Songs for a Tired Heart: Avice Caro on Crafting ‘Home Demos’, Faith, and Feeling Deeply

By Leelou Reboh

Open­ing Image: Dress Róisín Pierce Neck­lace A Sin­ner in Pearls Shoes Mal­one Souliers

Like many of us, I’m sure, I’m guilty of con­stant­ly rush­ing around the streets of Lon­don. Head down, and a slight frown on my face, I waste no time catch­ing a glimpse of the beau­ti­ful scenery of the city, even as I’m head­ing to meet folk singer and song­writer Maria, aka Avice Caro, for our inter­view. But in the sun-dap­pled Lin­coln Inn’s Fields, the young woman brings with her a sense of calmness–a break from the met­ro­pol­i­tan bus­tle we find our­selves shel­tered from by the dark pick­et fence of the park. We catch up, sit­ting on the grass and watch­ing the birds fly by–pigeons are some of Maria’s favourites–and the con­ver­sa­tion mean­dered like a folk ballad. 

‘Home Demos’, Maria’s first LP to be released on July 10th, holds itself to be exact­ly to her image: authen­tic, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble. Record­ed on a 1950s tape recorder with a 1940s rib­bon mic, her upcom­ing album is more like a found object than a pol­ished prod­uct. It’s a project as uncon­ven­tion­al as the artist her­self: no label, no man­ag­er, no studio—just total trust in the cre­ative process and in the charm of craft­ing things by hand. “I believe these songs have a place in the world the way they are,” she says, lying on the grass. “They’re not per­fect, but that’s what makes them beautiful.”

Maria speaks like she sings: with warmth, depth, and the occa­sion­al unex­pect­ed lyric that stops you in your tracks. But most impor­tant­ly, she bears a sin­cere belief in mak­ing the sim­ple things–the ones you tend to miss–magic. 

We spoke about every­thing from heart­break and cre­ativ­i­ty to faith and find­ing beau­ty in the mun­dane. Every­thing about the fol­low­ing inter­view is infused with Maria’s mot­to for her prac­tice: that art is some­thing you make with what you’ve got. In Maria’s case, a tape recorder from the 1950s, and a heart that feels every­thing, all too much.

How did you even come up with the idea of using such ancient record­ing gear to make ‘Home Demos’?

My gui­tarist Alfie’s just got a bunch of old equip­ment at his house. We were rehears­ing for a show, and he stopped and told me he had some­thing to show me. He pulled out the recorder that was con­nect­ed to this 1940s rib­bon mic, and he played me this ver­sion of a Tom Waits song that he’d just done on gui­tar. It’s kind of a mir­a­cle that this project even came togeth­er hon­est­ly, because the mic doesn’t have a jack.

I was going to ask… How did you man­age to get it to work?

Alfie man­aged to build this spe­cial box to plug the 1940s mic into the 1950s tape recorder,and that in itself is a mir­a­cle! And then there was this thing–it was like this organism–and it had all these wires pro­trud­ing out of it. I remem­ber there was this one bit where if we didn’t plug the wire into a cer­tain angle, it wouldn’t record prop­er­ly. We fig­ured out all these ways of tap­ping it to make sure it would work. It had its own language.

I didn’t expect that at all. I thought you’d tell me you just went to a studio!

I real­ly don’t know how any­body else would go about doing this kind of project nowa­days, because first­ly, you’d need to find the equip­ment in work­ing order, but you also need to know what you’re doing. I real­ly had no idea; Alfie engi­neered the whole project. There were cer­tain sit­u­a­tions where we’d get the per­fect take, and we’d play it back and the tape machine would eat the tape up! Look­ing back on that process, I guess it was God telling us that wasn’t the right version.

It must’ve been quite an inti­mate process, to do this just with Alfie.

Yes. It was amaz­ing, because I have such a busy life usu­al­ly. I have an office job still, so I’m exhaust­ed a lot of the time. So after work, it was refresh­ing to just be able to go to Aflie’s rather than hav­ing to be in a stu­dio with a lot of peo­ple and hav­ing to impress them. I could just lie on the floor and record.

