Caity Baser photo by Finn Waring
“This is just the beginning of a very long journey… and it is so beautiful.”
Caity Baser radiates music, even her speech has a melody to it. She has the expressive nature of a Pixar character, one who you imagine could never be seen on screen without the company of a perfect score or their own faint hum. It’s in her earliest design. Today, she appears before the camera a living animation, grinning in a pink Ed Hardy sweater like a flower from an urban garden – ready to chat candidly about her music and growth.
It seems only fitting to start at the beginning. Baser gushes, hand on heart, at the mention of little Caity.
“I remember being little and my mum playing me ‘At Last’ by Etta James and I was sat there eating my breakfast before I went to school like what on Earth is this,” Baser recalls, letting her first memory of music spin her into a smile. The image of a tiny Caity swooning over a bowl of cereal as a song moves her for the very first time seems lightyears away from the striking sketch of an artist that’s sitting here now. But Baser is quick to point out that, in her eyes, not much has changed: “Honestly, I am still the same girl that I was. I still find the same things fun. I still like the same things…” her thought is burst by a laugh as if to prove the next point, “When I was a kid I was just as loud and giggly and silly.”
It’s easy to imagine. Her breakout mixtape, Still Learning seemed to borrow its charm from a younger version of herself. Unapologetic and charismatic it laughed its way through all the mischief and muddles that lurk in your early twenties. “You know when you’re young and you would sing songs about heartbreak or relationships and you’re like six and you’ve never had a relationship,” there’s a big-sister-like tone to her voice as Baser suggests jovially that she had no business listening to such things, “I think music is cool because it can make you feel things even when you don’t understand them.” In that respect, her mixtape was a sign of the times, she went from being on the outside of the ‘great joke of growing up’ to writing the punchlines herself.
Still Learning was a whooshing whirlwind of group chat extracts, Facetime ramblings and self-care poetry, ‘rapped’ up and sprung to a beat. A tangle of cohesive chaos, for Baser it still didn’t qualify for the prestigious title of debut album: “I just didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know what an album meant. I didn’t know what the difference was and because of that I didn’t wanna call something an album.” The alternative label seems far more fitting anyway. Still Learning was a mixtape through and through. Homegrown and youthful, it belonged in your pocket, on a cassette adorned with doodles done in biro and a smattering of crossed out names.
In essence, it was made to help figure shit out. And while it was about learning, Baser chirps about how it did some teaching of its own, “You’ll always be learning, and you’ll never have the answers and that’s okay… and also why would you wanna have the answers because then life would be boring and predictable!” The latter half of this is delivered so matter of fact that it’s almost empowering. Why would you want all the answers? Maybe we could all do with being just a bit more Caity, or, a bit more like the small versions of ourselves who made mistakes, listened to songs just because they could, asked questions unashamed and took such pleasure in life’s messiness. Reaching for the hand of little Caity Baser certainly worked for her, “It taught me not to stress about the things I can’t control, because that’s how I feel now… I’m so zen.”
This calmness is a mark of who she is here and now. But Baser clarifies this is not to be mistaken for always being alright: “I think my ‘brand’…” the word is said slowly and tentatively as she winces at the idea of anything being so contrived, “My ‘brand’ has always been ‘I’m happy and I’m confident and everything is fine!’” She delivers this line with theatrical jazz hands and a sickly lilt to her voice, snickering at the absurdity of it. In reality, like most real people, she advocates that, “On the flip side, sometimes I’m not happy or confident and not fine… but I think that’s what I’m diving into in this new era.”
Baser is inspired by the ocean, “I love the outdoors, I love jumping in the sea. The second I get in there,” she acts out a stolen breath, “everything is gone…” In this self-declared ‘new era’, it seems as though she is the sea. Contented, not always perfectly calm but trusting the ebb and flow and being honest when things get rough. Always learning. Always moving.
