She also decided to try recording sessions in Nashville, citing country favorites like Ray Charles’s version of “Georgia on My Mind” and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”: “I just wanted to go back and study the basics of a great song.”
She went on to record in Los Angeles at Revival at the Complex, a studio that was built by Earth, Wind & Fire. It has vintage analog equipment, including a rare 1970s reverb unit she’s particularly fond of, which was also used by Fleetwood Mac in its heyday. “She’s very technical,” said Phelps, her co-producer. “She learns every plug-in, everything that matters to the execution. You’d really be amazed by how meticulous she is about curating or building the experience she gives you.”
The songs Baby Rose chose for “Through and Through” sketch a clear narrative: a reluctant breakup followed by desolation, a new fling that starts in a club, a levelheaded reality check and the realization — in “Stop the Bleeding,” the album’s stark emotional peak — that she’s in “a cycle of sabotage” that she needs to transcend.
The haunted sound of the album — immediate but echoey, refusing to be crisply digital — was a careful choice. “The sonics I go for are very ethereal, because I want just that little subliminal energy,” Baby Rose said. “I like to bridge the golden age of eras that I tend to listen to a lot — the ’70s, ’80s, ’60s — and then also understand where we are, and how much things have grown, and how much autonomy we have these days.”
Instead of samples and programming, the album relies primarily on hand-played instruments, with songs that often grew out of studio jams. But analog or digital, Baby Rose is determined not to hold back. “When I was a kid, I was told the worst advice ever,” she said, “which is that you have to pretend to be something you’re not to get in the door. And then when you make it, you can pop out like a Trojan horse.
“But I always had this like innate calling to be very vulnerable and visceral in my writing,” she added. “And so I do this not only because it’s in me, but it’s showing little me that you’re making it, you’re connecting with people by doing you. You do you.”
