Cat Clyde Releases ‘Down Rounder’.
Written by: Eva Lynch
Strummer Jasson
Last week Cat Clyde released her newest album Down Rounder, an album full of heartfelt lyrics which explores where she is and how she connects to the world around her, looking at patterns in the natural and unnatural world, and as she explains it, “the turning wheel of life, shedding old selves, embracing new selves, and the ever changing, expanding and contracting nature of love and life.” The record reflects on her wandering ways, and its title Down Rownder, builds off the expression of a ‘rounder’ in efforts to capture a similar spirit to someone who travels through natural landscapes hoping to make sense of it all, offering a lived in and comforting sense of the word around her.
With the album’s release, Clyde shared a video for her song “Everywhere I Go,” which captures the free spirit of the album. The video was filmed by her partner Strummer Jasson on her UK tour in February and follows her travel and movement across the country, by both train and foot, making their way around London and Glasgow. You can watch it here.
The album, which focuses on the natural environment and our connections to it, possesses an inherently intimate and personal feel, and connects any listener to Clyde immediately. Down Rounder is the fifth album from the Canadian singer/songwriter, and is a combination of soulful blues, folk-driven indie tones that explore the journey she’s been on for the past few years, and process feeling adrift and searching for your purpose, feeling overwhelmed, the art of letting go, and ruminations on the state of the environment at the hands of a male-driven colonial society as she reckons with the impact of our destructive legacy on the earth.
The album began its initial recording at Clyde’s home studio in rural Quebec as a follow up to her 2019 album Hunters Trance, with the intentions of self producing the album with her partner Strummer Jasson from their cabin, with their own Second Prize Records. When mold offset their plans, forcing the couple to relocate and rebuild, Clyde reached out to LA-based producer Tony Berg, and within a week the two were in LA, and managed to record the rest of Down Rounder in six days flat. In an interview with The Line of Best Fit, Clyde spoke about how the album offered the opportunity for her to grow as a songwriter and dive deeper into the music, saying how the silver lining of her relocation was that it gave the song a chance to breathe, and to “try things and experiment and give [the songs] time to change and grow. I’ve never had that before. It was an interesting experience because I was able to feel closer to the songs and they grew in a lot of ways.”
Once in LA, Berg brought in several musicians to play with Clyde, and this sense of newfound comradery imbues the music and album’s live recording, as Clyde explores the new community that was forged through the making of this album and people who helped her move through the process to produce the honest, stripped back album which is full of her unmistakable croon and playful twang. While it plays off her love of classic country music, Down Rounder really shows the breadth of her influences and wide selection of styles Clyde likes to dip her toes in. The way the album and its creation shook Clyde’s comfort zone and pushed her to navigate new paths has created a beautiful and vulnerable piece of artistry, which is the most true to herself yet.