INTERVIEW: The Buoys release second album 'Concrete Cowboy': "There is a ‘quiet’ difference of being an all-woman band. You feel like you've got to work twice as hard and be twice as loud."
Interview: Shalane Connors
Published: 23 October 2026
Sometimes in life you have to go back in order to move forward. Founder and lead singer of The Buoys, Zoe Catterall has spent much of the Sydney band’s 10-year history in the Inner West of Sydney, working a full-time job alongside writing, recording and touring with her band. But when burnout led her to reevaluate her life, she made the decision to move back to her hometown, Woronora, on the very southern fringes of Sydney where the metropolis gives way to national parks.
This move helped inform The Buoys’ second album, Concrete Cowboy, released today. Inspired by diverse influences such as HAIM, The 1975 and Adrianne Lenker, the album explores self-growth as Catterall and her band mates – Courtney Cunningham, Hilary Geddes and Tess Wilkin – became more confident in who they are.
Catterall formed The Buoys in 2016, as a trio, and released their debut EP, Soft Boy, in 2017. She soon encountered problems keeping the band together, because she kept meeting like minded women with well-established careers who would eventually leave, often for a job opportunity they couldn’t pass up. By 2019 though, the current lineup was locked in and The Buoys entered a consistent cycle of releasing music.
In 2020 they released their second EP, All This Talking Gets Us Nowhere, followed the next year by a third EP, Unsolicited Advice for Your DIY Disaster. By 2024, they were signed to major record label Sony Music launched their debut album Lustre, which had enough impact to hit the ARIA Album charts.
While everything was moving in the right direction, behind the scenes, Catterall was struggling. Working in a corporate day job while being a rock star on the side was taking its toll, and when it came to Concrete Cowboy, the after-effects of Catterall’s burnout would play a large part in its creation. She quit her day job, and writing the album transformed into more than a creative project and became a journey of rediscovery of self.
Concrete Cowboy is a classic pop-rock album that can code-switch between harder, squealing guitar rock-outs and gentle, melody-driven pop, depending on the sentiment. Catterall’s lyricism is so beautifully constructed that, stripped of the music, it’s as compelling to read as a poem or a short story.
Opener ‘Take It Over’ dives into the struggles Catterall experienced leading up to the album’s creation. With a driving, pulsing beat that breaks out into a guitar heavy chorus, she sings: “I’m losing hair and tell myself it’s not that bad / I only have to stop, don’t have to play the part”.
The second track, ‘Bitch’, was the first single, released in August 2025. It’s a brooding, simmering number with a dirty, fuzzy synth beat. Catterall, writing from personal experience, takes aim at men who use the slur against women who aren’t afraid to own their power: “Go on, say it, I’m a bitch”.
Second single ‘Kill You Back’, about being murdered and then coming back to haunt the perpetrator, has a chaotic, zany feel reminiscent of new-wave bands like The B-52s – though Catterall herself gives a nod to contemporary Californian band Illuminati Hotties. In the middle of the album, ‘Alone in Vegas’ – inspired by the 1985 film Desert Hearts – and ‘Give or Take’ bring a softer, more gentler sound. “I wish I could let you in” Catterall sings in the latter.
‘Stay Up to Date on Politics’ is a standout, a stream-of-consciousness exploration of the struggle many of us have with intrusive thoughts: “How it works, what to do / How to act, play it cool / Can I hope? Can I dream? / Is overthinking a normal thing? / Tell me that it's not only me”
The album ends on the beautiful ‘Tell Me It Gets Better’, which explores the concept of being unhappy in your own home when your relationship has changed. “All I need at the end of a hard day is going on home to you / But now I don’t who I’ll meet when I do”. The gorgeous melodies in the chorus are heightened by Catterall’s yearning vocal, portraying someone desperately wanting everything fixed, but with the realisation it probably won't. “Tell me it gets better / Like I remember”.
Concrete Cowboy is an important step on The Buoys musical journey. The pain and subsequent change in lifestyle for Catterall, coupled with the growing touring and performance experience of the band has resulted in a sound that is more assured, more confident and completely captivating. We recently met with Catterall to chat all about the creation of the album.
Hi Zoe! Congratulations on the release of your second album, Concrete Cowboy. It's been two years since you released your first album, Lustre. What has changed for The Buoys in that time?
