Elke appears in our Winter 2024 Issue with cover stars L.S. Dunes, Wisp, Fall Out Boy x WWWYF, and Chase Atlantic. Head to the AP Shop to grab a copy.
For whatever reason, every so often, you get deliciously lost in a song. Maybe it’s a nostalgic, era-defining throwback for you, or simply the soundtrack of choice for a moody week. If you’re lucky, you emerge from the trip with a souvenir like an old memory or a much-needed epiphany. For Nashville-based musician Elke, getting wrapped up in the fantastically intoxicating embrace of Kate Bush’s 1982 single “Suspended in Gaffa” inspired her to piece together Divine Urge, her second studio album.
“I had just finished my last record,” Elke tells AltPress, fresh out of Pilates. “I discovered that song, and I listened to it for four hours straight on repeat, sitting on my couch, and I was just sobbing. I think that cracked my brain open a little bit, and it became the ethos for what I wanted to do next.”
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For those who haven’t experienced the glory of “Suspended in Gaffa,” it’s a fun listen. Whimsical, feminine, and existential. Very Kate Bush. To armchair music analysts on Reddit, it is a song about experiencing God and endlessly working toward recreating that divine moment just once more, to no avail. In the music video, Bush is seen dancing in a barn and traveling through space — ’80s teased coif in tow.
“I related to how unwound it felt,” Elke says. “It didn’t feel like anything was held back. I didn’t realize how much I needed that. I was always trying to write something that felt like something that I’d listened to before. So that song was life-changing, for sure.”
Zac Farro
The zealous, follow-your-nose freedom with which the album was collaged together is supported by its very title, Divine Urge. The first song on the album happens to be the titular track. It sets the tone for the succinct yet genre-packed 35-minute compilation with Elke’s low, coolly paced, and Kim Gordon-esque voice: “I’ve got a divine urge.” Having spent three years in the making, it is a body of work that reads more like a scrapbook, appropriately citing diverse sources of inspiration.
A nomadic magpie of sorts, Elke can call several American cities “home” due to her moving around for her dad’s casino job. Born in Louisiana, she spent most of her childhood in Chicago, and her adolescence in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas. At 17, she moved to New York City and, during the pandemic, she relocated to her current homebase of Nashville. A few years ago, her father was diagnosed with cancer, and it wasn’t until recently that she received the news that he was in remission. “It felt like somebody was searing off one of my heartstrings. We don’t have the type of relationship where we could soothe each other during that, so it was a very lonesome process,” she says.
Reckoning with her father’s aging revealed to Elke the vulnerability beneath his otherwise tough-guy disposition. “Having this crazy 360 response — which actually doesn’t shock me, because I have this theory that he’s just never gonna die,” she laughs. “I have so many thoughts on this subject, because he’s gotten a lot cuter. He’s getting to that really, really old age.” When her mother called to let her know that the illness wasn’t spreading, she processed the positive news by going on a long car drive wherein she blasted and screamed music until the system’s Bluetooth malfunctioned, and she sat in silence. In her breathing, she found Divine Urge.
“Everything starts with words for me. I care about words so much, especially because I grew up not being able to communicate well in the world. My ability to take notes in school was really bad,” she says, with the subtle confidence of having overcome that early communication block. Through a poet friend, Ana Božičević, Elke was introduced to CAConrad, an American writer whose prose changed everything for her. “There aren’t many poets where I become such an obsessed fan, like I did with CAConrad,” she adds. “Every single book of theirs. Get it.”
Like so many people, Elke once found poetry to be intimidating. After Božičević put her on to so many different poets, she realized that it could be a bit of a lawless form. “Dude, punk poems… it’s a real thing,” she says, proselytized. “I’ve read a poem that made me want to just throw things against the wall, just because there was so much energy in it.” At some point, after going through a few different poets and their specific styles, Elke gave the enigmatic medium a shot. “One day I wrote a poem. Then five more came out, and five more, and I was like, ‘Oh, whoa.’
“I want everything to just have energy,” she buzzes. “Sometimes I want to read things and be like, ‘Mm, that’s nice.’ But most of the time, I want to read it and be like, ‘I gotta get up. I gotta go do something crazy.’ I’m definitely striving for that in my work.”
After our call, Elke sent over some poetry book recommendations. We’d be remiss not to share them. New Life by Ana Božičević, Actual Air by David Berman, Crossing With the Light by Dwight Okita, While Standing in Line for Death by CAConrad, and Permanent Volta by Rosie Stockton.
The production of Divine Urge — which employed everything from funhouse laughter and insect buzzing to the bold beats of an 808, an electronic percussion machine — was shouldered by Nashville-based musician, friend, and producer Jake McMullen. And, yes, it does make you want to get up and do something crazy.
“There are so many sounds. That’s very much Jake’s ability,” Elke says of the album’s co-producer. “He has this endless magician’s hat of like, ‘Where did that sound come from?’” When it came to the 808, a piece of equipment Elke wasn’t familiar with prior to this process, she was immediately obsessed. “It’s this thing that gets inside your chest. I was like, ‘Let’s put it everywhere.’ A really specific [808 moment] would be in ‘One Fake Sedative,’ which is a good example of my child brain. It’s maybe one of my favorite songs. Every time I hear it, it does that third-eye thing.”
Zac Farro
Another collaborator of Elke’s is her boyfriend, drummer Zac Farro of Paramore. “We met at a New Year’s party here in Nashville. He lived in Nashville. I lived in New York. We met there, but then he came to New York, and for some reason, that time I was like, ‘You.’ And he was like, ‘No, you.’ We fell in love really quickly,” she says.
Elke’s first album, No Pain for Us Here, was produced by Farro. “I was really following his intuition. I was in the boat with him, and we shared this intuition together,” she says of that experience, which differs from that of this most recent project, which Farro drummed for but did not produce. “It felt way more like I had so many different parts of my brain on. I’d be like, ‘Wait, what’s that?’ Nothing was ignored. It was super different,” she says. “And I loved both experiences.”
Recently, Elke started taking improv classes, something that’s reframed her perspective on music making. “Somebody asked my teacher, ‘You’ve been doing improv for a long time. What have you benefited from it?’ And she was like, ‘Well, I used to see an experience as something that I needed to get something out of. I realized that what I get out of it is the experience.’ And I feel that way very much with this record,” she says. “What a fucking treat to have that many people on your side willing to work with you on your vision. I feel very connected to everything. Life just makes way more sense now. I feel very arrived.”
As for the future? “Man, it looks so bright.” And funny.