Grace Ives Doesn't Know, Either
But for the moment, beyond major magazine features or sold-out shows, Ives is most stoked on the fact that people know the lyrics to her songs. We’re seated in opposite couches of her dimly-lit Brooklyn brownstone, and while impending nightfall threatens to break up throngs of cultured 20-something year olds outside, her two cats, Ichabod and Jupiter, are quasi-contemptuously eyeing each other on a faded rug leading up to the dinner table. “So many people were singing songs that literally came out a week ago,” she says, fading sunlight from a narrow window illuminating one side of her face, and an antique yellow overhead light fixture battling for dominance over the other. “In the past, at shows, it would just be maybe two or three people singing along. But last night, it just felt very… excited.”
There were also shows where no one sang along at all. One of Ives’ first serious performances came in support of her debut album 2nd, and in the grandiose-yet-humble stage area of C’mon Everybody, a Brooklyn event space and bar, not a single person had arrived to see her play her set. In the same spunky, down-to-earth spirit that has grown to characterize her artistic appeal up to now, she did wind up trooping through her entire performance — besides the room’s four walls, her only “audience” the entire time was a curious couple that walked in and walked right back out — which, even though it’s great material for an inspirational scene in a biopic, should one someday be made of her, accomplished little in the grand scheme of album promotion. But for Ives, the agenda may never have been so much for run-of-the-mill self-promo as it was for cathartic self-reflection. Promoting herself, both in conversation and on her social media platforms, comes across as a necessary evil: her pre-release spree of promotional Instagram posts featured two selfies in effortlessly-random spots, each captioned with the same formulaic “in (location) thinking about my album that comes out on friday.” The joy in Ives’ art is rooted more in an extraordinary vulnerability, one that shies away from sensationalist stages separating artist from audience, and basks in not only not knowing what’s going on, but laughing about it, too. It’s what made the show so special to her — there wasn’t any toilet paper in the bathroom, and at times, it felt as if the vacant, barely-structurally-sound venue was going to fall in on itself, but the prospect of an even playing field far outlasted the need for a glamorous coronation. “It was the perfect place,” she says, because “we’ve all never been here before.”
Released via the New York indie label True Panther Records, Janky Star sees Ives package a funny record of herself in rustling, minimalistic soundscapes described by Pitchfork as “pop music made from the inside of a maraca.” “Cut my hours back, well I guess I'll walk it off,” she sings lightheartedly of the grueling odd-job hustle that foregrounded her new peak in “Loose.” “I come home to an empty talk / I bring the bed bugs back.” Musically, the album manages to be markedly modest in light of Ives’ far more expansive background — an acoustic guitar leaning against a nearby wall is a convenient hint towards her longtime prowess as an instrumentalist, and on top of that, she was churning out awkward melodies via laptop software long before she was performing, let alone to rooms full of people who knew all the lyrics to her week-old songs. On Janky Star, though, the sounds are far from those of big-band anthems or tech-savvy ravers. “Lazy Day,” for instance, boasts a sonic backdrop not far removed from a grown-up’s version of a kids’ wind-up toy, droning forth between two wistful chords that alternate with one-another amidst click-tracky drum hits. As much as it’s stripped down, it's an ethos that waxes maximal — much like the musician herself, the music isn’t trying to be something it isn’t, and the fact that it’s hilariously honest with itself is part of what makes it so good.
The tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, often crossing over into equally tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation, is a quality Ives embraces beyond music. “To go a whole day without laughing is crazy,” she says. “To watch a whole movie without laughing is crazy. To listen to a whole album without laughing is crazy. [...] You’ll see red carpet interviews of actors who take themselves so seriously, and I think they’re so fucking weird. Like, if you would just laugh… We just saw you for two hours on screen pretending to be Elvis Presley.” Part of Ives’ musical ethos hinges on taking herself with a grain of salt, but before it was woven into the fabric of her critic’s-pick albums, it was a preemptive defense mechanism to ward off smart-mouthed classmates before they could make any wisecracks at her expense. Today, it nests comfortably in her craft as the chief instrument of artist-audience barrier-breaking. Yet at the other end of the spectrum, it may also be an undermining agent for her immense talent: sometimes, when she isn’t careful, the risk presents itself for her to diminish herself in the name of humility.
With a well-received album out, a newfangled litany of people who know the lyrics to her songs, and a headlining international tour coming up, it’s a balance she’ll have the rest of the foreseeable future to strike. For now, though, when she shows me the weirdest tattoo she has — an indiscernible frog-thing hoisting an unknown object, all captured in thick, enigmatically-squiggly ink — it seems like she’s well on her way.
“I don’t know what it is,” she says, between laughs. “It’s, like, a fucking platypus- a frog-horse holding hearts? I think that’s definitely the weirdest.”
The namesake of Janky Star is a tattoo given to her by a friend years ago. Between it, the unknown amphibian, and an army of other funny ones that populate her limbs, she doesn’t plan on getting any removed.
