This is a new era for Pixie showing astounding proof of her personal, passionate messages throughout her music career. Many of these new tracks give a fresh outlook on life whilst also appreciating the past. The album opens with the anthemic 'Show Your Love' with a quintessential band count down of "1,2,3,4…" and bids proof of inspiration from those such as Fleetwood Mac and Joni Mitchell. The album completes acoustically with 'Comes Back Around', wrapping the album with her final reflection of her career and time in Encino. I had the chance of interviewing Pixie on her new album and really getting to know the process she seized with introducing this new era to her discography.
Congratulations on the first week of releasing your album, 'Encino'. It’s a brilliant album! I can’t even imagine how it must feel to share this long-awaited piece of work with the world.
Awh thank you. It feels amazing. It’s been a long time coming and we’ve been working on it for ages. So, for it to actually be out it feels amazing and it seems there’s going to be a lot of 'Encino' adventures.
I want to first start off with that idea of sharing this process of writing new, personal music. I’m sure writing it is one thing and performing it is another. I just wanted to know what was it like feeling it and hearing it all come together with a live band and audience in comparison to working on it for so long in the studio?
Because it was written with the band in mind and touring and doing shows it feels amazing to actually do it live. Because I’ve been working on it for the last five years, I’ve still been doing shows but not been able to perform any of the new songs. But now that it’s out I can sing all of the new songs. Everywhere and anywhere. So, it’s been a real fun week doing in-stores and meeting people who have supported the album. We’ve been playing all the songs acoustically, just stripped back as well which has been lovely. And the album launch show was with the full band, so that was very fun.
You’ve said before that the track 'Coco' explores a sense of artistic alienation. You came out with your debut album 'Turn it Up' in 2009. I imagine in that era of the pop world it was very fast paced to constantly produce music. What was it like to really slow down with this new album? Did you feel a chance to explore lyricism more personally with the freedom of being able to take it slower?
Yeah definitely, because this style of music we were making for this album, it didn’t have to have a time constraint on it. You know if you were making an of-the-moment [album] that sounds like what’s on the radio it's trend-led stuff. It kind of must come out instantly otherwise that trend’s already gone the next week. But with this style I wanted to make to have the ability to come out at any time and hopefully it would live on. It could be brought out at any time or any era. So that meant we had all the time in the world to really perfect it. Making it with a small team rather than with millions of different people every day – which is how I did my previous albums when I was a lot younger – was really amazing, and very freeing. It just felt like you can write about whatever you want to write about. You haven’t just met the people, and they’re gone the next day. We built up a real rapport with working together. [pause] And so I loved making an album in that way.
'Encino' opens with the timeless track, 'Show You Love'. What was your process with this song? Did you know this would be the opening song going into it and this sound you wanted to introduce your new era with?
I didn’t know it was going to be the opening song when we were writing it but then after we were all done it seemed like the perfect one to open the album! It showcases the whole band. It opens with the cool countdown like "1, 2, 3, 4…" to bring the band in. It gives that full band, festival vibe. As soon as we did it I knew this one was going to be so fun to play live. And the message behind it: you give love, you get more back. I wrote that when I was more in a down time – the verses where they talk about going through a heavy patch – that's when I needed to hear that message the most. That’s generally when that stuff comes to me when I need to hear it the most. It’s a very positive song, and a good outlook to have.
Regarding the rest of 'Encino', I wondered, is there a process in mind that you go into an album when it comes to arranging the track list? Is it thematically, musically, narratively?
It’s definitely a jigsaw puzzle! The songs kept moving around. I lived with some of these songs for five years. Once we decided the songs we kept going back and back to them and rearranging them into a different order. Taking the drums out of here, putting them back on that song, making that one more acoustic, this one was a ballad when we wrote it but now, we need it more up-tempo. There’s a track called 'Further From Love' and that was a ballad at the start, and then we turned it into a stomper. We really did live and breathe them for a long while.
The final song of this album 'Comes Back Around' is quintessentially a finale song and it’s so beautiful in its acoustic composition. I quickly noticed your inspiration from TS Eliot’s final poem. I guess it’s quite fitting this being his last poem and your musical response being placed as the final song. In your words I’d love to know what your connection to this feeling and the idea behind it completing an album was. Whether it was pure coincidence or intentional?
I came across the quote when I was reading a foreword of a book and I became absolutely obsessed with it. I was like “oh my god that’s exactly how I feel”. I have travelled the world, tried to find everything outside of myself, fit into different moulds and find all these different sounds. To fit in this machine, this sort of rat race, of life. And then finally going back to the start and seeing it for the first time, it was there all along. I realised that is all I needed. Going back to the essence of what I am and why I got into music in the first place. I felt like it was a self discovery moment. Without sounding too cheesy. I just loved the quote, it just clicked. I knew I had to get that subject on the album. When I listened back, I just knew the album had to end on that final lyric, “everything I ever needed was already there”.
For my final question, 'Blockbuster Video' sees you reminiscing on your past and childhood. You will of course have plenty of musical inspirations now for your song writing in adulthood, but I wondered if you had any names that stood out to you as a child as well?
When I was younger, how I learnt to sing was from all the big singers – Whitney, Mariah, and Celine – so I would listen to those when I was learning to sing. My mum likes a lot of Motown, so there was always Stevie Wonder and soul singers. I also used to be very inspired by all the teen girls like Christina and Britney who started out so young. I thought then, it is possible, it can happen. But with this album I have really looked into the crafting of songs and storytelling. That’s what I have really gotten into with this recent album - people like Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. But it has been fun to combine the two.
I finished the interview thanking her for her music. Turn It Up (her debut album from 2009) was the first CD I pressed into my dad's hand to put on my little pink MP3 Player. I have grown up with her music. At a time, at six years old, songs like 'Jack' were the pinnacle of my childhood. Perhaps it's the nursery rhyme quality of lyrics such as "Jack and Jill, they went up a hill" that hooked me. But now as a 21-year-old doing my Master's I sat and listened to the acoustic ending of "Comes Back Around" and I saw so many relatable qualities. Pixie, you were a joy to talk to and I wish you luck with your musical adventures.
Pixie Lott's fifth album, 'Encino', is out now.