We are led to believe pop stars arrive fully formed. We don’t see the years of preening, training and toiling that happens away from the black mirror. But in the case of Cat & Calmell, following their debut single in 2020, they’d found a whole creative team poised to curate their pop persona. It’s only several albums, EPs and a brief hiatus later, that Catherine Stratton and Calmell Teagle, understand the power of stripping it all back. One can only describe it as an undressing. Stylists, make-up artists, creative directors? Gone. Gone. Gone. What remains is entirely of their own making. Their newest project Live Laugh Cool Star is the result of this evolution. Infused with the DIY spirit of indie sleaze and cobbled together with whatever resources available to them (think an iPad and a friend with an appetite for printing g-strings) the mixtape is a palate refresher. Inside you’ll find what the best friends describe as “nihilistic optimism”, intentional Australiana and the carefree expression that defined the early internet.

Aboard this new era, Astrophe spoke to the pair who appeared shoulder-to-shoulder over Zoom, Calmell clutching a Hello Kitty plush toy. We discussed creating without expectations, cyber punk and opening for Renee Rap

JP: Hi you two. What have you been doing today?

CS: Just working from home, admin stuff.

JP: Wait, do you two live together? What’s it like living and making music with your best friend?

CS: We talk about it all the time. But I think sometimes we forget that when you boil it down, that's the crux of our situation right now. It’s been our dream since we were teenagers. Sometimes we’ll have moments when we step outside of it and remember we’re doing what teenage us would’ve wanted us to be doing right now.

JP: When you were teenagers did you imagine having careers on your own? What was the vision when you were thinking about music?

CS: We’ve both been performing since we were kids. When we were younger I only ever really thought about doing it as a solo artist. Once we became friends, we would make silly Youtube videos and do everything together. It was a serendipitous opportunity that we got to be in a section with a producer. And that’s when we got to write our first song together. Then it all felt really right.

JP: I wanted to talk to you about Live Laugh Cool Star. Tell me about the starting point, inspirations, all of it?

CS: When we wrote the song Cool Star, that’s when everything fell into place. That was the inception of the mixtape. We hadn’t planned the rebrand and the whole mixtape thing happened as we were making new music. Calmell had come up with the line “live, laugh, cool star” and we were like what does that mean? And she was like “I don’t know”. It snowballed from there.

I think we were so excited about Cool Star when we wrote that song, it was super exciting. We were quite stuck with writing and the music side of things for a while. We took an unofficial hiatus and then when we got back to it we just followed whatever made us the most excited about putting stuff out, then just built the world around that. We’ve just been stumbling and figuring it out as we go this entire time.

JP: Was there a theme around the things that were making you excited again?

CS: Sonically, it was just trashiness and exploring more electronic stuff. Outside of that, I think even with the lyrics we were writing. It wasn’t that we weren’t being ourselves with previous projects, but we would write about heavy things or in a way that didn’t show the full spectrum of our personality—not that any song can—but with Live Laugh Cool Star we were way more unserious about it and I think that made it feel more like us. We’re just not serious people and Live Laugh Cool Star is silly and goofy. A lot of the lyrics are kinda tongue-in-cheek. I stand by them.

JP: Even just listening to the last EP and this mixtape, that evolution is evident. Your previous work is a little more introspective and this is fun and a bit, not necessarily nihilistic, but flippant.

What does it look like when you’re writing together, are you at home or do you go to a particular place?

CT: When we were writing Cool Star we were primarily in Melbourne with our producer Lucy. But we’re currently in a writing stage for the next project, so we’ve been writing a lot more from home and working with producers from overseas, so it’s been a lot of Zoom sessions. We haven’t really done that since Covid, which is… interesting.

We’re in the process right now of working with heaps of new and different people. I think we’re in an experimental stage as well where we’re not putting too much pressure on what the music is going to sound like. When we wrote the Cool Star project it was all so natural and we didn’t have this pre-thought out thing where we wanted it to be indie sleaze or trashy, it was just born that way. Which is why we had so much fun with it and performing it because it came out naturally, we didn’t force it.

JP: It’s exciting that you’re already working on something new. Can you say anything about it? I guess you just did but…
CS: It’s still early stages.

CT: We were listening to some of the demos together and thought we'd written the most random project ever. The thing with Cat and I is that no matter what we write it always feels like part of us even if it’s different from the last song. I think that’s why everything up until Cool Star was random.

We went through our indie phase where there were more instruments in the production and it was more sad girl shit. But that was still us, it was a representation of what we were going through at the time and the young women we were in that moment. I think we’re just trying to figure out who we are at this stage now post Cool Star.

I’m still in that party girl era but I do ask what feels different now compared to last year and I think there’s been a lot of personal, sonic, and identity growth since then. So we’re currently in the process of figuring out what that is and what that looks like and sounds like. Even visually in the music videos, styling and fashion. We’re never really the kind of people to plan what an era is going to be, we just trust the process. We’re both always evolving together, so we’re always on the same page. It’s not like one is going to be a pixie dream girl and one is more Kesha. We’re riding the wave together. So we don’t really have much to say about the next project but…we’re cooking?