You have an office job? What do you do?

It’s a secret…

Right, I see.

I’m just kid­ding. I work in tech.

I’m sor­ry, did I real­ly hear tech?

I know! I love it. I’ve always had a hun­dred dif­fer­ent things going on in my life. I remem­ber, even when I was in school, I would sneak off at lunch break to play music, but then I would go back to the class­room and be real­ly aca­d­e­m­ic. It’s easy for me to have all these dif­fer­ent lives going on.

So music has always been part of your life then?

Def­i­nite­ly. I remem­ber my first expe­ri­ence of music was when I was a child. I’d have dreams where I would write songs, and then I’d wake up singing and hum­ming the melody! I’ve always been tapped into that world of sound and fairy­tales and composition.

Is there some­one else in your fam­i­ly who’s musi­cal­ly inclined?

In terms of mak­ing music, no. But when I was a child, my par­ents used to sing me lul­la­bies and it was my favourite time of the day. I remem­ber feel­ing so enthralled. Both of them are Slav­ic, and the lul­la­bies they knew were quite uncon­ven­tion­al, to put it that way. I remem­ber this Russ­ian one, and the under­ly­ing mes­sage was not to sleep too close to the edge of the bed, or else the wolf will come and get you. I then became a nan­ny, and I’d tell the kids those sto­ries and they were so scared! I remem­ber it made one cry; it was awful!

Why did you grav­i­tate towards folk music specifically? 

I think it takes me back to that place of being a child and lis­ten­ing to my par­ents sing lul­la­bies. Folk music is one of the gen­res that tru­ly allows you to tap into the art of sto­ry­telling, there’s so much of these almost fairy­tale nar­ra­tives. Anoth­er aspect is when you write these folk songs, their struc­ture is often this one melody that loops over and over again; so you write them as a whole because it’s like writ­ing a poem. Lastly–I was actu­al­ly talk­ing to a pro­duc­er about this the oth­er day who point­ed this out–folk music is cycli­cal. You’ve got the melody, which loops over and over again, and it kind of lulls you. It’s relax­ing, but it’s quite uni­ver­sal as well. Even though I sup­pose not many peo­ple of our gen­er­a­tion would lis­ten to folk music, I do think it still has a place in today’s soci­ety because it’s time­less. Some of these songs are so old, yet they’re still so resonant.

Many of the themes they bring up still feel rel­e­vant today, espe­cial­ly politically.

Def­i­nite­ly, and even on a per­son­al lev­el. For exam­ple, when Joan Baez sings ‘Sil­ver Dag­ger’, which explores betray­al and men hurt­ing you, those kinds of themes. You lis­ten to it and think, ‘Wow, women have been going through this for cen­turies’. I think there’s some­thing pow­er­ful and com­fort­ing about it. There are also a lot of women in folk. It’s dom­i­nat­ed by women’s tales and women’s writ­ing, and it’s amaz­ing that so many of these sto­ries still sur­vive and stand the test of time. A lot of the women who sing these songs sound like birds. You get a real high out of singing these songs because you use your voice like an instru­ment in that way.

What’s your favourite top­ic to write about?

I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by sad­ness and grief. I’m a very hap­py per­son, but for some rea­son I find sad­ness extreme­ly roman­tic and poetic–and nature! So I com­bine these two things togeth­er. These feel­ings are almost incom­pre­hen­si­ble to the human mind. Like, how does one describe grief? You don’t. You just expe­ri­ence it. There’s fun in being indi­rect about a sub­ject. Some­times, I’ll feel sad, and I think about how I can say it, with­out actu­al­ly doing so. So I think about how the flow­ers would feel about the sit­u­a­tion. I wrote a lyric the oth­er day that was like ‘it was such an awful day that even the moon cried’, or some­thing like that. I just love words, and I love lan­guage and its abil­i­ty to cre­ate all these stories.

What are some of the sil­li­est lyrics you’ve written?

