Elle Gilliam is always taking her art places.
Over the course of the last five years, it’s difficult to think of many other musical artists who have so consistently and animatedly pushed their sound and style to more expansive and challenging places. When she first came to the notice of Necessary Evil, it was with the gorgeous, lilting, acoustic near Americana of ‘Picture Perfect Depression‘ in 2019, back when she was still recording as Helltown*. Her music five years on bears little resemblance to those essentially standard guitar based records, and along the way she’s also dragged it into so many avenues and artistic tangents that it has been anything but a straight progression.
(*and also still… y’know… mostly identifying as male…)
You may remember me interviewing Elle last year, so it makes sense that I would reach out to her on the 12 month anniversary to get an update on her current status, both artistically and personally. Well, that would have been in February, so fuck me I guess. Wonderfully though, Efficax soon released their follow up album to last year’s ‘DESTROYER‘, so I could at least question Elle about the themes and inspirations behind their new album to coincide with its release date. Well, that was in April, so fuck me I guess.
However, only six months after this essential record was released, I managed to tie Elle down and ask for her to talk us through the record’s fourteen tracks. As far as you all know, we met in a dusty but quaintly adorable bookshop cum cafe in the back streets of Los Angeles. Elle was nursing a kumquat espresso and idly browsing through a Breanne Fahs book when I came in, blinded by the rays of the mid afternoon sun trickling through her long hair. I sat down and apologised for the smell – I thought I’d seen a tuna sandwich in the bins outside the shop that unfortunately turned out to be a dead raccoon – and we began:
This was actually the last song that I wrote for the album. It really started more as an experiment to make something that sounded a little darker and dreamier. The lyrics are a callback to my first album ‘DESTROYER‘, because by the time I’d finished ‘DESTRUCTION’ it had felt almost like a companion piece to that album in particular.
Let’s start with an easy questions: those first lines of haunting (“I can still feel the barrel/Pushing into my head/Its been 12 years/Thought it’d go away but instead/Its a stupid thought/In the back of my mind”) hit pretty hard. Is that referencing a specific moment or is it not to be read literally?
Definitely referencing a hyper specific moment for me, but can be read a lot of ways I suppose. Really that whole section is, without getting into the dark specifics that are painfully obvious, just how hard it is to not carry guilt around over certain things and actions, like some stuff isn’t easily pushed away and forgotten as much as we wish it would be.
Do you feel guilt over things you’ve done directly to other people, or how things you’ve done to yourself have affected other people?
Not so much directly to other people, I try to not do things that I’ll regret in that sense. Much more just about things relating to myself. After years and years of therapy and dealing with mental health issues, it has kinda become a norm that when that feeling hits it brings with it the weight of the past and all the shitty things and bad decisions I’ve made for myself over the years.
This song I spent way too much time on, and I am still not happy with it. But I had to stop tinkering and fixing at some point and just release it. 2001 is the first song I wrote for this album, it was one that really came together quickly – after it was finished was when I drove myself crazy trying different things in the mix! The song I think is pretty self explanatory, but the way I described it to a friend after I sent it was, “I was watching footage of 9/11 someone posted and it made me cry,. Like, it’s so much different now looking at it as an adult and seeing how making jokes about it hid the whole generational trauma”.
So, you’re telling me that it isn’t about that 1999 Dr.Dre album?? That’s kind of ruined my next few questions… I’ll only ask one: what’s the best nineties rap album?
I mean, maybe subconsciously it is about the Dre album and I just channeled it all into a coverup by making a song that seems like it’s about more??
Nineties rap albums are actually hard for me to even think of because rap is a genre I really have never been able to get super into. I honestly can’t even think of one that I know of that came out in the nineties and from my Google search of the few I thought maybe came out in the nineties it turns out none of them did!
So we’re not getting that Efficax rap album anytime soon??
I’ve written rap songs before, mainly as a piece for a short film about a juggalo and it was horrorcore rap. But it will never be heard because the idea was scrapped and I think the world is better off that way.
