The Elke Experience
I’m curious where artists’ influences play into who appreciates their sound, how it’s composed and who composes it alongside them. Clearly there’s strategy in place in the music industry to predict success for acts that follow direction. But there is a path less traveled, and success can be found on it by a select, and very special few. Elke is one of them.
Exactly a year ago, I saw Elke perform at Elsewhere in Brooklyn. At the time, she was promoting her first EP No Pain For Us Here, a dreamy avant-garde tracklist that drifted from the punk sound of her previous work. But minutes into the set, it was clear that Elke was embracing the ethos and energy of punk music with more fervor than ever before. From the white t-shirt she wore, onto which she’d Sharpie-scrawled “I <3 TO SING”, to her wild movements, flying limbs and crooning, beautifully and shockingly low-pitched vocals — Elke embodied nothing but pure authenticity and freedom, and that energy was tangible throughout the space.
On Friday, the Nashville-based artist released My “Human Experience”, a five-track EP that is as eccentric and emotional as the last, though this one pushes the poetic nature of her previous songwriting and experimentation in sound into new territory. Elke told me “It’s about using words to evoke feelings… it’s as much for me, creating, experiencing and feeling something — as it is for the listener.”
It’s an experience, and whether it’s based on her human one, it’s now available to be ours. As a (fellow) creative being with ADHD, Elke has channeled her attention span into meticulous creative direction across the board with her act, and welcomed us once again with this project into her well-crafted world. It’s one driven by poetry — the likes of C.A. Conrad who she cites as her biggest inspiration and “icon”, for their lack of shying away from shallowness — and community, friends from across the country who came together to create this EP and offer us it’s big, bizarre and beautiful energy.
Her passion for words is prevalent throughout this EP, as it is seeing her perform in the flesh: Elke wants to evoke and share a story, a narrative. With smooth sentimentality, My “Human Experience” twists and turns from track to track, coasting on her unique, romantic, and at times harrowing voice and rich, thoughtful lyricism through what should feel like dichotomous rhythms and sounds, slipping in and out of “genre” definitions with elegance. It’s art, more than anything, I told her, to which she eagerly agreed, “Art Pop, actually, which derives from the Talking Heads, is the genre I’ve been classified as and feel the most content with.” And after seeing her live a few more times, I have to concur. There’s something about seeing real dancing on stage that hits a deep-set need many musical acts today cannot unlock for the audience. And Elke dances.
Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Elke a question I ask many artists. Is it you, up on the stage? Or is that just Elke? “It’s 50%, 50%. When I talk between songs, that’s all me. But when it’s Elke, none of my nerves are there. I’m just in it. I let go, I feel it all.”
Listen and dance to My "Human Experience" now, on all streaming platforms.