Actu­al­ly, there’s this song called ‘I Saw A Seag­ull in Sep­tem­ber’ on the new album. At the begin­ning, it’s this real­ly inti­mate song about long­ing, yearn­ing, sad­ness, and nos­tal­gia. This per­son sees a seag­ull and it reminds them of their true love. You spend the whole song think­ing that it’s an emo­tion­al song, but at the end, the lyrics are ‘It wasn’t a seag­ull, he was just a fat pigeon’. The rose-coloured glass­es come off! I don’t know if you’re the same, but I’m such a dream­er and a roman­tic in every sin­gle regard, so being in love is real­ly dif­fi­cult because it’s real­ly hard to see the sit­u­a­tion for what it is. Nat­u­ral­ly, you want to see the best in peo­ple, and when they’re hurt­ing you, some­times you need to take a step back.

Do you remem­ber the first song you ever wrote?

I do. It’s called ‘Man Is Worm’. It’s about a man who gets real­ly sad, he los­es his hands, and then he can’t paint any­more. He looks out­side and sees a worm that get eat­en by a bird, and lat­er on he’s like ‘Guess it’s time to die’. I must’ve been 14 when I wrote this. I don’t know why it’s so depressing!

I have to say I love the name. Real­ly it’s all a mat­ter of per­spec­tive, isn’t it?

It’s fun­ny because I got into this top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion a cou­ple of weeks ago with this guy. We were in a bar or some­thing, and some­how we start­ed talk­ing about hap­pi­ness. He asked what the best day of my life was, and I said ‘today’. He didn’t get it because we were in some ran­dom bar and the floors were sticky. But I think every day is the best day of your life if you live by that rule. Like right now, this is the best day of our lives. We’re in the park. There are beau­ti­ful birds, and they are scream­ing, and the sun is behind a cloud, but it will come back.. And what more do you need? 

Some­times you just have to take a step back and appre­ci­ate what you have, be content…

Exact­ly! I mean, it’s kind of why my whole album even exists. I remem­ber when I was writ­ing the songs, I had these ideas for how I want­ed them to sound in the future, if I had access to a cel­lo or vio­lin, or an orches­tra… But then I took a step back and thought that these songs have a place in the world, the way they are, so I just used the mate­ri­als that were avail­able to us because that’s the whole point of art. It’s about using what you’ve got and mak­ing do with the life and mate­ri­als you’ve been giv­en. And they’re not per­fect! There are bits where the mic cuts out a bit, or it doesn’t recog­nise the fre­quen­cy of my vocals; but I think that’s beau­ti­ful. I love mak­ing some­thing per­fect from some­thing imper­fect, and see­ing the light of some­thing that’s dark. It all relates to that idea of mak­ing do with the day that you’ve been given–that applies to the emo­tions, the sit­u­a­tions, the cir­cum­stances, the mate­ri­als, everything!

It’s a beau­ti­ful part of being alive to be able to deal with the ups and downs–no mat­ter how big or small they might seem–and be resilient enough to get through the rough patch­es of life. 

Absolute­ly! I think the most beau­ti­ful thing about los­ing your­self is find­ing your­self again. It’s fun­da­men­tal, as a grow­ing per­son. One day, when we’re old and gray, we’ll look back on these moments and think about how glad we are they hap­pened. Because one day, you’ll have a daugh­ter, or you’ll be an aunt to some­body, and you’ll be able to tell them the tale about how you fell face flat on the ground, but then you got back up! I was lis­ten­ing to this inter­view with John Berg­er recent­ly, and he got into the top­ic of hap­pi­ness and ten­der­ness. I feel like peo­ple tend to think that some­body who’s hap­py all the time hasn’t expe­ri­enced grief or suf­fer­ing. But that’s not true. He was say­ing ten­der­ness is a choice, and it’s tru­ly the most pow­er­ful and free­ing thing you can do. A per­son can under­stand there is so much suf­fer­ing and pain and evil, but they don’t let that con­sume them. Real­ly it’s the only thing you can control.

Is that mind­set in any way relat­ed to your faith? You’ve been quite open about it on social media, and you even start­ed a Sub­stack about your journey.

