About Heart Go Wild 

Five albums into her critically-acclaimed songwriting career, Caroline Spence is giving herself permission to break the rules. 

That untamed spirit runs throughout Heart Go Wild. Co-produced by Spence herself, the album balances craft with creative experimentation, making room for pop anthems ("Fun at Parties"), emotionally bare ballads ("Confront It"), beat-driven explorations of self ("Soft Animal"), and all points in between. The result is her most imaginative interpretation of American roots music to date, reaching beyond the swooning, soft-hued folksongs of her early work to showcase just how colorful and wide-ranging her artistry can be. 

Two months before Spence began creating Heart Go Wild with collaborators Mark Campbell and Peter Groenwald, she ended her business relationship with Rounder Records. She'd been with the label for years, introducing herself to international audiences with 2019's Mint Condition — an album that found her duetting with Emmylou Harris — and cementing her reputation as a newly-minted leader of atmospheric Americana along the way. What initially felt like a genuine partnership eventually turned into a creative constraint, though, and Spence found herself craving the freedom of independence. Heart Go Wild finds her back in the driver's seat once again, fueled up on new influences and fresh ideas, free to create something expansive and eclectic.

"I was listening to artists like Big Thief and Sarah Klang," she says, nodding to the constellation of artists who inspired Heart Go Wild's sonic universe. "I loved The 1975's Being Funny In A Foreign Language — it had a mix of highly-saturated up-tempo songs and gorgeous, roomy, intimate tracks, and everything lived together. All of a sudden, it felt possible to make an album like that."

In the past, Spence might've suppressed some of those left-field influences. Working with Campbell and Groenwald, though, she felt emboldened to try something new. They pieced the album together over the course of a year — a timeline that never would've been possible under the ever-watchful eye of a record label exec — and got creative, handling most of the instrumental duties themselves. "We really gave ourselves permission to go down the rabbit hole," Spence says. "For 'Dried Flowers, Old Habits,' we put a cinderblock on the sustain pedal of a piano and opened it up, so Peter could pluck the strings like it was a bass. For other songs, we would send instruments through the Leslie like it was an amp. The whole process was so playful and joyous."

The results speak for themselves. Songs like "The Sound Of You" — a gorgeous waltz, punctuated by pedal steel, acoustic guitar, and brushed percussion — nod to Spence's musical roots, evoking the southern soundscapes that swirled their way through albums like Spade and Roses. Her sound blooms into new shapes on the folk-pop gem "Effortless," the cathartically cinematic closer "Where The Light Gets Through," and the electro-kissed ear candy of "Where The Time Goes." "Fun at Parties" finds her making room for synthesizers, glittering vocal hooks, and a driving groove built for festival stages. Tying those songs together is Spence's voice: a striking instrument that's bold, breathy, and beautiful all at once, whether it's wringing every ounce of raw emotion from "Confront It" or filling up the sparse spaces of "Why The Tree Loves The Ax." 

"I called the album Heart Go Wild because it feels like a command," she explains. "It says, 'Just go. Just feel it. Be in your natural state.' That's what these songs are: a process of me figuring out how to truly be myself."