The song obviously references a very specific event in 2001, are you old enough to have any memories of 9/11?
Yeah, I remember 9/11. I was in, like, fourth grade and didn’t really get what was happening. I was too young to take in that it was tragic that so many people died. In no way am I feeling bad for, like, ‘America’ though – as a country the US has done so much worse than 9/11. But it’s fucked up now to see that footage and think of how it was interpreted by a kid and how it kind of gave a generation a really dark sense of humor to make sense of all the people that lost their lives.
I was 16 when it happened I think, but your generation has really grown up and always lived in a “post 9/11” world. Were the people in your community generally behind the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Sadly, yeah, the whole town I grew up in was a very red and conservative area, so it was very pro the wars for ‘revenge’ and ‘justice’, which is such a gross way of trying to justify all the fucked up things the US did after 9/11. But I think growing up there also shaped a lot of my very far left political beliefs by being surrounded by so much right wing bullshit.
Are you passionately behind Kamala Harris?
I am not! That being said, I’m voting for her, but only because it’s a better choice than the guy who wants my healthcare taken away and probably would rather I just don’t exist because of who I am. There’s so much I hate about the Democratic party as well, and it’s sad that we have to choose a lesser of two evils in American elections.
It’s just my religious trauma and love letter to Alex G song.
Is it literally directed towards Alex G?? Like, are they the ‘you’ in the lyrics??
Haha, I never thought of it that way! That intro verse was written well before the rest of the song and I had it in a notes app on on my phone forever but never finished the song. I guess I finished it while listening to a ton of Alex G’s last record, so maybe subconsciously it was because I just love all of his music.
So who is the ‘you’ that you wanted to be just like?
Nobody in particular in that one. I think at the time it was more of a feeling than a person. Like, wanting to go back to a simpler time where things didn’t feel so complicated. But with present circumstances feeling like it is, it’s just so hard to get back to that sort of life.
Your favourite ever Alex G song?
That’s so hard cause I love so many, so much. A few that I always have on repeat would be Gretel, Immunity, and The Same.
I’ve never been a good piano player, but I knew enough to make little melodies, and after the intro for break pt. iii I was proud of myself. The whole part three aspect is just an inside joke with my friend, Mazzy Ghost. I was about to release my album ‘break’ and it has a title track on it. Mazzy also had a single she was going to release of a song also called break and didn’t want to use the same title, so I jokingly suggested she add ‘part two’ to the title. So that started the fout part series spread between myself, Mazzy, and our band together Cool Mom. Back to the song itself: the album has a lot of religious imagery throughout. I’m not a religious person at all, but I do think about how easy it must be to have something to put hope into, and how easy religion makes it to forgive yourself. So the song has a lot to do with that. The piece about the car accident and the highway was really inspired by a scene in the Sopranos – excellent show, just watched it for the first time – and the Los Angeles traffic.
My God, I love the Efficax/Mazzy Ghost extended universe. When it gets turned into a blockbuster movie, who will play each of you?
I don’t know who Mazzy would want to play her, and she’d get final say with that. For me, I’d like to be a hyper realistic claymation person that is in the real world. It’d be weirdly realistic and uncanny valley feeling, but it’s also so off from reality. I think that would be the ideal situation.
How long have you known Mazzy Ghost and how did you meet?
I’ve known Mazzy for, like, a year and a half. We met through a mutual friend and became pretty close quickly. We both write a ton of music and have huge back catalogues, so we bonded over that and ended up getting close. For ‘DESTRUCTION’ especially, I would send her a lot of the tracks to get her thoughts on the songs, so she helped shape a lot of the album in a way. She also helped show me a lot that I didn’t know about production and helped a lot with just me learning to incorporate a lot of elements that I’d wanted to, with the more electronic stuff which has been incorporated in a lot of the Efficax sound.
What car crash was it on The Sopranos? Now you’re talking my language.
