Australian alt-pop star Mallrat is a quick thinker. Perceptive and brilliantly creative. She's also a kickboxer - something that helps with thinking. "One of my favourite things is that you can actually feel your brain getting quicker," says Grace Shaw (aka Mallrat) as she describes her hobby. "When you do a new combination, I always feel like I can feel those neuro pathways being created, and I'm distracted from the fact that I'm focusing on the techniques and the combinations." It's an analogy that mirrors her musical process as she evolves the Mallrat vision on her expansive second album 'Light Hit My Face Like A Straight Right'.

There's always been depth to Mallrat's music, and her debut album, 'Butterfly Blue' (2022), was a captivating introduction to her world of blissful pop and sharp electronic edges. This time around, the vision is more defined and vivid. "I've had it finished since near the beginning of the year. I still listen to it every day," she enthuses. It's refreshing to hear from a musician who enjoys listening to their own music. "I'm still obsessed with it, which is a really good sign. I'm pretty self-indulgent with it," laughs Grace.

For Grace, there's a clear sense of artistic progression. "I do think this album is a reflection of my growth as a songwriter and a producer. Something about this album feels more elevated than anything I've done before," she explains. "That's cool because when I did the last album, I said this was my favourite album ever. I still really like that album, but now, when I listen to this one, that's what I'm thinking about this album. It's cool to feel like I'm getting better."

In realising the vision for the album, Grace built on the established Mallrat sound while exploring new approaches. "I do think that I had a really specific but difficult-to-pinpoint sound in mind when I found the lane for this album," she says. "That sound was a lot of beautiful vocal textures, vocals that didn't feel necessarily real. Vocals that felt like they were treated as samples. That was a big part of it, as well as a lot of influences from dance producers that I love, like Hudson Mohawke. There's a song that I was listening to a lot while making this album called 'Larabar' by Wet, and that was produced by Buddy Ross, who I ended up working with, and that's special to me. I love that song because of the way that the vocals are treated. It's really unique. The other thing that really influenced this music was a lot of traditional Gaelic music.

In that Gaelic and choral influence, you hear the elemental feelings that elevate her music - a swirling melange of sounds floating in Mallrat's creative ether. Both pastoral and energised, gentle and frenetic. "My mastering engineer Rory is Irish, and he told me that there's a secret conspiracy that I'm actually making folk music disguised as pop music," laughs Grace. "I think that sums it up pretty well."

The album title 'Light Hit My Face Like A Straight Right' feels revelatory. "I wish I had a super insightful answer to this because this feels like the moment for a clever answer," laughs Grace. "I will say that I was thinking of light as a character a lot. This idea of magical realism in a suburban setting where things are moving in ways that they're not supposed to move, and light is bouncing around for no reason. It's not necessarily a revelation that I have figured out yet, but that was what I was imagining. I hope that I have an answer a few months down the track. Sometimes, songs that you write make so much more sense years later. Maybe I'll have a big revelation."

Sonically, there are revelatory moments as Mallrat's love of dance music, stripped-back ethereal pop and hip-hop collide. "I definitely lent into and had a lot of fun sampling," she says. "Whether that's the Memphis rap samples or my own choral things. That was something that I love love loved on this album." She highlights 'Pavements' as a key example of her sampling approach. "I'm a big Memphis rap fan. I really like DJ Zirk and Three 6 Mafia, and I wanted that contrast of textures. I knew that I wanted a Memphis rap sample, and when I was listening to the song 'Born 2 Lose' [seminal Memphis rap song by Buckshot and Criminal Manne, produced by DJ Zirk], it really stuck with me. It fitted in really well." There were also gentler sounds sampled. "There's another song called 'Virtue', which came about because I was working with Casey MQ and telling him how much I loved listening to choirs, and he showed me his favourite folk choir on YouTube. It was this group called Rajaton singing a song called 'Butterfly', and I really loved it and said we should sample it. He said he had started that already, so we opened that up and rebuilt it.

The album is characterised by sudden shifts in pace and mood. "Some of the frenetic feeling songs are interludes made at the end to tie together the slower songs," explains Grace. "I think it reflects how I listen to music as well. It felt natural to balance it out because I'll listen to Lana Del Rey and then listen to SOPHIE and then Fleet Foxes or Three 6 Mafia. It's an amalgamation of my tastes."

One of the album's standout songs is 'Horses'. It's the final track and beautifully encapsulates the mix between understated songwriting and jagged electronics. It's a special song for Mallrat. "The song talks about a lot of feelings related to going home," reflects Grace. "The first verse describes catching a train and going home with my sister. The second verse is just walking around trying to make time pass faster in a hot Queensland summer."

With 'Light Hit My Face Like A Straight Right', Mallrat heads into 2025 full of confidence, energised by both the music around her and her own art. "I'm going to make something completely different next," she says excitedly. "I'm already sitting on a couple of albums that are very different from this one, so I'll finish one of them. I want to keep doing interesting creative things and hopefully work on other people's music a bit more."