EAT YOUR HEART OUT // Fearlessly Flourishing

Before breaking the hearts of pop punk kids everywhere by buddying up with Lil Wayne, Blink-182 shaped a generation with their anthems detailing love, loss and all the growing pains in between. Not too dissimilar are the tracks found on Florescence, the debut full length from Eat Your Heart Out.  

MORE: LEGACY: BLINK-182: Enema Of The State // BRING ME THE HORIZON: First Love Australian Tour REVIEWS: BAD RELIGION: Age Of Unreason // THE DAMNED THINGS: High Crimes

Before the official release of the record, we here at Hysteria got frontwoman Caitlin Henry on the phone to get the lowdown on the LP and the lyrical inspiration behind it.

Hysteria: Congratulations on finishing up Florescence, you all must be so stoked to have your first full length done!

Caitlin: Thank you! We are very stoked, very excited and very relieved that we’ve got it all done.

How did you feel making it compared to your past EPs?

I think we just all went in knowing this was going to be a lot more work than we’ve ever done before. We definitely wanted it to feel like the best thing we’ve ever done so we wanted to put the most effort in. We definitely stressed ourselves out a bit in the process but overall it was just really exciting, even when it was stressful.

Do you have any memorable or funny stories from the recording process?

We recorded the album in Los Angeles, so the whole thing felt like a really weird dream. I guess it was always a bucket list for a little band from Australia to record their debut record in L.A. That was cool in itself, but we spent a lot of time riding around on those scooters in the parking lot of the studio. That’s one of my main memories, everyone absolutely flying around on those [laughs].

I definitely remember this one day where I really emotionally hit a wall, it was one of the days where I was tracking and I just had a bit of an emotional breakdown. Our producer Zach Tuch and Patrick [Miranda, of Movements] were both there and they just sandwiched me in a hug and said it’s going to be okay. That’s one of the moments that really sticks out to me, but it’s not really funny [laughs].

We were trying to find something for ages and then, on the same day, our manager and I both found the word Florescence. It means the process of flowering, it’s a synonym for bloom or blossom. Since both of us found it on the same day, we took it as a sign.
[ Caitlin Henry ]

Speaking of Pat, the track Carousel was co-written by him. How’d that go?

It was really interesting; we haven’t done a lot of co-writing before and we’ve had a couple of experiences in the past that we didn’t really vibe on but Pat’s been a good friend of ours for a couple of years now and he always said he wanted to be involved on our debut. Since we were already in L.A where he lives, he just ended up coming down and we co-wrote a fair few of the tracks. It was really cool to have his input and it was really inspiring to see how he works and how his brain fires. He’s so fast and so efficient at what he does, it’s really incredible. I don’t even know how he thinks of his ideas, they’re so sick. It was definitely really inspiring and it pushed me to try to step up my game because I didn’t want to feel like we were operating at two really different levels. Pat just knows how to instil confidence in people, especially on those days where I was hitting a wall. It was really cool to have him in the studio with us.

We’d love to know what other tracks he co-wrote.

There are 11 songs on the album, I think at the end we ended up working out that he had input on ten of those. Some of them were co-written by me, him and Will [Moore, Guitarist] whereas with others he had a listen to the demo and suggested we change some melodies or words. He pretty much worked across the album, except for the song Same Stars. Having him so invested and wanting to help us was pretty cool.

The record’s got a pretty interesting title, we’d love to know a bit more about how you came across it and how it ties into the album content.

We knew we wanted the album to be called something to do with flowers and nature and the idea of blooming but we couldn’t find the right word. We didn’t want to call it bloom, we feel like that’s a word that a lot of bands have used recently and although we love the word, we just wanted something else. We were trying to find something for ages and then, on the same day, our manager and I both found the word Florescence. It means the process of flowering, it’s a synonym for bloom or blossom. Since both of us found it on the same day, we took it as a sign.

There are a few different ideas on the album but the overall inspiration came from things I’d experienced, people I spent time with or feelings I had over the past year and how I learnt to accept them and overcome them and grow into an adult. The process of flowering, and growing into the next stage of something, summed that up nicely.

There’s obviously a fair bit of growing up that’s occurred over the years and the record does a great job of encapsulating that.  Did all your lyrical inspiration come from personal experiences though?

Pretty much all the lyrics came from personal experiences that I had or things I felt in the process of growing up. There is one track that’s actually from the notes in Will’s phone and that’s Pear Tree, that song is about a dog that he had that died. He had to bury him and that was pretty much the saddest day in his life and I guess it was a really pivotal moment in him growing up… realising that dealing with that stuff is something you have to do as an adult. With the exception of that though, all the other songs are experiences that I’ve had.

Do you feel like being in the band and going through your adolescent years in the music industry made you grow up a little differently?

I guess so because even when we were finishing school and everyone was thinking of going to Uni or deciding what job they were going to have, we just wanted to do the band. That’s what our main focus was so most of us didn’t go to Uni. I guess it was different in the way that we always had very different goals to all of our peers. We obviously still aren’t that well known as a band so I think it would be very different if we grew up in the limelight. We were pretty lucky to have the chance to grow up a bit before the band started to become known at all. It’s cool for us that no one had to see us go through our weird, edgy 17-year-old phase [laughs].

If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self as you were first getting into this, what would it be?

Practice more. Practice playing the guitar more because that’ll come in handy and practice songwriting more. I guess I’d also tell myself to not get as disheartened and to not take on board every stupid YouTube comment that some random person leaves, but to still be open to constructive criticism because it is valuable.

Order/Stream Eat Your Heart Out’s new album Florescence here.