It was the one where Bobby is sitting in traffic and his wife Karen had died in a car accident. He was stuck in traffic on the way home because of it and didn’t know. That just really struck me as so sad, and how awful that feeling would be. The Sopranos rocks though. I’d never watched it but I binged the whole series this year and it was sooooooooo goood!
Originally this was a very different song, it broke apart midway through and into a breakbeat. I showed it to a friend who suggested to keep building it with the trap style beat instead. The high pitched vocals were super fun to mess around with, and I think I finally got it down with this track. The track is really about the past for me, how it can feel like a dream at times, like a feeling that can be half remembered. I think of it as one of the darker tracks on the album thematically.
Maybe my favourite track from the record. Do you have one that you’re particularly fond of?
Glad you like that one! I think it’s a departure from the rest of the album with the pitch shifted vocals the whole way through the song, but it works. I think for a favorite off the album it’s fuckface, mostly because I really love all the stuff Mazzy did with it. I wasn’t sure what the sound was going to be when I sent the basic stems off to her and she made it so much more dynamic and I love the way it turned out. But for a song I did everything for, I think it would be pleaser. It just kind of ended up having all the themes that I wanted the album to cover packed into one song and the instrumentation came about really easy along with the structure. Maybe wasn’t a favorite at first, but relistening to the album it’s one I think in hindsight works really well.
This was actually half of the original version of pulse, so it made sense to me that they should go back to back on the album. I’m a stereotypical goth at heart, so I love paranormal and witchcraft so the salt is meant to be a reference to that. But instead of keeping spirits away, using it as a safe space for yourself to try and keep away the darker thoughts. That’s my weird summary of what it’s about, I guess. The bridge is my favourite part in this one. I had the first verse end instrumentally and then when I was recording the lyrics I ended up adding in the “am I too proud” lines that come in at the end. They were so natural and so I built up the bridge and kept that going which I think really brings it all together.
Since Salt is a pretty spooky song and ’tis the season, what’s your favourite horror movie?
Not to sound like a pretentious film person – even though I know it will sound that way – but my favourite is a smaller film called ‘Kill List’ by Ben Wheatley. I was obsessed with the trailer when it came out and saw it as soon as I could. It’s a really unique and weird blend of a hitman film and occult/folk horror. For a more popular pick, I love the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, terrified me as a kid, but now I can’t get enough of them
I’ve seen Kill List! And, even as an English person, I had to watch it with subtitles to understand what they’re saying half the time…
Fuck yes! You are the only person I’ve ever talked to who has actually seen it! Like, nobody in the US that I know had even heard of it. The accents are so thick, especially his friend, so that’s the best way to watch it anyways to actually understand it! It’s so good, like, it ticks all the boxes for a horror movie for me.
Don’t worry, nobody’s heard of it in this country either!
Damn, that’s crazy. I figured it was a bigger film in the UK maybe, just because I know it had more hype there from the festivals it played at just because of how, like, hyper real the violence was.
[Editor’s note: ‘Kill List’ is on Amazon Prime and, most importantly, it’s 91 minutes long. Youse all have no excuses not to watch it]
Does the Pulse/Salt mix still exist somewhere? I’d love to hear that amazing “Breathe in, breathe out” breakdown as the culmination of a 6 minute epic
I think there is a rough mix somewhere on my computer. That was one I sent to Mazzy to see if it worked, because I wasn’t sure if it was too drastic of a change up midway through. She had the suggestion to build out Pulse as it’s own song. But that whole “breathe in, breathe out” part wasn’t quite in it, that was added in when Salt became it’s own song instead of just the ending of Pulse.
Probably my favorite track on the album, but this is a rare case for me where I actually do like the album as a whole, this one just stands out. I wrote it and had it fleshed out, but I really wanted Mazzy to produce a song because I love what she produces, and was so glad when she agreed to do this one. So I sent her the stems for just the guitar and vocals and told her to do whatever she wanted, and I love how she made it sound. Writing this one was another that was easy, I knew what I wanted it to be about and once the chorus was written the rest was easy. I was happy to get to use “down in the chop” which is an old timey expression for depression.
