Elke Bares it All
How are you doing today?
I'm doing really good. We're in Nashville right now for the next couple of weeks. It's really thunder-stormy out, it feels nothing like LA. It’s kind of nice... I didn't realize it, but I feel very grounded and happy to be here for this time. My partner owns a house out here, so we come and check on it from time to time. We have a bunch of friends out here and my family's really close. They’re gonna like drive in and visit, just some good downtime in the summer. It feels like everyone left LA... We moved back to Nashville for the pandemic and we bought this baby grand piano and I just started writing. It was a different style than I'm used to working in and I got all of these new songs from that period of time. I didn’t really know how to package them or work with them because they were so different from what I was used to making, but I just went with the process.
That's awesome. And you have new music coming out soon? In August?
Yeah. There's a single coming out on August 5th, called "My Sweetheart".
What was the inspiration behind the song?
When I moved back to Nashville, there was this one morning when I woke up early, and at that time of day there are these little patches of light that hit our living room. Something about that moment and how I don’t always see the light like that because I’m sleeping through it made me pause. I began to think about the night before, my partner and I sitting on the couch watching TV, eating chocolates and making drinks. I looked around and it was like there had been an explosion in the living room. I sat there the next morning looking at the light and wrote it in one shot. It's simple. It's about loving my partner and loving the moment that we are in.
That's amazing. You mentioned the piano and how being in Nashville shifted the sound of your music. I would love to know how you think your sound has evolved since your last release?
It has been a real journey. Playing around with how I tell a story, how I work with time signatures, even experimenting with my voice. I got more heady with the structure and the way that I sing. On my last album I wasn’t as much singing for me — I kept parts of my voice to myself, but this time I really wanted to go deeper and express exactly what I want and use my voice in every way that I can because I have a range and don’t necessarily connect with one sound more than another.
What would you say the inspiration behind the album as a whole has been?
To me it’s about this overall human experience. Taking you through feelings of love and what it means to accept it. I also started talking about some things from my past that I was never able to put in a song cause it was too fresh and addressing some more parental issues. Things that went wrong with my mom and how I recovered from that, going into friendships, and through feelings I experienced in my younger twenties. I really struggled when I hit the point of knowing that I was an adult but didn’t feel like I had the tools for it and how dark that can feel. I wrote one song that’s more about that darkness, about the big circle of human experience. I’m really stoked about the title of that one too, but I can’t tell you that. At it’s core it’s just an album about being a human, covering as much ground as I could in a way that still felt authentic.
You spoke about this a little bit, but I’d love to know more about how you came to embrace getting out of your comfort zone. Where and when did that shift take place?
During No Pain.
From No Pain to, working on this new album, what made you want to go deeper?
Honestly, I would have to say the grand piano was kind of a great way to start that. Just having a different instrument. I treat my voice as an instrument, as all singers do, but I really get focused in on how it should sound. Down to the mic that I use, I am understanding now more and more that I just always want to be exploring. There’s this Childish Gambino quote where someone asked him if it was him or someone else singing on one of his songs and he said something along the lines of, “No it was me, I just sang different.” And I just loved that. For some reason I feel like we have this idea in our head that we’re this marketable package that can do a certain set of things or sounds, when in reality we can do it all if it calls to us. I let me voice meld with the song and transform to carry the music how it deserved to be carried.
I would ask what is next for you, but it sounds like it’s just back to the music!
Yeah. It's back to the music. There's a couple of things that aren't really necessarily confirmed yet. So I won't talk about them, but I’m super excited for this year. Building up for this big album release, it's almost kind of freeing. I also love the fact that I'm not just shoving things down people's throats, just so they are down there, you know, that's so dirty.
Be sure to check out Elke’s new single, My Sweetheart, coming out on August 5th.
