but a lot of the music industry is about finding people on the spectrum that\u2019ll do it for nothing \u2013 because we can\u2019t not, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
While she\u2019s determined, after a few years of \u201cincredible pain and change\u201d, to not seek out external validation, I can\u2019t resist telling her about some of the comments I\u2019ve seen on YouTube under the My God video, like: \u201cHearing Grace live this year is going to be the highlight of my youth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat makes me extremely grateful and glad,\u201d she says, \u201cbut a little inside of me goes, \u2018Imagine if you knew me though.\u2019 I still have that little dig at myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grace Cummings\u2019 songs to live by<\/p>\n
Each month we ask our headline act to share the songs that have accompanied them through love, life, lust and death.<\/p>\n
What is the last song you sang in the shower?<\/p>\n
Mary Don\u2019t You Weep, as performed live by Aretha Franklin on Amazing Grace.<\/p>\n
What is the song you have listened to the most times this year?<\/p>\n
Melody by Serge Gainsbourg.<\/p>\n
If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?<\/p>\n
About 10 completely different songs playing very loud over the top of each other.<\/p>\n
What is your go-to karaoke song?<\/p>\n
Crying by Roy Orbison.<\/p>\n
What underrated song deserves classic status?<\/p>\n
Life Line by Harry Nilsson.<\/p>\n
What is a song you loved as a teenager?<\/p>\n
The Tourist by Radiohead.<\/p>\n
What is the first song\/album you bought?<\/p>\n
The White Stripes by the White Stripes<\/p>\n
What song do you want played at your funeral?<\/p>\n
The End by the Beatles.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s one song you wish you didn\u2019t write?<\/p>\n
I wanna change something on every song I\u2019ve ever written! But that\u2019s how it goes. I think sitting with decisions you\u2019ve made in the past are just a part of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Grace Cummings\u2019 earliest memories is going into the lounge room to tell her parents about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-590204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}