It’s some­thing that I’m still explor­ing. I grew up going to Chris­t­ian schools, and I’d pray when I was younger. When I became a teenag­er, I was like ‘Screw this, I don’t believe in God’, but I’d still pray. Then, one East­er Sunday–I think it was about two years ago–I was in this gor­geous 900-year-old church. And instant­ly, I thought, ‘Oh, I actu­al­ly do believe in God’. I enjoy read­ing the Bible and the sto­ries, and I feel like they can be great exam­ples to fol­low. I’m most­ly inspired by the spir­i­tu­al aspects of Chris­tian­i­ty, of com­mu­ni­ty, and find­ing a sense of belong­ing in a met­ro­pol­i­tan city where everybody’s so indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. It’s nice to have one place that you go to on a Sun­day to expe­ri­ence mag­ic and trans­for­ma­tion, and think about all the peo­ple that you love and care about, and how you can be a bet­ter per­son for them.

Has it been dif­fi­cult for you to bal­ance your spir­i­tu­al­i­ty with your line of work?

I found it easy to lose track of my life in the past, so Chris­tian­i­ty has been real­ly ground­ing for me. In moments of doubt, I just go back to being grate­ful and remem­ber­ing that my life is a bless­ing. It’s doing the small things, like going to bed at night and think­ing about your day, and say­ing ‘thank you’ for every­thing. Or remind­ing your­self that if it’s not okay right now, it will be even­tu­al­ly. It’s easy to lose sight of that. But to go back to the music indus­try, I think it’s the case with any sort of com­mu­ni­ty: there will always be good and bad peo­ple, and some that come to you with emp­ty promis­es. But for every per­son who lets you down, there’s always some­body who’s going to believe in you and make your life bet­ter. There’s a lot of dark­ness in music, I don’t know why… Thank­ful­ly, I haven’t real­ly expe­ri­enced it oo much. I’ve spo­ken to friends who’ve gone on tour, and it can be quite a lone­ly thing. It must be unset­tling, hav­ing to uproot your entire life; but I’m not at that stage yet! So I guess for the time being, I’m lucky because I get to live a nor­mal life, and do what I like.

Is that spir­i­tu­al aspect some­thing you ever try to con­nect to your music?

It’s fun­ny because God has found His way to creep into the songs I write every now and again. It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly a con­scious thing. I love hymns, and they remind me a bit of folk songs in the way they’re struc­tured, as in they often have that one verse that repeats itself on loop. I do have this lyric in my album where I go ‘I prayed for Love, and then you came. I prayed for Peace, and then God took you away.” And I think that, after find­ing God, I don’t know. It’s just a com­fort. I want to be the kind of per­son who believes in some­thing. So it does con­nect to my music in some ways, but it always hap­pens quite naturally.

What’s your start­ing point when you write music?

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, every song comes from a feel­ing, and it’s want­i­ng to do it jus­tice with words and a nar­ra­tive. But some­times I’ll just be walk­ing down the street, and a melody will come into my head–or some­times I’ll be in the kitchen hum­ming some­thing and like the sound of it. I’m also inspired by a piece of lit­er­a­ture, or music, and I have a char­ac­ter come up in my mind that I want to sing or write about, or a sto­ry I want to tell. I’ll sit down and map out the words, but it real­ly varies. Some­times it’s the melody that comes first, some­times the char­ac­ters or the tale. It can even be just a phrase. The oth­er day, I just had the words ‘Be still, my qui­et heart’, which then changed into ‘Be still, my tired heart’. It was loop­ing around in my head, and I was just like, ‘I need to write a song about this!’. I got obsessed with it. I know I sound mad right now.

Actu­al­ly, it makes more sense to me for it to be as spon­ta­neous as what you’ve just described. It feels like your whole process it. Are you self-taught?

Yeah. I’m self-taught com­plete­ly. I think I had a few gui­tar lessons when I was younger, but that’s it. I’d love to get harp and piano lessons some­day, that’s my dream. But I love just dis­cov­er­ing things on the gui­tar. It’s one of those instru­ments where you can just sit down and fig­ure out cer­tain arrange­ments and chords.

Is the gui­tar the only instru­ment you can play?