The new version of fuckface is amazing. Are there any other songs from your back catalogue that you think deserve extra shine?
Nothing really worth going back to I think! I’ve thought about going back and reworking some songs, but usually once I start I kinda end up liking the original version again. Right now, my back catalogue has been used to take bits and pieces from to rework into newer stuff that sometimes has a totally different feel, but it’s fun to be able to change things so much and take songs that were intended to be one way and flip them into something totally different. Like, on the album I have been working on for the last while there are some songs I wrote before Destruction came out and I just keep changing little things and they become so different in tone, but closer to the original intention.
So, no Trap Beat Helltown album??
I have a chunk of Helltown songs I did actually remaster and add a lot into. But when I listened back to it later I kinda hated how they turned out and just decided to leave them be!
Yeah, but years after your death you’ll be recognised as a musical genius despite your meagre sales – kind of the 2020s Nick Drake – and all of this will be released on special expanded editions of your classic albums, so we all just need to wait until then
Once someone gets my password into my computer they’ll have a good amount of songs they can at put together as a few ‘unreleased works’ albums so that’s my gift for whoever gets my computer!
This is my jam track. Really thrown together on my part, but I actually love that about it. I’d been playing with a lot of different guitar tones and think for this song I got exactly what I was looking for. Listening back to this track now, I’m actually really happy with how it turned out. A lot of the lyrics were quickly written alongside the music and it all just worked. The incorporation of the word ‘destroyer’ was very intentional – by the time I’d written this I decided I wanted to add in more references to my first album, and I felt like this thematically connected to it.
Would I be within my rights to say this song ‘rocks’?
I think that’s fair! It’s one of the more straightforward songs on the album I think.
The most ’emo’, even down to the lyrics?
Definitely the most like traditional emo on the album I think. I wanted one that felt like a “band” song even though it’s just me, so I tried to get that vibe. And any band stuff I do inevitably ends up being emo. Like my friend and I made a surf rock EP a long time ago, and even that ended up becoming just emo songs!
“All the jokes we thought/so funny to tell” – Were you a teenage edgelord??
Oh yeah, totally had that annoying edgelord phase, so happy that part of life is over.
What’s the one thing you’re most ashamed of being a fan of back then? Maybe you’re still a fan now??
Shoot that’s a hard one. I’m trying to think of something but I can’t even think of anything specific. I honestly think I, like, repressed those memories! The only thing I can really think of is, like, those super fucked up kinda movies that I thought was fun to show people, like ‘Antichrist‘. But I still like that, I just don’t like casually put it on as a fun watch to see someone’s reaction.
What’s the last film you saw and what star rating would you give it?
Luckily this is easy cause I log everything on Letterboxd. Last film I saw was a short at a festival last weekend that one of my best friends wrote and directed called Beltane, and I’d give that 5 stars, such a good folk horror short. Last, like, feature I saw was called Heresy. It was paired with my friends short and I really liked it. A film from the Netherlands, very reminiscent of The VVitch. I’d give it, like, 4/5 stars.
You’ve definitely outdone me: I’ve never heard of that film
I’d never heard of it either and probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t at a festival I was at. But if it ever pops up on streaming somewhere and you wanna watch a good weird folk horror movie, it’s only 60 minutes and pretty good!
This was an early song in writing. Going through a breakup I thought a lot about past relationships ,which were thoughts that hung over the album. I think I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I wanted, and part of the frustration that hangs over the record like the rain cloud on the album’s cover is not knowing what that is. For me, that’s what this song is kind of about. I had the “melt into you” line as well that I just really liked and it turned into the chorus rather easily.
Was the break up with the person you were with when we last spoke, or is that relationship still going strong?
