A part of Australian singer-songwriter Mallrat, née Grace Shaw, knew her younger sister was going to die. “The idea of suddenly losing my sister felt like a near possibility so many times,” she says. “When you’re preparing for something like that semi-regularly, in hopes of protecting at least a part of your heart, it does weird things to you.”
Shaw’s new single “Horses,” which sounds like a ballad by and for someone deep in the throes of grief, was written before her sister Liv, a poet, died from an opioid overdose last May. In her soft and airy voice, Shaw sings: “Drive past the station and it looks the same / I wonder how many faces have changed / And if I sat down on platform two / Could that bring back you?”
“My default answer is to say ‘Horses’ is about home,” says Shaw, 26,“but really it’s about my confusing relationship with my family and my sister, and missing her before she’s gone.”
Growing up in Brisbane, Grace and Liv attended an all-girls parochial school on academic scholarships, though it was Liv who got the full ride for her writing ability (which “was just years and years beyond her level,” says Shaw). They were introduced to music through their maternal Irish-and Scottish-grandparents, who loved the 1995 musical Riverdance, while the girls’ parents, both writers, preferred Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, the Ministry of Sound, and Pet Shop Boys. “There are no musicians in my family, just people with good taste, but writing was really in the mix,” Shaw says, recalling a time when her mom claimed the only thing that she and Shaw’s dad fought about was punctuation.
As life at home turned from good to bad and their parents divorced, she and Liv, who was four years her junior, felt like “us against the world,” Shaw says. “I felt a real sense of parental duty over my sister.”
The girls bonded over their love of Leonard Cohen, Nicki Minaj, and animals—horses in particular. “When [Liv] was little, I would be like, ‘I’m a horse, and you can sit on my back,’ and we’d ride around the carpet,” she remembers. Later, while Liv took to writing poems in her journal, beginning to struggle with addiction in her teens, Grace found solace at the dojo, first practicing jiu jitsu and then kickboxing.
“I was always going to be a UFC fighter,” says Shaw. As we speak over Zoom, she’s clad in an oversized graphic mixed martial arts tee by the brand Affliction, with giant white chains wrapped around a large cross. “But then music started consuming my world.”
To hear her tell it, “Horses” is not the only example of Shaw’s uncanny, almost witchy ability to look into the future. In high school, she was seeing the Adelaide-born rapper Allday in concert when she had a vision of being with him at the airport. Not only did she not know Allday personally at the time, but Shaw had no formal music training. So she did what any other teenager with a hunch would do in the 2010s: She looked up how to produce her own beats online. Songwriting came soon after, and within three years, Shaw had self-released singles and an EP—2016’s Uninvited—and opened for Allday in Australia and North America. Sold-out shows with the likes of pop star Maggie Rogers and rapper Post Malone, as well as collaborations with rapper/singer Azealia Banks and electronic duo The Chainsmokers, followed; and in 2022, she released her debut album, Butterfly Blue, cementing herself as a rising star in pop.
“I think prayer and manifestation are the same thing,” says Shaw. “Our intuition is really important.”
Though she is hesitant to call herself spiritual, Shaw sprinkles references to angels and heaven and light like pixie dust across her sophomore album, Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right (out February 14 via Nettwerk). At times, her sound is gritty and dance-fueled, as on the tracks “Pavement” and “Hocus Pocus,” both of which sample vocals by Memphis rapper DJ Zirk. Other songs sound almost like hymns, with titles like “Virtue” and melodies that flutter effortlessly up and down the scale.
“I love listening and watching Gaelic choir videos on YouTube,” says Shaw, citing the University of Dublin’s rendition of the traditional Irish song “Mo Ghile Mear” as an influence in writing songs such as “Ray of Light,” which sounds like it was recorded at church—only with synthesizers, a drum machine, and an electronic organ in tow.
What’s clear is Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right—its title referencing a boxing term—is meant for the dance floor as much as it is for hiding under the sheets in your bedroom. Maybe you’re sobbing. Maybe you’re smiling. Maybe you’re doing both—Shaw certainly is, especially now that she’s preparing for an Australian, North American and European tour beginning in the spring, not to mention a few guest spots alongside Kylie Minogue in their native country.
Call Shaw’s sound dream pop, or the opposite, reality pop, as the meaning behind her words, like life, can change in an instant.
“When I wrote the chorus to ‘Horses,’ it was me singing it and feeling unrecognizable,” says Shaw. “But since Liv passed, I imagine it’s her saying it, which is kind of a nice way to think about it, like a call and response.”
In it, Shaw sings between sharp inhales, as if gasping for breath: “Hey, I’m right here / I look different now / Do you remember?”
Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right is out February 14 via Nettwerk. Order it here.