The only way out of the dark is through

IN the middle of last winter, Danielle Caruana felt frozen. Emotionally and creatively, she had nothing left. Her marriage was faltering. She had run out of words and feeling.

“I was exhausted, and it was excruciating for us both,” she said.

Known to audiences as Mama Kin, Caruana turned to her long-time friend and collaborator Dingo Spender. Over more than 20 years of friendship, the pair had shared music and trust. Now they turned to songwriting to process what they were both living through.

“We both went into that writing session pretty broken, four days in this Airbnb, writing two songs a day, both of us just shattered.”

The result is Promises, a deeply personal new album by Mama Kin Spender, out August 15. It follows their 2018 debut Golden Magnetic and captures a moment of reckoning and renewal.

“I came back with this handful of ragtag songs and realised we were writing a concept album,” Caruana said.

“Every lyric from these songs has been plucked from our relationships; they are direct quotes.”

Both were going through emotional upheaval. Their friendship gave them the trust to take creative risks.

“We have got each other’s backs, and we don’t pull any punches,” she said.

“I treasure those friends who are brave enough to say the uncomfortable things.”

“Dingo and I dig deep. He is an incredible writer, fantastic musician, and a vulnerable, brave man who takes real responsibility for where he could have done better.”

Caruana’s husband, musician John Butler, looms in the shadows of the album. The couple, who married in 1999, were confronting the structure they had built together as young adults.

“We built this when we were kids, but we built something that was designed for traumatised children looking for a partner to fix everything for them,” she said.

“We’re not those people anymore, but we’re still living in that thing that we built then.

“We had to disassemble that structure and decide whether we want to build a new thing together as adults.”

The project became a way to channel rage without destruction.

“When I lived in Margaret River, we did these burns in Autumn, dealing with all the stuff that built up, and at the right time, you set a big fire to clear it out,” Caruana said.

“I’m proud of how I used that rage, in the hands of a younger woman, it could have ruined the rest of my life, but it was necessary, a lightsaber.

“It feels like poison and medicine all at once, but I’m not going to use it to shoot anyone or burn anything down.

“I’m going to use that rage to burn down the debris, to get rid of the chaos and to bring clarity.”

Caruana has spent most of the past 22 years raising her children, Jahli and Banjo, and said her creative path has now shifted.

“They were my focus and I’m now able to put the full weight of my shoulder behind my career,” she said.

“I made the choice to prioritise being the primary carer for my children, music rode shotgun, but it was in the front seat, and I took care of it, bubbling along, as much as I could.”

She believes the creative process behind Promises helped save her relationship.

“We did create something brand new, completely different that would not have been without having fully surrendered the thing we had,” Caruana said.

“I will never call our marriage unsuccessful, no matter what happens now, because I’ve learned so much.

“We’ve had two wonderful children together, we’ve gone on this incredible journey, and somehow we’re about to become actual adults because of it.”

“That for me is the now that the definition of success for this marriage, and what it means to move into the next stage.

“I want when we’re grandparents, no matter the nature of what we call our relationship, to know that anytime I look across the room, we have a smile and a heart between us, and those kids run between with great ease. Let’s reverse engineer that.”

Mama Kin Spender plays The Citadel in Murwillumbah on September 6. Promises is out August 15.

For tickets, visit events.humanitix.com/mama-kin-spender