Yeah same person, but it was very amicable and we’re on good terms. Was the most ‘adult’ break up I’ve had, but it definitely led to thinking a lot about relationships and trying to navigate that whole dating world again.
Are you on dating apps?
Unfortunately, yes. It seems impossible to meet people naturally anymore, since everything is online nowadays.
Is that scary as a trans person, or do you think there are enough safeguards?
No so much scary, but it takes some more time to kinda like make sure people are chill and not going to, like, kill me! Dating in general is hard, so now it’s still hard just takes a little longer to kinda get people’s vibes and make sure it’s cool/ Luckily, it’s pretty easy to weed out the chasers
Yeah, after I asked that I realised your experience probably wouldn’t be different than any other woman: just trying to weed out the murderers and the fetishists! It’s not liked people assigned female at birth have it easy
Exactly! That pretty much sums up how dating works for me these days. Back in the day, pre-transition, women I knew would show me the type of stuff people would send and it was fucked! So at least I knew that going back into dating, it’s just common place amongst women.
This just started out as a fun experiment for me. I loved this song when I originally wrote it, but with this album I felt like I was moving a bit more out of that lo-fi sound. So I thought I’d mess with it again and re-record it to see how it would sound more refined within the style of “DESTRUCTION” and rather quickly I loved where it was going. The song seems to become more relevant to me as more time goes by, just the idea of losing touch with people and fading into the background of their lives as time goes on. It feels like it’s an inevitability that happens as people grow and change, but also can be more intentional. The new addition to the end was another that was just ad-libbed. I knew the idea I wanted and went for it. I think it really encapsulates a lot of what this whole album is about for me. It’s a tragic feeling to reach out to someone to see how life is, but to find yourself coming up with an excuse as to why you were inquiring.
It’s another amazing rejig that weirdly brings Bruce Springsteen to mind! Who would you name as the major influences on the ‘DESTRUCTION’ sound?
That’s awesome because I love Springsteen! A lot of stuff that influenced the album is pretty random, but I’d say Alex G, 8485, Coma Cinema, Jane Remover and Wyatt Smith
This was the point of the album where I really wanted to change the structure. I always knew I wanted this album to be a mix of the experimental pop that I have been making and some of the more acoustic folksy songs that I used to write. This one felt like a good track to use to start that transition in the album. I was worried about naming the track “user” because I didn’t want it to be seen as a song about like addiction since it wasn’t supposed to be. The easiest way to say what this song is about is summed up in the small bridge of the song, “I got it so easy, and I don’t even want it.”
“Jesus christ I’m so scared to die/Had a hard enough time in this life/Wander around and see all the things I try/Such a failure couldn’t even wake in time” – are you really this afraid of death?
I mean, in a way, yeah. Like, I would like to not die anytime soon! Especially with finally just being in a better place in life.
And is “Jesus christ you watched the building fall/Bet you didn’t even feel much remorse at all” another 9/11 reference??
Oh yeah, second verse is basically all a 9/11 reference!
The general theme of the albums seem to be struggling to search for religion in order to make sense of events like 9/11, or is that too basic?
I don’t think that’s the exact themes, for me at least. I weaved in a lot of the 9/11 references as more a tool for growing up and having that kind of emotional maturity that comes with age. The religious aspects are all over the album. I’m not religious, but I think it’s really interesting how people believe in religion to save them, and how to promise of a better life after death is what drives a lot of people to try and do good instead of just doing it to be a good person. I did try and keep the meanings of a lot of stuff in the album vague though, mostly just so people could have their own interpretations even though so much of it is hyper specific to me. I still wanted it to be a relatable album at least emotionally.
Do you believe, as the theological scholar OPM theorised, that heaven is a halfpipe?
Probably the most realistic depiction of heaven. Jesus packing a bong and skating. I’d be down to go hang there.
