On Day 5 of SXSW, we sat down with London-based songstress Ellie Bleach to dive into her songwriting inspirations, upcoming EP, and much more!
After running around and doing a few other interviews on Friday March 15th, we headed back to the Austin Convention Center to chat with singer-songwriter Ellie Bleach. The indie darling, whom we ended up seeing perform twice at the festival, ended our SXSW 2024 interview streak with a fun and delightful conversation that was much needed after a long and hectic week.
Catalina: So this is your first SXSW, how has it been going so far?
Ellie: Yeah, it’s been incredible. So I haven’t actually played any shows yet. I’m doing my first show tonight at 8pm at Las Perlas, and then another showcase on Saturday afternoon for the British Music Embassy. So we got here on Tuesday. So so far, I’ve literally just been chilling and living my best life (laughs) and taking it all in. Hats off to any artists that had to play like as soon as they got in, because when you’ve just done [a] transatlantic flight, you are just like, “I don’t know what’s happening. Where am I?” So yeah, glad to have a few days to kind of recover.
Catalina: Are you excited for your first show tonight?
Ellie: Yeah, I’m really excited. I haven’t actually been to Las Perlas, the venue yet, but I clocked that it’s on like, the super busy kind of nightlife street when we’ve been like power walking to different venues in the evenings. I’ve kind of gone past it. So yeah, I feel like the vibes are going to be immaculate.
Catalina: Have you seen any cool bands, or what are your favorite bands that you’ve seen thus far?
Ellie: Yeah, we saw Pussy Riot, which was incredible, like I never thought I’d get to see them. We saw Noah Faulkner the pedal steel guy.
Catalina: Yes! We saw him too, he put on a great show!
Ellie: Yeah, we saw him in in a church was like an Episcopalian kind of church. And so yeah, just beautiful. And also, we don’t get churches like that in the UK, it was very different. Like this one looked very kind of Puritan, so yeah I was really enjoying that. Trying to see who else? Well, we’re going to hopefully see Faye Webster tonight, which again, super excited for. And my manager really loves this band called Voxtrot who broke up like 10 years ago, and then she discovered on the plane here that they’re playing shows and she thought she’d never get to see them!
Catalina: Tell me about your songwriting process and what inspirations you have for your music?
Ellie: I feel like I have quite a wide range of inspirations, like across a lot of different forms, like film and literature, as well as songwriters I admire. So I see the project as a very kind of all encompassing thing. The pool of influences is quite wide. So this EP that’s coming out on the 28th of March is a concept EP— can’t say concept album, because it’s not an album—but yeah, concept of fictional town that’s kind of a strange, surreal, suburban place. And every song is a different story from a resident from that town, kind of an anthology. So yeah, I’ve been reading and watching lots of anthology kind of works like, films like “Happiness” and “Magnolia.” And “True Stories,” the David Byrne film has been a big inspiration for this project. I imagine if I had the crazy budget to make into a film I imagined it to look like the film “True Stories.” So yeah, definitely inspired by anthologies, where they all sort of have an underlying tied theme.
“So I see the project as a very kind of all encompassing thing“
Ellie Bleach
Catalina: Oh that’s a great description! What song did you enjoy writing and recording the most off of that EP?
Ellie: Oh, good question! I’d say the song I enjoyed recording the most was the song “That’ll Show ‘Em,” that was most recent single. Because that has a very like, theatrical arrangement and production style. So we got a clarinet, alto and baritone sax, trumpet all added [and] kind of growing from the demo I originally made. Often when I —a lot of songwriters have this experience—when you’re making the demo, you imagined it to have like a much grander scale, like the finished product. So hearing my little MIDI instruments become real and have real arrangements was super fun. Also, two of the parts were done remotely as well. So, the clarinet player lives in Manchester—which is far from London, for any Americans—so he recorded it in his home and then sent the part to us. And then we worked, remixed the takes and things like that, and the same with the trumpet part. He sent us a trumpet part from somewhere else, and we kind of conglomerated it. So yeah, it was a really fun, creative process. And then I think writing—my songwriting—tends to be quite fragmented. So I’ll be doing like, little bits here and there when the inspiration strikes, rather than like, sitting down [and saying] “I’m going to write and finish an entire song.” So, there are parts of like the song “Lakehouse,” that was the second single from this EP. I’d written like three quarters of it, and just couldn’t think of a few sort of gaps in the lyrics and in the verses. I just couldn’t quite work out where I wanted them to go. And then like, months later, I was at work at my day job and was suddenly like, “Ah, this is actually what the song is going to be about,” and then going back retrospectively editing them.