Good question. Because we've been playing together for so long, we're like a well-oiled machine. Because we already had done the debut album together, the biggest change would have been we have experience with what it's like to go away for two weeks and just lock in. We're such a touring band, we play live a lot, and with the last few years with the economy the way that it is bands aren't touring as much as they used to. So we actually can put time aside to write, so there's a few more songs on this album that we were able to write in the room together, which for our debut album we just didn't have time for because we were either touring or working our day jobs. So you hear the band sound. I mean, you always have, but we just had more time to spend with it, which I think you can hear on it, which is exciting,
You've worked with Chris Collins again on this album. It is a beautiful album. It's super, super fun and kind of envelops you in this lovely rock hug. It feels a little bit like a B-side to Lustre., it's a bit more positive and less in your face. It draws you in more. Explain to me the approach to Concrete Cowboy.
That actually makes a lot of sense when you say it like that because I've always seen our debut album as like, ‘This is us. Hello! This is us!’ We had to introduce ourselves, there is a ‘quiet’ difference of being an all-woman band. You feel like you've got to work twice as hard and be twice as loud.
Now we're like, all right, either you're in or you're not, and this is the sound that we like and we want. Being a bit more comfortable in our own skin is maybe where that relaxation comes from, but a huge part of it for me personally, as the lyric writer and the storyteller, is I stopped working my day job. I was really really burnt out, and the signs were signing because I was writing about burnout in the first album, and I didn't listen to my body, and I really got screwed over by burnout. It's also an album of re-self discovery, who am I when not a cog in this big corporate machine, trying to always scurry and struggle and stress and just constantly working. I had to stop because of my health and you can hear my thoughts slow down, my dreams come back and all of those things that happen when you're able to stop and breathe.
A big side effect of living in a metropolis is that pressure to keep up with the rat race. But also being in the music industry, there's this real idea that if you take a nap, you're gonna fall behind. Is that something that you've really struggled with in the industry?
Massively, massively. When I wrote for the last album, I didn't know that I had autism. I'm now fully aware of my neurodivergence, and that for me played a huge part in being a perfectionist and having to always overachieve. Being closer to the city made it so much harder to ignore that voice, that you should be working, you should be working, you should be working. Moving back here to my hometown, if I don't get internet, if the wi-fi goes out, I've got no cell service, I've got no internet. I'm by the water, and I'm back in nature, and I just was forced to slow down. Instead of me being 10 minutes around the corner from a dinner with friends, it's about an hour when I include like all the travel time, and so I have to be really selective with my energy. It's made it a lot easier to stop that really bad cycle of having to be on all the time.
There's something really counterintuitive about the outcome of that, being that you probably end up getting more done in the long run.
Yeah, I've started writing more. I've seen my friends way more than I have since I was living in the city. I live further away, and I see them more than when I was living in the city.
You have a super cute origin story. You started a band just from the desire to see more women on stage. You have a really cute quote on your website: ‘Even if you don't feel ready, and even if you don't know anyone, you should definitely start a band.’ And you went out and did that, and that was 10 years ago. So, happy 10-year anniversary!
Thank you!
You've already released a few tracks off the album, and at this point, I have to do a big shout out to Frances Martin who joined you on the ‘Bitch’ music video. It's absolutely wonderful. If you don't know who Frances is, she's a local living legend who actively supports, in the flesh, every single up and coming Sydney band that ever was or will be over the last 20 years. She's an incredible spokesperson for people trying to make their art in dwindling live music spaces. How important have people like that been to you in the Sydney scene?
So so so important, Fran especially. A lot of people call her the fairy geek mother, because she really is that. She looks out for you, she understands the pressures that you're under, and just always has the most incredible wisdom to share with you. She tends to know when you need a little hug She'll just know and she'll come up to you and just drop the most sage wisdom, and then you walk out of that conversation going, ‘I can keep going, I can do it.’
Ten years is a long time to be working multiple jobs and touring, and it does run your body into the ground. You do wonder should I continue? Is this good for me? And Fran is the woman who comes back in and sprinkles the magic back in. A lot of us artists grapple with the fact it's unaffordable to be a musician, you need another full-time job, and that eventually runs a strain. But the the real big one for a lot of us, because we are heavy feelers and deep feelers, is just the state of the world. It sometimes feels a bit cruel or odd to be releasing music and to be celebrating yourself when the world is a burning pile of dog poo. And Fran just comes in and makes you feel safe to express yourself, and just puts everything into perspective. So I look forward to more conversations with her, our lovely friend.
As an all female band, have you found those places, those safe places, few and far between? How have you found the support touring around Australia in particular, but also overseas? Has there been a difference there?
We've been quite lucky in the artists that we've me. A lot of the artists that we've toured with have just been the most generous and kind, and they always have a lot of great advice to give. One of our first tours around Australia was with DZ Deathrays, and they shaped how we tour really. They were like our green room is your green room, everything is shared, we don't want you to think that this is a no go zone. And we really liked that. We really loved bringing in the family element of touring, so that's how we do it now.