This was an old song. I wrote it 6 years ago (fuck I’m getting old) and never recorded it other than an iPhone voice memo. I remember sitting at the edge of my bed in my apartment at the time, just fiddling with chords and getting the building melody of this one. It was a song that I always came back to, and this felt like a good time to do a proper recording of it. I only rewrote the bridge, the rest was all the same as it was 6 years ago.
If it was written 6 years ago, was it originally planned as a Helltown song?
Yeah I think it was written like just as I was finishing up ‘Picture Perfect Depression‘ so it was going to be on the follow up to that but then just got lost somewhere in the shuffle. I always liked it though and ended up revisiting it when I was just playing guitar and realized it was the shooter chords, so I wanted to have it be on this album
Do you really think you could have had the whole “married/kid/family” life? Was that ever really on the cards or would it involve you being a completely different person?
I don’t think it could ever happen. When I wrote that one I think it was about that kind of thinking of, like, “life could be so much easier if I do what other people do”. But instead I was just driving myself mad with mental health and gender stuff at that time.
You say you were always a straight shooter, but how good were you at light gun games like Time Crisis?
I’m actually really good at Time Crisis. Specifically Time Crisis 2, which is the greatest arcade game of all time. I fucking love that one, at one point I made it into the top 10 scores when I lived in Portland at an arcade there. It was a big life achievement!
This is one that I don’t think I realised how much I liked it until it was finished. I really wanted another track to start with the sweeping building piano, but to go into something that was a more of a chill and slower electronic part. I think the song is self explanatory, but I also think every song is because I write them about things that are super clear to me. I guess its its simplest form it’s about feeling like a burden. I think the this song echos a lot of the same themes as fade.jpg and it deliberately continues on the wandering around themes at the end, but instead of going in a positive direction it spirals back into self destruction, which is another thing I wanted the album to go into.
It’s a gorgeous, classic ‘2nd last track epic ballad’. You say it’s about feeling like a burden, but it also seems to be about wanting to be a people ‘pleaser’? As in, concentrating too much on being a people pleaser rather than talking to them about your own issues
Yeah that’s pretty spot on, it’s kind of about both I guess. Like, being a burden in the sense of towards other people who are moving in new directions, but still going along with the plans even though it’s not right. Also just in that sense of talking about issues, and how those issues can just get worse in private and we put on a smile to make others happy around us.
“Pack of cigarettes in hand/I said I’d quit but I’ll start again” – What brand of cigarettes do you smoke?
I actually don’t smoke! When I did my faves were Parliament lights or filtered Lucky Strikes.
So you did quit!? I feel lied to…
Haha, yeah, but it works as a nice line about going back to self destructive habits. If smoking had no negative side effects I’d love to do it again!
And the final song, the one the album is named after. This is one that nobody has mentioned to me. I think it flies under the radar, maybe because it’s a low-key song to end it on instead of some of the bigger songs on the album, but it just felt right to end it here for me. This one was really the song that I think ties it all together. I wanted to bring back ‘DESTROYER’ but use it as a character almost, like a harbinger of impending depression and self destruction. But I also wanted the album to end on a different note, a more positive note, unlike the rest of the album that I think sticks with a certain complacency in its darker themes. I don’t think that the positivity is going to be incorporated much going forward – I actually know this for a fact since I’ve been diligently working on a follow up – but I thought it was an important way to end the album with its themes of self destruction with a change where it’s about how fucked up things can get but we can still move forward. Maybe it just didn’t land or something, I don’t know but I really like the song and was very happy with how it came together. I had the guitar recorded for a long time and it just took a while to put it together lyrically.
I think it does perversely end the album on a high note. There’s nothing specifically positive about it, but it’s like an acceptance of your flaws and strange peace in that self awareness?
Yeah, I really didn’t want it to end on a completely downer note, so the last song is pretty much about that kind of acceptance and trying to at least push forward to something closer to contentment.
