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Back in 2019, as their sophomore record was starting to take shape, Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez, the core members of North Carolina-based country act Blue Cactus<\/a>, questioned how the record was coming together. “I remember talking about this after we knew what songs we wanted to put on the record; we were hanging out by the pond where we used to live, and I was like, I don\u2019t know how these songs that we\u2019re writing right now are connecting,” remembers Stewart. It was a tumultuous time for the two of them; they had both ended long-term relationships and were settling into a relationship together after years of touring and playing music as friends. Though their thoughts, emotions, and the resulting songs seemed scattered at the time, Stranger Again<\/em>, the album they released last week via Sleepy Cat Records<\/a>, would come to be a meditation on preserving relationships as both musicians took stock of the shortcomings and strengths that had gotten them to that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We did not sit down and say ‘we want to write a relationship album’ or anything, but I think it was a by-product of what was going on for us personally. That\u2019s how we were living and what we wrote about – we were realizing how important our relationship was and wanting to make sure that we were actively participating in it so we didn\u2019t repeat mistakes from past relationships,” Stewart says. “It was almost like we had to get out of our immediate lives and look at it from above.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We definitely couldn\u2019t see it in the moment,” adds Arnez, “but after seeing all the songs laid out in a list of what we were excited about having on the album, it became pretty clear that there was a thread running through them for sure.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n