Preloved’s coming-of-age odyssey

Back then, Watson was two years into the creation of their debut indietronica album, Willow, but only a few of those songs would make the final cut. One in particular was about their childhood dog, Cassie.

They loved Cass with the kind of unwavering love that can only be understood by someone who owns a pet. However, the crushing reality you face as an owner is you never know when you and your dog will go on your last walk. You don’t know when will be the last time you watch them excitedly run around in the garden. It's knowing that one day you will no longer wake up to the out-of-tune melody of their barking. 

Watson had written a song in preparation for that harrowing day, but those final moments came all too quickly. Unexpectedly, on that ordinary Monday in November, Cass had to be put down.

The untimely death would come to represent the album Watson had been creating. “Cass is definitely a key centrepiece of the album. He represents my childhood and growth, and that just turned into growing into an adult,” Watson tells me. 

“When he passed, it was like, okay, this really makes sense now. It puts the songs into perspective even more after the grief.”

It was only a matter of time until Watson turned his grief into an album. Music has been their muse for as long as they can remember. They recount childhood years spent playing on websites where you can loop songs, for instance, the producer gene always within them. Once they reached high school, the love for music became much deeper. It was no longer a hobby, but a means for processing things.

“It’s been my world for as long as I can remember. I remember being in high school and having a real shift in my thinking and not being able to enjoy things that are not music-related,” Watson says, which came with its own challenges. “If anything is slightly askew or going a little bit south, it feels like the world is crumbling.”

This all-consuming love for music led Watson to Hannah Judge, who helms a project called fanclubwallet. Watson started out as the producer and drummer, but their relationship blossomed into much more.

“[fanclubwallet] has been a huge part of my life since 2020. It’s also built around Hannah’s and my relationship, which is very fulfilling. I can’t express how much it has made me grow as a musician and human,” Watson says. 

Watson is all too proud of fanclubwallet’s success, but there was still an itch to create their own music. Over the years, they started dropping songs under the Preloved alias and began work on their debut album in 2022.

“It’s been a very slow and natural process of it being on the back burner but also being very heavy on my mind,” they tell me. “I’m not going to pressure myself to make this, but I know it's extremely important.”

Willow is self-produced with the occasional influence from Judge on a few songs. “I haven’t collaborated much on it, which I think is something I should probably try at some point. I think for this specifically it was very much like, this had to be just for me,” they say.

Which is understandable. Willow is a very personal album: their coming-of-age story.

“It became more of a ‘my life up until now’ piece than I was expecting it to be,” Watson explains. “There was a lot of thinking about me being a preteen when making this album, and that makes sense because that’s when you start to come of age, and you start to grow and become your own person.”

“It’s the things you prioritised,” they continue. “In a very wholesome and natural way, you weren’t thinking about much other than your friends, your dog, your dirt bike. That’s what it means to me: coming full circle after going through adolescence in the early 20s.”

It’s for those reasons the album feels so relatable to listen to. All of us have experienced, or are currently experiencing, or will experience, our own coming of age, and these soft, homespun indie sounds – intimate as they are – make a lot of room for you to map your own story onto them.

“I’m someone who really hangs on to the past, so that in itself is a part of the album too,” Watson tells me. “You’re just hanging onto that feeling and that nostalgia. Sometimes, it feels kind of shameful to not really want to let go, but other times, maybe not letting go is what I want also. There’s comfort in the past.” 

“It’s kind of reconnecting with that person – almost back to your roots.”

Watson went back to their roots in the creation as well as the emotion behind Willow. They traded the studio for a portable set-up that they took out into nature, the comfort of the four walls replaced by the swaying of the trees. Zero distractions; just pure solitude and the sounds of the wilderness.

“I would have a song, and then because life is so crazy, I would go on these camping trips and bring a portable set-up, and I’d use that time to make and arrange the song. I found it to be such an awesome experience,” Watson says. 

“It was like having a studio on a campsite, and then you get to go on a hike and listen to your mix and think about it. The biggest challenge was to find a place that was distractionless and outside of time. I didn’t have to worry about time or people. It was very much tied to, I need a break from all this, which was also, I need a creative outlet.”

The desire to find a new creative outlet wasn’t the only benefit to taking the studio out into the wilderness. As unique as the portable studio is, it is more than merely a gimmick.

Nature’s voice elevates the sound of the album. Watson captures the atmosphere of their camping trip by weaving in the sound of the Canadian wind, the buzz of cicadas, and the rustle of the trees. Incorporating these sounds into the songs to accompany Watson’s intimate vocals and acoustic guitar makes you feel like you are sitting right beside them underneath a willow tree.

Back in the familiarity of their four walls, Watson doesn’t feel the weight of having people hear this music, even though this is their first-ever album drop. Despite the vulnerable nature of the songs, they are just happy they got the chance to create it and are excited to use the skills they learnt in the future. 

What does fill them with fear, however, is what comes next. Once you come of age, what happens next? Do you ever really stop coming of age? It’s a question they don’t have the answer to.

“It’s scary because I was like, this is my coming-of-age, and I don’t want to stop coming of age,” they tell me. “I don’t want to stop, I want to keep coming with it. So maybe we will keep coming of age.” I guess we’ll have to keep listening to find out.