[Editor’s note: I would really compare it to Faster by the Manics in the way it finds perverse peace in almost celebrating its own perceived imperfections and toxicity. I didn’t mention it to Elle though, as when I mentioned the Manics in our last interview she had NO IDEA what I was talking about! She is, after all, American. Best Manics song ever though, scientifically proven]
And what are you pushing forward to?? What’s the next album sound like and are the themes different?
For me, it’s about just getting through all those low moments to find out more of what I want from life. It sounds cheesy saying it, but whatever! The next album I think is pretty different. I’ve been working on it for a long time, there are zero 9/11 references, and I think if anything’s it’s closer to the ‘Crushing’ EP I put out a while ago. A lot of songs about relationships, crushes, identity… actually maybe it’s not so different!
Do you think people will see an album called ‘Destruction’ in 2024 and immediately think of Gaza?
I mean, maybe, from the title alone. Probably a good thing to make people think of Gaza, since it’s tragic what’s happening there and it feels like it gets swept under the rug a lot, at least in the US.
On the posters advertising the album, would you use the lyric quote “You can’t be good without the ‘DESTRUCTION’ (album)”?
Haha! I love that! Seems like it would make a great billboard, with that quote and just a photo of me with both thumbs up.
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Elle also treated me to a preview of her next album due for release in early 2025. ‘Junebug’ will feature a massive twenty tracks – “It’s a lot, but there is a particular flow to the way that it’s structured that took a lot of organising and shifting as the album grew, but I really like how it came out” – and currently has as its cover a photo taken by Elle’s sister Jess that was originally meant to accompany a physical Helltown release that never happened (“It will likely be the final art because I just think it fits the album really well!”).
‘Junebug’ is an album that has been a reflection of a lot of parts in my life recently. Both the beautiful and the messy parts, and the moments being stuck between where you are and where you want to be. I hope it’s an album that resonates with anyone who hears it, and they can find some sort of connection in it. It’s really long and comes out sometime in January, unless I decide to keep writing and make it even longer! Which I hope doesn’t happen because I’ll never finish anything if it does!
Elle played me three tracks from the next album on the Sony Walkman that she had on her person (we’re in that Los Angeles bookstore, remember) – gutted, true bloom and on my knees. She said they were a good overview of the record’s sound because she “Wanted to build off of the poppier sound on Destruction, but also try and bring it back to songs with more bedroom acoustic elements”. All three songs feel a lot fuller than Efficax’s previous music, with more of a beautiful dreampop sound far more achingly beautiful than anything Elle has previously done. She says that she was listening to a lot of Adrianne Lenker while writing the album -“Took me so long to get into her stuff. My friend, whose band is Stay in Touch, took a writing workshop with her and after hearing about it I decided to listen to her solo albums, and just couldn’t stop for a month” – along with German Error Message, Wyatt Smith again, and “The entire I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack“. All these influences are evident, to differing degrees, on the ethereal and dreamy tracks that she played me.
gutted opens with a voicemail left with Elle from someone with the wrong number, while on my knees ends with a voice message left for her on a dating app (“I like your black hair as well, I dig gothic chicks, so… that’s hot”), and Elle says there are many voice messages sprinkled throughout the album. “The best on it is one I got from an old co-worker. It was a place I hadn’t worked in years and a strange message about them being worried about me, because they hadn’t heard from me. Something about it just felt odd, because it had been so long and I had no real communication outside of work with them, but it ended up being perfect for an intro part of a song”.
DESTRUCTION’ is a huge leap forward artistically from anything Effifax has done before, and I fully expect the leap with ‘Junebug’ to be similarly seismic. I would have told Elle this to her face, but I had to leave the scene quickly. When she was using the bookshop’s bathroom, I stole the half eaten blueberry muffin she had bought, as I haven’t eaten in days. I swiftly bid her goodbye when she came back, wanting to leave the scene of the crime as quickly as possible.
Necessary Evil 
3 thoughts on ““Driving Myself Mad With Mental Health and Gender Stuff” – Efficax Interview”