INTERVIEW: Allison Ponthier on new EP 'Shaking Hands With Elvis': "I don’t want to put pressure on myself, but I do always want to experiment and have fun, because it’s how I continue loving my job."
Interview: Emma Driver
Image: Julian Buchan
Texas born, Brooklyn based Allison Ponthier launched her music career last year and is already carving out a strong fanbase and critical acclaim - not to mention streams in the millions - for her emotional, sincere guitar pop.
Her 2021 debut EP Faking My Own Death chronicled her journey from growing up in Texas to moving to New York and coming out as queer, and last month she launched her spectacular second EP Shaking Hands With Elvis. It is a collection of music that doubles down on Ponthier’s desire to explore the most uncomfortable conversations about her life that she can, while also exploring new sounds and ways to present her stories. "I want to always feel like I can grow, and this project reflects that,” she says. “I know who I am and what I want so much more fully."
EP opener ‘Autopilot’, on the surface is a song about Ponthier’s inability to drive, but also represents the sensation of being paralysed by fear and how being closeted, and her subsequent coming out, still affects everything she does. “Why am I worried to make mistakes?…I’m just stuck on autopilot’ she sings.
‘Hardcore’ is a gentle, shimmering pop song co-written with and produced by Ariel Rechtshaid (Madonna, Haim, Charli XCX) which plays with Ponthier’s blessing and curse of being an intensely emotional and empathetic person - ‘It's hard bein' hardcore / I'll cut the lights, and cry in the dark more / If you don't feel, then what the hell is a heart for?’
‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery’ and ‘Late Bloomer’ show off Ponthier’s desire to expand her indie-country-folk sound and both tracks lean more into pop and glam rock territory, with some interesting electronic sounds and soaring melodies while still retaining the feel of her earlier, earthier sound.
Title track and EP closer ‘Shaking Hands With Elvis’ is a highlight and in many ways the heart of the EP. A gorgeous guitar ballad it is a moving contemplation of death and in particular the loss of a close friend last year. "Whether or not there's an afterlife, I want to believe that he is not by himself," she says. "The end of the song feels like a goodbye—but only for now."
Ponthier’s music is a thing of beauty - it is deep and emotional, vulnerable and raw but never cloying or overblown and always with an incredible soundscape that imbeds itself into your heart. It is music you want to hold tight and after just two EPs Ponthier has everything it takes to become a major mainstream star. We recently caught up with her to chat all about the creation of the EP.
Hi Allison, so lovely to chat with you again. So we’re here with a new EP, which is pretty exciting. It is a really great and it seems to build so beautifully on Faking My Own Death. I feel like the kind of sounds you were exploring there have been built on even more. Did you have a sound or approach in mind when you came to put the songs together for this one? Or was it a more organic process?
So most of my songs from Faking My Own Death were made around the same time, within the same year. Other than ‘Cowboy’, ‘Cowboy’ I’ve had for five years now. A lot of those songs were when I was listening to a lot of folk music, Mamas and the Papas and Fleetwood Mac. This time, I never really tried to walk into the room and be like, ‘I want to make this type of song’ or ‘This needs to be Allison 2.0’. I don’t want to put that pressure on myself, but I do always want to experiment and have fun, because it’s how I continue loving my job, enjoying making things and looking back and seeing growth is really exciting. The through-line for all of these songs has been pushing myself harder, production wise, like ‘Hardcore’ has that feedback, guitar sound, there’s a lot of cool layers in it. ‘Autopilot’ is a little bit heavier than any of my songs on Faking My Own Death. ‘Late Bloomer’ is like a 70s rock song. I’ve just listened to a lot of different kinds of music, and when you have bigger feelings, you reach a little bit deeper to write songs that are a little more raw. I wanted to showcase that rawness in the production as well.
I did want to ask you about those themes, because there is a darker thread of death – death as part of life – and almost the darker side of having all the feelings. Is that the way your mind turns when you’re writing songs? Does it turn from the small details to the existential quite easily?