JP: In terms of the one you’ve just done, how did you come up with the look of it all? I gasped at the Corey Worthington reference in Cool Star.

CS: I think we brainstormed that in our living room.

CT: The original idea we had was the ute. We really wanted to do something in the back of the ute, then we thought we should just lean into the Australiana of it all. Then we added the Kylie Minogue Australian flag. We went to South Korea and filmed in Asia for past music videos. But when you film in Australia you can tell because the trees are so distinctive and the light has a specific colour hue. But for this era we leaned into it instead of running away from it.

CS: I feel like the last era was us leaning into our Asian side. We had Asian film references and then with the new project we went the other way because we’re both half Australian (I’m half Chinese and Calmell is half Filipino). Like I said, going into this we both wanted to showcase iconic Australian things because I feel like, even other Australian musicians, always want to aspire to make stuff as if it’s coming out of America. First of all, it’s hard to achieve that here unless you’re going to America to make those videos. Second of all, America’s flopping hard right now.

JP: Well it has that sense of place. We all know that feeling of cultural cringe and wanting to distance yourself from Australiana. But I feel like your outlook feels fresh, even though there’s the ute, it doesn’t seem like the typical tropes. As someone who grew up in Western Sydney, I recognised a lot of other references too.

CS: Even before any of the project was released and we were still writing it, we talked about how much we wished there was a bigger nightlife or party culture in Sydney and how there’s so many cool artists in music and other mediums in Australia but the creative scene feels so decentralised. Everyone always ends up going to London or America if they want to make something of themselves with their creative work. I think we just wanted to shine a spotlight on Australia being cool and what our version of Australia looks like through our eyes. It’s a mixture of neo-indie sleaze that we were resonating with at the time and we mixed it with influences we saw growing up that resonated. We knew we had to have Corey Worthington in it and we brainstormed the music video with Calmell’s boyfriend who is also an artist.

JP: What is it about indie sleaze that resonates with you right now?

CS: I think it’s the DIY attitude of it. Even now, when talking about the nightlife and party scene in Sydney, the few events that are put on all have a pretty indie sleaze adjacent crowd. It’s a resurgence but also a reaction to what’s happening socially and economically. We were down bad and broke, real bad, when we were writing this mixtape. We always talked about how we wished we could buy new clothes, that our style felt so stale, and that just led us buying more kitschy stuff or super cheap accessories and wearing them in a way that felt cool to us. Party City vibes.

JP: Recession-core.

Where’s your favourite place to go out in Sydney?

CS: Right now it’s our friend Solly’s rooftop. On Saturday, Breakfast Road had their show on the rooftop. It’s just really nice because you can see the city skyline and people will walk by on the street beneath, like last Saturday I went downstairs to use the bathroom and this man walked by and said “glad to see there’s still a bit of life left in this city”. I thought he was going to be a neg and comment on how loud we were being but he was just like “you guys do you”.

JP: Can you tell me about the g-string merch?

CS: That was Calmell’s brain child.

CT: Everyone loves a g-string. It’s what we wear. Except for my granny panties. It’s either huge granny panties or the tiniest undies… anyway. We were just getting tired of other artist’s merch. It’s always some lazy print on a tee. I think we were just trying to think of pieces that suit the vibe we were going for but also something that people like to wear. Even if you don’t like to wear it, it's just a fun little collectible. And they’re really fun to throw off stage too.

JP: There’ll be a transition. At some point you’ll switch to granny panties, then when you hit 80, you’ll return to the g-strings again.

CT: We made a custom jock strap for a fan we met at the Camila Cabello tour. That was so much fun because we had to go out of our way to hunt one down and it was the first time we’d ever held one. We always look forward to that segment of the show. One, everyone loves free shit. Two, I just love throwing shit off the stage.

JP: You’ve toured with Camila Cabello and Dua Lipa. Tell me about those experiences, are there any moments that stand out to you?

CT: Our last tour was with Renee Rapp and we supported her on her Australian leg of the tour. That was lowkey life-changing for us. Camila was awesome, we got to meet her and also gave her custom panties.

CS: The Camila panties said “Camila lives down under” in green with an arrow pointing down.

CT: Who knows if she wears it or just threw it away. The Renee tour was super fun. Everytime Cat and I do a performance we try to level it up in some way. Last minute, we added new choreography to the show because we didn’t have a lot to work with and when it’s just us two we’re always trying to figure out ways we can make the show a bit more interesting. We booked out a dance studio, choreographed some shit, got Cat to do a cheeky leg in the air. After that tour we met a lot of our new fans and that’s when we started doing Twitch streaming and started a Discord. We kind of built a community just from those shows which is really important to us.