I have an omni­chord! I ini­tial­ly bought it to write new songs, because I felt like at that time, my song­writ­ing had become a lot more repet­i­tive with the gui­tar. I want­ed to try some­thing new, and I was won­der­ing whether it would change things if I wrote on a dif­fer­ent instru­ment, whether that would cre­ate some new music, new ideas. So I got my omni­chord, which is an elec­tron­ic ver­sion of the auto­harp. It sound­ed like a video game, so ethe­re­al and strange and unique sound­ing. I just fell in love with it so much that it no longer just became some­thing that I was com­pos­ing music with. I released my EP ‘Myth­weav­ing’, which has the omni­chord on it, and then I start­ed play­ing it live. That’s the sto­ry of my omnichord–I’m feel­ing very pas­sion­ate about it!

You sold it very well. Now I want one! How do you hope your music will impact people?

I just want to make some­thing that’s beau­ti­ful. Or even if what­ev­er I sing about touch­es peo­ple, that would be nice. And also, relat­ing back to the com­ments I made about folk music and it’s abil­i­ty to make you feel a bit less alone, if I sing about some­thing and someone’s expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing sim­i­lar, I would like them to think, ‘Wow, that’s beau­ti­ful, and I feel the same.’

And what’s been your most mem­o­rable per­for­mance so far?

I was part of a folk col­lec­tive called ‘Broad­side Hacks’, and I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sing ‘Willie o Wins­bury’. It’s a real­ly beau­ti­ful Scot­tish folk bal­lad about this girl who falls in love with a guy, and her father’s like, ‘Why did you impreg­nate my daugh­ter? I’m going to put you to death!’ And at the end of the song, he meets Willie, and he realis­es, actu­al­ly, this guy’s pret­ty dope. And so he tells him he doesn’t have to die, and the cou­ple juste rides off into the sun­set. It was prob­a­bly my favourite per­for­mance because I just love that song–it’s such a nice one to sing. It’s so high with all the lilt­ing notes, and it real­ly lulls you, and it’s hap­py. Oh, and Robert Pat­tin­son was there!

As in THE Robert Pat­tin­son? Did you say hi?

Yes! He’s a friend of a friend. They kept say­ing, ‘Rob’s com­ing’, and every­one was like ‘Yeah, right. Put him on the guest list.’ And then he actu­al­ly came and had a real­ly good time. He’s so nice; a real-life cutie.

Last­ly, I’ve got to ask: where does your name come from? You’re so adamant of its pro­nun­ci­a­tion on your Insta­gram bio…

So, when I was think­ing about adopt­ing a stage name, I was read­ing a book by Thomas Hardy called ‘The Pur­suit of the Well-Beloved’. A lot of his books are quite mat­ter-of-fact and real­is­tic, but this one is bonkers. There’s an ele­ment of the myth of Pyg­malion, and ghosts, and I felt like it embod­ied the vision real­ly well of some­thing that’s very whim­si­cal and strange–and some­thing that was Eng­lish. I thought that was per­fect. ‘Avis’ also comes from Latin, which means bird, and then ‘caro’ means ‘dear’. So alto­geth­er ‘dear dar­ling bird’, which I thought was cute.

It’s love­ly, actually.

I also love birds. And it terms of how you pro­nounce it–because every­body always asks me this–I change it all the time! So pro­nounce it how­ev­er you want. It’s a cou­ple of words. That’s why I love words, because you can con­stant­ly decon­struct them, give them new mean­ings, breathe new life into them. Some­times I say ‘Aaaa-vis’, some­times ‘a‑visss’. Depends how I feel…

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Andrew Kim­ber
Video­g­ra­ph­er Vital­ij Sidorovic
Styl­ist & Art Direc­tor Eve Fitz­patrick
Make-up Artist Chi­haru Wak­abayashi using Fen­ty Beau­ty & Fen­ty Skin
Hair Styl­ist Kyosuke Tan­za­wa
Tal­ent Avice Caro
Cast­ing & Words Leelou Reboh
Stu­dio Assis­tant Han­nah Abra­ham
Fash­ion Assis­tant Aman­da Flor