“I do think beautiful art is informed by real life,” Natalie Schlabs reflects during our recent exchange, as she explains how she reconciles the dual yet symbiotic demands of raising a recently expanded family and cultivating her burgeoning music career. Indeed, “beautiful art” also serves as a fitting description for the West Texas-bred, Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s soon-to-be released second studio album Don’t Look Too Close, which is slated to arrive in stores this Friday, October 16th.
With a running time just north of a half-hour across a compact set of nine songs, Don’t Look Too Close is a lean, lucid, lush and unequivocally lovely affair that showcases Schlabs’ penchant for merging introspective, evocative lyricism with instantly memorable melodies. The exquisitely crafted songs contained therein have remained in heavy rotation for me—both on my laptop and in my head—over the past few months, and I’m still awestruck by their many charms. Hence why it was such a pleasure to catch up with this gifted songstress recently, to delve into the inspirations behind the album and much more.
Natalie Schlabs’ ‘Don’t Look Too Close’ is in stores now | Buy Here
Natalie, your new album is stunning. And there’s no hyperbole here. It’s wonderful, and you should feel so proud that you’re bringing this sublime set of songs into the world. Can you talk about what you hope listeners will take away with them upon listening to it?
Thank you so much. That means a lot. As simple as it sounds, I hope this album brings peace to the listeners. Times are really hard and polarized. We need art and beauty more than ever to be a balm for our souls.
If they feel less alone listening to my songs, this album will have been a success.
Four years have elapsed since the release of your debut album Midnight With No Stars. In what ways has your approach to songwriting and recording evolved during this period? What have you learned since the release of that album that informed the crafting of Don’t Look Too Close?
I’m a lot more settled into who I am as a writer and an artist.
When I started writing for Don’t Look Too Close, I knew I wanted to have a record that sounded more like what I wanted to listen to at the moment, which was more Indie. Before, I sort of felt like I had to stay in the singer-songwriter bubble, but I gave myself permission to go in whatever direction I wanted to.
I also felt a lot more confident going into the studio and more bold to voice what I wanted because I had more experience. That can be something that’s difficult in general for women in music, because there are so many men in the studio. We can sort of easily slip into the backseat. I’m grateful to have had Juan Solorzano and Zachary Dyke produce it. It really felt like a collaboration.
I’ve also done a lot of counseling and work on myself, which helped me work through some of the fear that can keep me from taking chances in my artistry, and hopefully that will lead to more honest songwriting over time.
So the run-up to Don’t Look Too Close’s arrival was a relatively long one, as you’ve released six of the album’s nine songs over the course of the past six months or so. Was this a calculated strategy to get the bulk of the album’s material out to the world over an extended period of time?
It was long! Maybe that’s why I’m so tired! [Laughs]
In all seriousness, it was a strategy my distributors and I came up with to give more of the songs a moment to get into the world, and hopefully land some playlists. We have done that, so I’m grateful. I also have Sideways Media on my team this round, which has helped me land some cool pieces and work with great platforms, such as Albumism.
The sanctity of family is a recurring theme across the album. How did your own family and upbringing inform your ambitions to become a musician/songwriter? And what role do you think your music plays in your family now, particularly with your son approaching the formative period of his early childhood?
Music was pretty common growing up. My grandpa Gerald played guitar and sang songs for us often. So, we would sort of gather around and sing together as an extended family. My mom and brothers would sing and play at church, too. When I turned 11 or 12, I sang and joined in. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that I started playing guitar and writing my own songs.
I hope making and creating music can be a joy to my son. Since it’s my job, I can forget about the simple fun of it. My husband Josh is a musician, but he’s not doing it as his main career right now, so he will pick up the guitar and play a Beatles song for Desmond. I sing to him a lot too, and now he’s starting to join in. It’s so fun to see. I hope we can have a piano in our house one day, so it can be an open invitation for him to play.
Although your lyrics are quite introspective and personal, there’s also a palpable universality to your songs that is so easy to connect with and ultimately, reassuring in its empathy for the human experience. When you write, do you intentionally try to strike this balance between drawing inspiration from what’s happening in your own life and ensuring that the songs’ messages are still relatable to your listeners?
I certainly try to. I love writing as a form of processing experiences for myself, but I also feel like experiencing songs together is a common way we humans can connect to each other and express empathy for one another. So, it’s something I’m usually trying to think through and improve upon in the balance of my songs.
The album’s title track “Don’t Look Too Close” is a poignant, beautifully crafted rumination about parenthood that explores the different perspectives that parents and children have. It definitely made me reflect upon my own relationship with my two young daughters, and how my wife and I do try to shield them, as best we can, from the anxieties that we feel as parents. Can you talk more about what inspired you to write the song, and more broadly, how becoming a parent has shaped who you are as a songwriter?
