From time to time we ask an artist to join us with a guest column introducing a new release. Today Erica Elektra (Hearts of Palm UK) weighs in on her favorite tracks from That's Intense, out now on Itunes, and describes how the album got its name.
By Erica Elektra
I sat down with Dan Horne of Lone Palm Studio to begin work on the album, and he asked me to describe the songs and the feeling I was going for. I told him that this was basically a concept album, of being brokenhearted and going through breakup after breakup. I wanted to convey my sadness. He was quiet for a while (as he often is) and then said… "Whoa, that’s intense.” And he was absolutely right, cuz my album IS intense!
My favorite 5 tracks off the album, in no particular order, they are just what came to me.
1. “Kitten”
This is a song I wrote many, many years ago while I was
living in Portugal. When leaving the country, I’d had to find a new home for my
cat, and when I took her there (which was located in the Humboldt countryside),
she ran away and disappeared. Her bones were found a few months later. This song
was an homage to that sweet kitty who was so special to me. I had never
recorded the song properly and when working on this album, I thought it would
be really nice to revisit it and make it sound beautiful. After all, it fits in
with the theme of “That’s Intense”… cuz losing a pet is really intense.
2. “Contract”
I like this song because it’s so simple. There are no real
chord changes that distinguish the verses and choruses… in fact there is hardly
a chorus at all. This song was an exercise in minimalism and it feels very
different from what I usually do. Because of the simplicity, I feel like the
heartfelt lyrics are able to penetrate the listener in a more direct way.
3. “Oh No”
I just like how this sounds like something you’d hear on the
dance floor in some trashy club in Germany. It’s total Europop. Writing the
music and lyrics also came really easy to me. Something about this song was
just effortless, and that’s why I like it!
4. “Please Understand”
This was a song I built entirely on the Omnichord, and so
the writing process was quite different from what I usually do. I also think it
really represents the Erica Elektra sound… it sounds somewhat chipper and happy
but when you listen to what I’m actually singing about, it’s quite sad. Someone
once described my music as upbeat melancholia, like a rain cloud made out of
cotton candy. I feel like this song is a perfect example of that. Plus I can’t
help but love the use of dried out coconuts to replicate the sound of horses’
hooves during the choruses…
5. “Heading West”
This was really fun to flesh out in the studio. I love how
Dan played the pedal steel and gave it a real country vibe. I also like all the
hawk and rattlesnake samples we used. It just ended up sounding totally
different from what I usually do. One other thing that made this a different
type of song is that I wrote the lyrics with a non-musician friend of mine. I
wasn’t feeling super inspired to write about anything, I was sick of sad love
songs, and so I asked her to tell me what was on HER mind. She had just done a
road trip from Oklahoma to California and had a lot of imagery and philosophy
to talk about… so that’s what I wrote about!
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