As to whether an album is on the horizon, Baser gives a promising, although innocently vague, answer that, “It all feels great… it feels like something different for sure and it feels so special.” The first taste of ‘something different’ came in the flavour of new single ‘Watch That Girl (She’s Gonna Say It)’. In this track, Baser speedruns her recent therapy breakthroughs with a fabulously free and entirely live instrumental backing. It even sounds like a breakthrough, like a gospel butterfly emerging from a cocoon – in a mythical electric-blue chiffon dress. In the song’s lyrics, she confesses: ‘First ten years of my life gave me problems, Next ten years shut ‘em out, I ignored ‘em, Now I’m 22, what I’ll do? Try and solve ‘em, How?’ How? By doing what she’s always done. By doing what Etta James showed her can soothe any soul. By singing.
Her pride in this new project is adorably evident. “Every single line in every song has a meaning, has a purpose,” Baser trills with excitement pinching her cheeks, “Every single word is there for a reason.” She leans forward and looks both ways as if divulging a secret before adding, “I don’t really swear in these songs… whereas before it was like ‘fuck you and fuck you and fuck you!’” She continues that when you swear, you’re just trying to fill gaps in the music and there was too much to say, too much to confess, to be diluted by wasted syllables and profanities. The lyrics and her vocals needed to shine. And they do.
Baser’s voice is undeniably her biggest asset. Listening to her music often feels like chatting with an old friend, someone who knows just how to put you back together again, or what words to say when they can’t. This is true of everything she puts out including her new “stuff”- which she describes carefully as such with nothing more than a playful look and a tongue held in a smile as the idea of an album flirts in the air. She finalises that: “Knowing what you wanna say, why you wanna say it and what you wanna sound like is such a key part of what an album is.”
Watch that girl. One might just be waiting around the corner.
Just before the bend is latest single ‘Running From Myself’, which knows exactly what it wants to say and why. Put simply, this song is a promise from the Caity of the new era to all the versions of her that came before. It’s a promise to honour them, to talk about them and to stop running away from the things they’ve allowed her to feel – for better or worse. The production is glorious, a bold and brass big-band anthem, and Baser beams at how it’s so “technically different.” With increasingly lively hand gestures, she articulates that, “I feel like all my songs are very talkative and rap oriented and this time it’s proper belting… I can’t wait to explore different parts of my voice.” Her thoughts rush into one another like a child chasing a ball down a hill, “I’ve been training! I can’t wait to show off honestly.”
She’s referring to her upcoming tour – Watch That Girl She’s Gonna Sing It. An intimate series of shows that will debut her new material stripped back to a piano. “I wanna just reactivate the love and be like ‘I’m still here hello!’ and also I wanted to put on shows that sort of replicate the studio cause that’s how I would make songs, with the piano, and I think it’s cool to include people in that process,” the above is chattered at 100mph, such is her energy when it comes to live performance.
Anyone who attended the Still Learning Tour can attest to her cartwheeling, labrador energy on stage. Dancing and fluttering across the room doing tricks as if trying to earn a sleepover from her parents. “Every time I go on stage it’s never not cool,” Baser elaborates the joy of “going out and having people in front of you where you’ve shaped their whole day.” There really is a sense of community on her stages. Even before she begins to sing the room flowers with people complimenting each other’s outfits, sharing drinks and inquiring who did their hair that morning. “They’ve gotten ready, they’ve pre’d with their friends, they’ve gotten the train, they’ve got the Ubers, they’re waiting outside… I just think that’s mental, and I will forever be gassed that’s a thing.”
“Even when I’m selling out arenas, I’ll still be like ‘Oh my god! There’s loads of you!’” she promises. Her loveable optimism peeks out in the decision to say when and not if. Given all that she’s accomplished from Lil CB to Still Learning and now, “this more vulnerable side that people have never seen,” her growth is inevitably destined for arena-sized rooms.
Very different from the room in her family home where everything started all those years ago.
Pondering which age would be the best one to revisit, to blush with herself about all the excitement to come, Baser decides: “I would probably go back to… actually I don’t think I’d ever wanna go back.” She stays rooted in this thought for a moment. Given all the growth, all the changed seasons and all the learning passed across each one, going back might seem like running – which she has vowed to stop doing. Quietly pushing herself for an answer, she lands, laughing, right where we started: “I’d probably go back to when I was eight and be like, are you okay? How are you? Can we listen to some nice songs?”
Perhaps she’d go right back to that kitchen. Etta James playing her heartstrings for the very first time. Her mum and her breakfast, the world at one dinner table. Maybe she’d revisit the day that musical seed was planted – see her love come along.