Catalina: I’ve read that you like narrate a world of peculiar characters with your music, what made you decide to take that creative approach?
Ellie: Yeah, so I think when I started out— lots of people sort of root into songwriting as more kind of confessional stuff—when I was like 18, teaching myself guitar and like, could barely play the piano, my songs had that kind of more like less high concept approach. You know, you’re like falling in love with the art of songwriting, you don’t want to be kind of intimidated by coming up with this complicated idea at first, so I think it took me years to grow in confidence as a songwriter. [To] sort of have the confidence to approach more unusual, nuanced topics. I also think and like to say that I kind of stopped doing confessional song songwriting, because I’d sort of confessed enough and was like, “You know, what, my writing is far more interesting when I’m telling stories and my own personal experience.” There are far better songwriters that can write incredible things about heartbreak and stuff like that. My strength lies in like, telling these surreal tales.
Listen/watch ‘Pamela’ here:
Catalina: Yeah, that’s cool. I read that your songwriting had that approach, and I was like, “Hmm that’s unique.” Because, yeah a lot of people tell personal stories, but most don’t craft into like a whole world with characters and everything.
Ellie: Yeah well, that’s what I find interesting about songwriting as a form that, you know, every other form of writing like screenplay, playwriting, fiction, short fiction, poetry, etc. There’s a far less like kind of confessional skew to the writing. Obviously fiction has like just totally boundless possibilities, but for some reason with songwriting, people tend to stick to traditional topics. Obviously, there are many great storytellers and songwriters, but I feel like that form in particular, tends to stick to quite confessional stuff. So yeah, I think once you realize that, you can literally write about anything you want, the world’s your oyster really.
Catalina: When did you find a passion for music, if you could pinpoint it?
Ellie: Well, I feel like there are so many different waves of discovering my love with music, and then discovering my love of creating it. Because I’ve always as a child loved singing and dancing and performing, and then I also always loved writing. I’d write little stories and little novels when I was a child and I remember begging my parents to get my novel published, because I thought that’s how it worked— I thought you’d just ask and it’d happen–and it was literally like what I’d written with pencil and paper. And it took me a while to put two and two together that the love of writing and the love of music can form and work very well together. So yeah, ever since I can remember, they’ve both always been big parts of my personality.
“Obviously fiction has like just totally boundless possibilities, but for some reason with songwriting, people tend to stick to traditional topics.“
Ellie Bleach
Catalina: I know you mentioned you have a day job, (both laugh) do you plan to continue on and flourish with your music career or is it more of a way of expressing yourself on the side?
Ellie: Yeah, I definitely want to aim for world domination (both laugh). It’s like 100% what I love doing the most. And the music industry now is so complex and there are so many sort of barriers in the way of making it someone’s living. And it’s an industry that changes like every year so it’s difficult to know what the future holds. Especially as I know, I’m an indie artist like, I don’t expect to be making like chart topping club bangers anytime soon. But, yeah, it’s what I love and it’s what I’m the best at I think. Lots of people say this about show business but it’s like, if I could do something else better, I would, but this is what I’m the best at, so that’s the way it is.
Catalina: After this, you head back to tour in the UK. What are you taking back with you from this whole experience here at SXSW?
Ellie: I’m taking back with me many souvenirs (both laugh). And I think just like, appreciating the scale of it, and how sort of filled with music the world actually is. Because I live in London and have lived in London for five years, there’s a very distinct music scene in London, which is great. And we’ve got great grassroots venues and things like that, but appreciating the world outside the London bubble. And yeah like just like being reassured that people will just turn up to a random like unofficial show to check it out just purely for the love of live music, I find [that] really inspiring.
Catalina: What are you looking forward to most about your upcoming tour?
Ellie: I think I’m really looking forward to like—the EP will come out like right at the start of the tour—being able to play the whole body of work with like, the full context. And yeah, sort of creating this like Ellie Bleach world that’s part of the live experience and another part of the kind of world building. And I love playing shows with my full band, I’m halfway across the world so could only manage to do solo sets at SXSW but playing with the full band— it’s very difficult to replicate that feeling. And yet when you’re when you’re in the middle of a set and you’re really in the zone, there’s nothing like it.
Catalina: Very insightful, thank you so much for stopping by with us today.
Ellie: Oh, you’re very welcome.
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