Definitely. I think the reason that I read about death a lot, or I’m really focused or interested in it, is because I think it’s representative of a lot more than just death. It’s something we don’t understand and death is so much more than just what it is, which is why it feels so crushing, and complex and frustrating. Who I am in my identity, the impact that I’m going to leave in the world, and how we treat other people who weren’t treated right all kinds of tie into the theme of death. I still have an interest and an attraction to knowing about death or being interested in death, but it is a little bit different now. Because [the song] ‘Shaking Hands with Elvis’ is about the loss of someone that I was once close to, so now my understanding of death is a little bit deeper and a little bit more unique than it was before I had experienced that loss.
The way you write about death, because the way you present it, it’s like a part of growing up – you have to face all the feelings, which is another theme I really, really loved in the EP. That idea of capturing all the feelings, feeling them all, but how they have a power. Is that something that you wanted to explore? It’s pretty clear on a couple of tracks – like ‘Chasing a Feeling’ and ‘Hardcore’ as well.
Thank you for noticing that. My entire life, I’ve been very, very focused on being too sensitive, and taking up emotional space. When I was growing up, I really felt like the more I played an extra in my life or background character, the more comfortable I would be. And really, I was just delaying the inevitable, which is figuring out who I am, what makes me happy and being comfortable taking up space. A lot of the things on this record, it’s not just me being, ‘Look at how great I am, I’m taking up space!’, it’s saying things about yourself that maybe are not the most attractive qualities, maybe not the most fearsome qualities. When you say them out loud, it takes away the power it has over you by thinking it’s a weakness. ‘Chasing a Feeling’ is about my ADHD, and while many people say it’s a superpower, and I feel like it can be a superpower, sometimes it also ruins my life in a lot of ways. It shapes who I am and my personality, and maybe other people don’t understand that. ‘Hardcore’ is about me feeling like, I am too much if I cry or get upset, or let myself emotionally connect with the world around me when everyone else is just trying to show how tough they are. ‘Autopilot’ is about my phobia of driving. Phobias are real, but not everyone understands them. I really, really loved writing a bunch of songs about my weaknesses. I just did two headline shows, and when I say I can’t drive, everyone cheers. When I say I have social anxiety, everyone’s cheering with me. That’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful feeling.
People turn to music to experience feelings, so for you to put them in songs is just a perfect match really.
Yes, I mean, I don’t want to act like I’m a super genius or anything, but one thing I’m really really attracted to is writing songs, making soundtracks for things that you don’t have soundtracks for yet. When I wanted to make my ‘can’t drive’ song, there’s not really that many songs like that, so I wanted to make a song with that. ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery’, I wanted to make a song about what happens to us after we die, especially female celebrities that weren’t treated well when they were here on Earth. I’m super super attracted to songs that don’t have a song yet. In my life, listening to other people, and just being a music listener, those are the songs that I love and keep hitting repeat on.
That’s perfect. Well, speaking of that thread of ‘the feelings’, and articulating the things that maybe aren’t the kinds of things people would normally write songs about, the track ‘Late Bloomer’ stands out. I know you released it as a single, but could you talk me through the genesis of that one? I’ve read that it touches on your coming out story, but I feel like it’s applicable to so many people in so many ways.
For me, like I had said the phrase ‘late bloomer’ a million times by the time we had written the song, because I had come out and I was 21 years old. But it also takes a very long time to unlearn the internalised homophobia that you have. it just takes time. It takes time to come into yourself and be yourself. It feels kind of like an awkward. second puberty in the best way. You’re making mistakes again, you’re having fun, you’re meeting people that are like you and it feels like being a teenager again in a lot of ways. When I was thinking about what I wanted to write on the day I wrote ‘Late Bloomer’, I was super excited to write a song that was that phrase I’d said a million times. It was a super overdue song. By the time we had written it I was like, ‘I’ve wanted to write that song for so long!’, which is why I think we successfully wrote the song that day, because I had so much momentum driving me to finish it.
And it plays with a slightly different sound palette too. It’s got the melody almost in a blues scale, and there’s this distorted guitar and some really cool vocal effects, but it’s still recognisably you. Was that something you wanted to explore, or did that come up more in the studio?