We've met so many people along the way who are champions of women who have taken us under their wing. I do think the experience, obviously, is starkly different to being a man. The type of support we receive is different, we understand that you've got X, Y, Z struggles, so we’re here to support you, here to you protect you, make sure that you feel safe and stuff like that. Males in a band can just kind of skyrocket without having to think too much about some of the darker stuff that can happen on touring.
As a songwriter, how to you manage the relationship of writing by yourself versus co-writing with all of these wonderful people that you have on the album? How does that come about?
When we're leading up to a body of work, we set time aside because back in the day we used to rehearse every week, and now that we tour so much, it's less necessary. We'll pencil out songwriting sessions in the week, and we would set a goal beforehand. I've got a spreadsheet of like 100 songs, and I've got them colour coded into moods and feelings because you don't want too many of the same mood and feeling in one album. Then we might say, okay, this week's session we're going to tick off one of Zoe’s songs, and then we'll come into the room and we‘ll write a song all together. We co-wrote all together ‘Take It Over’, ‘Waiting’, ‘Alone in Vegas’, ‘Welcome to My Brain’. It's just about balancing between the songs that were just started by me, and then balancing it out with stuff with the group, so that we all get to have some fun.
That's amazing, and to my brain I would be overwhelmed with the ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ mentality. It's amazing that you can live in both of those spaces successfully.
It takes so much grace and effort on all of our parts. But I've written with so many other people and I've written with large groups before, and it's always the way. And God, I'm just so stoked with how the album turned out. It's amazing.
What's the feeling that you're hoping your fans get when they listen to Concrete Cowboy?
Our goal as a band was we wanted it to be a world. We really wanted it to feel like you could step outside of what's going on, jump into the album, have permission to feel all your feelings, and then you can carry on however way you like, whether that's staying in your feelings or by putting them back in the album. I want people to get guttural with their feelings. Everything I write can be a bit theatrical, a bit dramatic. It's from a lifetime of growing up on Queen. I want people to pull out a hairbrush and jump on their bed and spin around in circles. I feel like a lot of us are missing that silly childlike energy. And if we just got that back, then maybe in Sydney we'd hang out more.
You've got an upcoming national tour, you’re heading to Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, and Perth over the last 10 days of October, and then in November you're supporting the Foo Fighters in Newcastle. That's insane, how how did that come about?
Wild. We have some incredible people on our team who just won't quit. Our booking agent Casey, and then we've got Grady at Sony, who just loves what we do. He was like, ‘I'm gonna make sure that Dave Grohl hears your album’. So he just kept sending it to the team, and then eventually they listened to it, and they're like, ‘Hey, we really love your album, do you want to play with us in Newcastle?’ We've been waiting for a gig like this for ages, and it’s a band that we actually care about. One of our biggest fears is, 'what if we get that stadium show and it's a band that we're not obsessed with, do you want to do a stadium show because it's a stadium show? So it just feels like the stars have aligned in a really cool way. We get to play good old rock music in front of people who appreciate just that.
What's coming up after the national tour and Foo Fighters?
We've got the Aussie tour in October, and then we continue the album tour in the UK and Europe in February, and that'll be I think a month of jam packing it with lots of shows.
What does touring look like for you guys? Paint us a picture.
We have this joke, we used to call ourselves Sydney's most punctual band, but now I think we can say we're Australia's most punctual band. Maybe after our next tour, we can claim the title of world's most punctual band! We're super organised, super responsible. We like to celebrate on the last night of tour, but a lot of the time I am on vocal rest. I've managed to teach Hillary some of my most commonly used Auslan phrases, so that if I'm not talking, she knows what I'm saying. It's kind of quite bougie, our tour manager from the UK loves touring with us because when we're in the Europe and UK, we want to go and have really nice fancy dinners. So we pack a pair of clothes for fancy dinners, and we eat nice. I'd say we're just a little bit professional, a little bit nerdy, and then 20 minutes before we're about to go on, we do one of those like footy boy circles - Buoys, Buoys Buoys Buoys! Once we're on stage we expend so much energy that throughout the day, we call it low energy battery saver mode. We're just very quiet during the day, really conserving energy, and then we slowly escalate just before the set, and then we go bang!
Concrete Cowboy is out now via Sony Music. You can buy and stream here.
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CONCRETE COWBOY ALBUM TOUR
TICKET INFORMATION HERE
23 October - Crowbar, Sydney, NSW
24 October - The Brightside, Brisbane, Qld
25 October - Jive, Adelaide, SA (Licensed All Ages)
30 October - Corner Hotel, Melbourne, Vic
31 October - Indian Ocean Hotel, Perth, WA
