“The way I sing naturally is drawn from ’90s pop music, and even reggae,” Mitchell says about
her touchstones from the sessions. “When I work with Mark, I can see that his influences
on what he produces organically sound folkier, almost like bluegrass.” This strange brew
of inspiration makes better sense when fed through speakers, as Raceday marries the
production flare of Mitchell’s modern pop pillars with an emphasis on songwriting that
Foster’s stated background would suggest. It’s easy enough to dash off a grocery list of
influences in the elusive effort to describe music in words, but the real magic happens when
an end result proves greater than the sum of its parts. Raceday manages to achieve this effect
over its five tracks, which are undeniably catchy and possessed of the same preternatural
confidence that, like her scarlet locks, is inherent to Mitchell.
The young chanteuse admires these pop qualities in her music but hopes that her audience
will also engage with some of its more deeply embedded aspects. “A lot of the things I sing
about are characters and stories that maybe [have or] haven’t happened,” Mitchell explains.
“For example, a character that I sing about a lot is this crazy, punky, reckless, almost
dominatrix type person, which is not entirely unlike me. But then, a lot of the songs were
influenced by actual experiences.”
One such experience continued to develop long after the songwriting process. Raceday’s final
track, “Bae,” was written with Mitchell’s boyfriend at the time, a popular Vine personality
named Nick Colletti. “It’s like bro comedy,” Mitchell explains of Colletti’s online presence.
“But he makes really cool beats, so we made that track.” By the time “Bae” was in the
production stages, Mitchell and Colletti had called it quits, so the latter’s featured verse was
passed on to the French emcee S.Pri Noir.
Today, Mitchell bakes her heart-shaped cookies for someone new, or perhaps as a treat to
enjoy on her own. “Don’t worry ’bout me, it’s all better now / You can worry ’bout you, I’m
all better now,” she sings on the chorus of “NoLo,” another Raceday cut. We haven’t seen the
last of Mitchell’s edgy avatar, however, as the anarchic CBGB scene-makers of her present
obsession begin to bubble toward the surface of her music. Already at work on her first
full-length effort—once again in collaboration with Foster—Mitchell reveals that this next
album will be aimed more in the musical direction of her heroes.
“With my fascination with punk and rock music, recently I’ve been writing a lot of heavier
songs,” she says. “You can expect the sounds to be more instrumentally driven. I’m playing a
lot of guitar, which feels really cool because it’s where I started.” No matter what’s next out
of the oven for Mitchell—nor how firmly set its ingredients are—we can rest assured that at
the gooey core will be the rich flavor of her own design.
LOOODD
FFLO
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