"I went out / I got drunk / I came home / To the eastside / Park my car / Unlock the door / Lights all on / It's how I left them..."
The sonic distortions, like emotional stomach aches of "eastside" by Nashville singer-songwriter, musician, visual artist meg elsier might pull you down into an artful reflective darkness. There are sprite gazes, eyes looking up within elsier's vocal countenance but even her somber confessions will (depending on your past and present) put you in a state. The lyrical drudge will move you if taken as metaphor or reality or an amalgam of the two and like an Ari Aster pychological horror movie might not be for the faint of heart if you are easily triggered. A gentle warning.
"I went out
I got drunk
I came home
To the eastside
Park my car
Unlock the door
Lights all on
It's how I left them
Why I'm so scared
Of coming home to the dark
I don't even know it
But it tears me apart
So I go out
I get drunk
And I come home
To the eastside"
I got drunk
I came home
To the eastside
Park my car
Unlock the door
Lights all on
It's how I left them
Why I'm so scared
Of coming home to the dark
I don't even know it
But it tears me apart
So I go out
I get drunk
And I come home
To the eastside"
It is brilliantly evocative bloodletting, the kind of emotional sound to get lost in and afterwards rush to the surface gasping for air and somehow feeling better. "eastside” exists on elsier’s debut album, "spittake", out now.
About the song, she writes: "I live in East Nashville, so the song title was inspired by that. 'eastside' grapples with feeling stagnant in life. It’s about loving and hating where I am, mentally and physically. I feel so trapped sometimes by the way life can feel so cyclical, miserable, and monotonous. I’m taking the dramatic and intense things that are hard to deal with and just numbing and dulling them. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not."
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[All of the songs on spittake were solely written and demoed by meg over the last few years. She later collaborated with Nashville-based producer Ryan McFadden to record the final product while still maintaining the DIY spirit of the album as a whole (the lowercase, uncapitalized song titles are a nod to the original demo names).]
“The creation of spittake was the biggest and scariest thing that I’ve done,” she says. “It’s something I built up and something that seemed somewhat impossible to even imagine how to achieve. But it happened! Ryan McFadden and I made this record by getting to know each other’s intentions and taste, and just brain processes. To be honest, I don’t think I knew what the record meant to me/what I wanted to create until it was done. I know I wanted to record an album because I felt proud of these songs and I really was craving for people to hear them. What I really was searching for was an introduction as… meg. Not someone I’m mirroring, or someone I’ve been trying to become. Just who I am genuinely at this moment.”
“The creation of spittake was the biggest and scariest thing that I’ve done,” she says. “It’s something I built up and something that seemed somewhat impossible to even imagine how to achieve. But it happened! Ryan McFadden and I made this record by getting to know each other’s intentions and taste, and just brain processes. To be honest, I don’t think I knew what the record meant to me/what I wanted to create until it was done. I know I wanted to record an album because I felt proud of these songs and I really was craving for people to hear them. What I really was searching for was an introduction as… meg. Not someone I’m mirroring, or someone I’ve been trying to become. Just who I am genuinely at this moment.”
"eastside" is not the kind of track that suddenly has a happy ending but I appreciate artists who tell the truth in which ever way is necessary for catharsis. Art of any kind that goes "there" is important because a great number of us have been "there" or will go "there" in our lives. The older I become I fully realize that the world as a whole is mostly a traumatic place, so traumatic that, in fact, the sheer amount of survivors, the sheer amount of people trying to do the right thing is in someway is literally a miracle. Somehow the beautiful melancholia of "eastside" reflects that miracle to me.
"What if I fixed
My life instead
I would rather burn it down
See what's left
So if you want
We can go and
Fuck it up
On the eastside
Eastside
Eastside
Eastside
Eastside"
I would rather burn it down
See what's left
So if you want
We can go and
Fuck it up
On the eastside
Eastside
Eastside
Eastside
Eastside"
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.youtube.com/@megelsier
https://www.instagram.com/megelsier/
https://www.facebook.com/megelsierisnotreal/
https://x.com/megelsier
meg elsier is an indie-rock singer, songwriter, and visual artist based in Nashville. One of the most exciting new voices in the indie-rock scene, meg juxtaposes sweet vocals and opulent melodies with grungy guitars and weighty production. Keen wit and self-awareness shine through her lyrics, seamlessly weaving into the fabric of her ethereal shoegaze sound.