When I was pregnant, I was reflecting a lot on how I was raised and looking ahead to what values I wanted to have as a new family. I started to see my parents in a new light with struggles and complexities beyond what I could have seen as a kid. As adults, it’s easy to criticize our parents for what we feel they could have done differently or better, but becoming a parent gives you fresh empathy for how most of us are really doing the best we can with the tools we have.
It’s also a bit overwhelming to think about the responsibilities we have as the ones that shape our kids’ understanding and imaginations. We can shield them from so much bad in the world, but ultimately can’t protect them from our own weaknesses and shortcomings, which sucks. I do think therapy and honest friendships can help a great deal with trying to be more aware of our patterns and reactions, so we hopefully give them less shit to work through later on. [Laughs]
As a writer, I don’t know fully! I’m still figuring that out. I do feel like my heart really grew with more love and fear than it had before, so that could maybe manifest itself in songs in an interesting way.
“Go Outside” is a song that many will benefit from listening to, I think, as it reminds us that “there’s so much more to life” than our synthetic, social media obsessed “realities.” Do you feel like you’ve been able to successfully balance your “virtual” life and your real life?
It’s something I try to work on actively. It feels necessary for me to have social media in order to get my music out in the world, but it also sucks that we as artists are also expected to have a following and feed like an “influencer.” I have to remind myself a lot that that’s not the work.
I also have limits set on my phone for various apps. I think that can help. I sometimes just throw my phone in a drawer for a few hours at a time if I’m trying to have rest or time with family. I want to do it for a 24-hour period eventually. Sometimes I want to just toss my iPhone and get a flip phone.
“Home Is You” is such a radiant love song, and the moment you sing “you got into my head,” with the emphasis on that last word, is so great! I assume that the song is inspired by meeting your husband?
Thank you! Even though it probably doesn’t sound like it, the song was sort of inspired sonically by Shovels & Rope when I was first writing it. I was singing it like I’d imagine Cary Ann Hearst would.
It has a lot of my husband and my story in it. We were friends for a good while before we started dating, and romance came from that deep trust of friendship. And in a sense, the song is also about the kind of friendship that is worth singing about, romantic or otherwise. In the second verse where I say, “Born into love by a common thread,” I was thinking about a C.S Lewis quote: “Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…’”
The ongoing pandemic has obviously created new and unique challenges for all of us. Can you talk about what the key challenges have been for you as a musician and how you’ve tried to navigate them to ensure that your career stays on the right track?
Ha, I’m not sure my career is on track! [Laughs] One day it feels like everything is chugging along, and then the next can feel like I’m wasting my time on a career that only works for people at the top.
But, my best days, I settle into music like I’m a blue-collar working songwriter (to borrow a phrase from Joe Pug.) I try to just do the work I can do in a day in the time I’m allotted, while also balancing being a mother. My husband and I trade off, and we have some childcare a few days a week, which I’m really grateful for.
I’ve mainly been working on putting this record out, which has been a great thing to focus on in a time like this. I also started writing for a company that does personalized songs for kids. I’m enjoying how that has to do with music, but it’s not about my own songs and career directly.
I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in Nashville over the years and I know that while it’s an exciting and dynamic place to build a career in music, it’s also a highly competitive environment. Can you talk a bit about your relationship with the city, both from a professional and personal perspective?
It was really challenging for me to leave my deep roots in Texas and move to Nashville. There were (and are) so many people pursuing music here. That was really overwhelming as a writer. I think I only wrote one song the first year I was here.
It’s also really hard not to compare your career with other people, because even if you work really hard, there’s always someone seemingly working harder or getting a better payoff. I have gotten much better at stopping the cycle of comparison before I get overtaken by it, but it’s still a struggle.
One thing is that I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I am married and I have a son. I can’t go after music as if I don’t have anything else going on. I do think beautiful art is informed by real life. That helps me feel like I have something to say, still.
I also have a really solid community here that took several years to build. I have songwriter friends I’m rooting for, and they’re rooting for me too. That circle of support makes it less overwhelming. I also have friends that are not in the music industry in any way. That can keep me grounded as a human.
OK, last question. In the spirit of Albumism, what are your FIVE favorite albums of all time?
Ms. Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Josh Ritter’s Animal Years, Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker, Patty Griffin’s 1,000 Kisses and Counting Crows’ Hard Candy. These are the albums I listen to over and over again. I wish my list had older music included here, but what can I say? We like what we like. Also, I know Ryan Adams is an asshole, but damn, some of his records are the reason I started writing.
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