JP: It sounds like with this last project you’ve had to be a bit more scrappy and resourceful. It’s a blessing that you have someone else you can bounce off so you’re not left to navigate it all by yourself.

CT: If it was just one of us on that massive stage with nothing to work with that would be so awkward.

CS: When we started releasing music it was as if it was in the opposite direction. When we began we had directors and stylists and makeup artists. Then it was a gradual process of stripping all of that away in order to have complete control over how we looked, what the videos looked like. Basically, all the cover art that we have for Cool Star, Calmell designed on her iPad. It’s a lot more work but it feels more rewarding because the end product is something that is completely us instead of someone else doing it for us and then not being 100% happy with it. Then a bunch of back and forth. We just got to the point where we figured we’d just do it ourselves. It’s also allowed us to figure out our identity sonically, visually and style wise. As opposed to other people giving us stuff that we don’t connect with whatsoever.

JP: I imagine this is also partly the joy of being a musician, the ability to curate these choices yourself. Collaboration is important but outsourcing these choices for the sake of it seems boring.

How has the response been to the mixtape when you’ve played it live?

CS: I think the reason why Renee Rapp was our favourite tour was because that was the first leg of shows we did, besides our own headline shows in December, after the mixtape released. So we got to exclusively play all the new stuff and put together a new set and what that looked like with Calmell on the decks and me on the sampler trying to man a giant stage. I think they were the biggest crowds we’ve ever played to. It was super fun. In a similar vein to us stripping back the creative process, we also had to do that for the live show process, which made us more confident performing as well. Because if we can put together a good 30 minute opening set for people who have no idea who we are and still receive so much energy—I could hear them through my in-ears screaming along to songs that they didn’t even know—then we can do so much once we start slowly adding stuff back into the set when we have more budget or control or whatever. It feels good to know that something that is purely just the two of us can be put in front of a crowd of 10,000 people at the AO and do well, it’s affirming.

JP: What is exciting you right now?

CS: In a general sense, Calmell’s adopted the philosophy of nihilistic optimism where everything is shit so you might as well try. As opposed to being purely nihilistic where you go, everything is shit, what’s the point? Well, if everything is going to shit I might as well do what I want to do and express myself the way I want to. Tying into that, I recently came across a TikTok about solar punk. Then I really liked all the ideas I was reading on that topic. Even just on my phone I’ve been seeing a lot of girlies building their own tech or DIY-ing way more stuff. It’s probably another recession indicator but it’s a more optimistic one. We’ve been so brainwashed into thinking we can only be consumers that buy products or ready-made things when there’s so much joy in creativity and customisability. And often it’s much cheaper to do it yourself and in a way that fully suits you. I really want to build my own cyber deck after seeing a girl on my TikTok algorithm do it. She did it in a beautiful mermaid aesthetic. I’ve only ever seen bros online do it and they all make it in the same hard case.

JP: The world is so crazy right now and it’s easy to feel powerless and frustrated. It’s such a cliche but they say making and building things is one way to feel some sense of hope.

To finish, Astrophe means the feeling of being stuck on earth. What makes you feel less alone?

CT: The only thing currently that brings me back to earth or makes me feel less alone or hopeful is when we perform. I was on such a high at Renee then when we came back home I got so depressed because I was like “what now?”

I think just meeting people. During our headline show we got a chance to meet all our fans and have a chance to talk afterwards which was so fucking nice because we’re so similar. Especially the fans that we grew up with. They know what we’ve been through and they’ve also been through similar stuff. It’s nice to know we’re not alone. Because of the headline show we had just released a project where everyone was singing along. It is like K Pop Demon Hunters where if we’re singing altogether we’re creating this balance in the world. Positive vibes. I just can’t wait to do more headline shows. That’s the only thing that makes me feel normal, less alone and hopeful.

CS: Even on that, I watched a TikTok this guy posted where he was Lime-biking in the middle of the street at night lip-syncing to Cool Star, screaming the words as he’s blazing down the street. That brings me so much joy because it’s so easy to forget that real people listen to our music and have their own connections to it and memories tied to the songs. Seeing a video like that reminds me that our music means something to other people. I feel like it’s always been a foundational way of how people connect with one another. Those kinds of things keep us lifted.

Photography Olivia Repaci

Styling Sophia Stamellos

HUMA Soraya Boularas

Video + Polaroids Simone Taylor

Words by Jasmine Pirovic

A special thanks to Maddy Smith <3

LIVE LAUGH COOL STAR the mixtape OUT NOW

Sabatucci dress and belt, vintage boots stylists own / Saigey top and skirt, own shoes. Talents own glasses, both wear Wynn hamlyn tops, Kourh jeans, Sabatucci skirt. Emily Watson bolero, Saigey top, Sabatucci pant, Charles & Keith boots / Sabatucci scarf, Saigey top, Kourh skirt, Wynn hamlyn belt, Acne shoes.