In late 2023, meg made her introduction with the release of her debut single, “ifshitfuq.” The track was added to Spotify playlists like Fresh Finds, Fresh Finds: Indie, and Fresh Finds: Rock, and was later included on Spotify’s indie editors’ Best Songs of 2023 playlist. She continued to build excitement with singles like “iznotreal,” “baby,” “forlyleinsanfrancisco,” and “oldnews,” which captured the attention of tastemakers like DIY Magazine, DORK, and Grimy Goods. After unveiling new layers of her artistry with each single, meg is now revealing her full-length album, spittake, out now.
Growing up half-Korean in a New England town, meg never quite felt like she belonged. “I think the main challenge that weighed on me when I was younger was that I never felt like I fit in anywhere I went. I was made fun of for being too white in Korean school, and I was made fun of for being too Korean at my normal school,” she says. “But, I think it was also a huge factor in how I came to find my identity and accept that I don’t have to fit myself into one box.” In her journey towards understanding herself and her identity, music became an essential outlet for meg. Whether mourning the loss of her hamster or feeling upset about a Legend of Zelda character dying, meg found the best way to ease the pain was through songwriting. Keen to have more colors to paint with, she soon picked up the guitar and started playing piano as well.
While meg knew she had an undeniable desire to pursue music from a young age, she was also plagued by stage fright. In an attempt to overcome it, she pushed herself to join her high school’s jazz band and musical theater productions. Eventually, she found the confidence to audition for and attend the acclaimed Berklee School of Music, but admits that her nerves didn’t truly subside until she moved to Nashville. There, surrounded by fellow musicians trying to pave their own ways, she came into herself as an artist, writing songs that felt authentic to her, while connecting with other musicians with whom she felt confident performing.
“Music has always been something that’s so intimate for me. It was something I had always done by myself in my bedroom, so I was nervous to be vulnerable with people and show them what I actually sounded like. Eventually, it was both the built up frustration and my own confidence in the music I was making that made me push myself to share my music with an audience,” meg explains. “It hit a point where it was like Alice in Wonderland where she ate the cookie that made her grow and break the house.”
Now, meg has become well-known for her frenetic and emotionally intense live shows. Her performances foster an intimate connection with audiences, stirring up a sense of shared experience while exploring new emotional territory together. “I’ve been having so much fun playing live and I feel like I’ve unlocked a side of me I truly love,” she declares. Her climb up the live circuit has seen her perform at iconic Nashville venues like Basement East, DRKMTTR, and The Blue Room. This Fall, meg will be taking her live show on the road with a North American tour supporting Finom.
meg's artistic vision extends far beyond her music. Alongside collaborators Jacqueline Justice, Mary Violet Woosley, and Roberto Kohler, she has created a boldly intense and vibrant visual world to compliment her music. Fashion is another vital element of self-expression for meg. She self-styles the majority of her videos, photos, and shows. “I love expressing myself through clothes, whether I’m playing with femme/masc traits, layering up, or wearing a bikini in a convenience store,” she remarks. “You can say so much with just how you’re styled. It’s an additional tool to be creative with.”
Her debut album, spittake, is just the beginning for meg elsier. All of the songs were written and demoed solely by meg over the course of a few years. She later collaborated with Nashville-based producer Ryan McFadden to record the final product while still maintaining the DIY spirit of the album as a whole (the lowercase, uncapitalized song titles are a nod to the original demo names). The album opens with the title-track, “spittake,” which meg kept in its original demo format, and speaks to the raw, untempered nature of the project as a whole. “This album was my first experience recording myself – not just vocals and guitar – and attempting to arrange and hear other instruments and what I wanted them to convey,” she explains. “That gave me a huge amount of confidence in going into the recording process and knowing that I would be able to make it sound like it did in my head.”
Blending elements of grunge, contemporary pop, folk, and indie-rock, the LP showcases meg’s ability to create dynamic, versatile, and effortlessly catchy music. Across the album’s 11 tracks, she delivers musings on love, death, nostalgia, youth, anxiety, depression and everything in between, with a uniquely self-deprecating touch. “The story isn’t necessarily linear,” she explains. “But the main connection throughout is this unreliable narrator that you as a listener determine your view/trust of. They are incredibly inconsistent with their statements but I believe they think they’re telling the truth.”
She continues, “to be honest, I don’t think I knew what the record meant to me until it was done. What I really was searching for was an introduction as… meg. Not someone I’m mirroring, or something I’ve been trying to become. Just who I am genuinely at this moment.”
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