When we first started writing it, I wrote it with my friends, Dan Wilson and Ethan Gruska, who are angels on this Earth and I would die for. When we were writing together Ethan was playing this very groovy guitar riff that then expanded into what is ‘Late Bloomer’ now. I heard it and because I listened to so much music from the 60s and 70s, I immediately was, ‘Oh, I have melodies inside of me, that want to come out.’ When you listen to something a lot, it makes you a better writer of whatever style of music it is. So when I heard it, I got really excited about the possibility of making a 70s rock song and I just think it wouldn’t have done it justice if we didn’t take it all the way there, if we didn’t do distorted guitars and different vocal effects, and really made it what it was. Because that’s what it is, it’s a 70s rock song. It’s also a song where I get out some of my frustrations by declaring that I’m a late bloomer. Sometimes you have to let the songs be what they are.
It’s great. I love that. And it starts off with the idea of being really awkward, and being ‘unadjusted’, which must resonate with so many people. Have you had feedback from young people, young women, that this song speaks to them?
Absolutely. First of all, there’s something very funny and, very me about making a song that sounds tougher than most of my songs being about how I’m awkward. But yeah, the number one gift of my life recently, has been that I did two headline shows, one at Hollywood Forever, and one at Baby’s [Baby’s All Right, Brooklyn, NYC] recently. They were my first headline shows, so I got to really interact with fans about their experience, about what songs they like, about what really resonated with them. And ‘Late Bloomer’, I can’t even tell you how many times somebody has said, ‘I’m a late bloomer too,’ or ‘I felt like the late bloomer’, and most of them are queer people who have gone through this kind of second puberty or re-finding themselves. But I also get it from just random people who feel like maybe their home life wasn’t the best and so when they became an adult, they got to heal their inner child. Or maybe much older and they’re finding themselves again. ‘Late Bloomer’ can have many meanings and sometimes that’s what makes a good song.
It is what makes a good song! It’s a great song. Thanks for talking me through that. How was the cemetery show she played at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in LA? Was it a crazy melding of theme and location?
Yeah, it’s a special place to me, but both places I played were special to me, in a certain way. Baby’s was where I saw my first show in Brooklyn, it’s where I met my girlfriend of five years, and then Hollywood Forever [Cemetery], I keep coming back to that place and feeling really emotional, and sentimental about it. I obviously wrote an entire song about it, so, I’m very into it! Playing it was great. For one, it was wonderful to actually meet the people that are into my music and see what kind of people they are. Everyone is so sweet and respectful and I see so much of myself in everyone that comes up to me. It’s like, ‘I like your songs’. I’m like, ‘Cool. We’re literally carbon copies’ – gay people with anxiety that love to make things. But what I love about Hollywood Forever, is the people that maybe are helping put on the show aren’t just music and entertainment people. A lot of times there are people that also work at the cemetery on the cemetery aspect. It was really nice to get to know some of the people that work there and talk candidly with them about the funeral process or what they love about being a part of someone’s life, and being a part of their death. Those are my kind of people, people that love music and entertainment, but also think about the bigger picture and have an interest in what happens to us when we die.
And aren’t afraid of feelings. Very important.
Yeah, and aren’t afraid of feelings! Because there’s a lot of feelings, definitely, that go through that place. Something beautiful about it is a lot of cemeteries can be a really scary or uncomfortable place for people who aren’t familiar with death or know how they feel about death. I love that at Hollywood Forever there’s active events happening and it brings the living and the dead together and makes it a little bit less scary. Overall, that just helps people process death a lot easier.
I think so, I’ve often thought we should have more Day of the Dead style celebrations in the Anglosphere.
Something that’s beautiful about that cemetery, and many other cemeteries that are like it, is there’s so many different cultural backgrounds. They have people of all different backgrounds and of all different religions. Every ceremony is different. I was talking to someone that was working there, and they were, like, ‘Something that really helped me cope with how I feel about death, even though I literally work at the cemetery, is just seeing different cultural representations of what a funeral is, and what does it mean to mourn or to celebrate life.’ I think it’s really beautiful that everyone’s totally different there. Everyone has their own way of grieving.
Sounds like the perfect venue for you to play a show ...
Exactly! And, to maybe be buried. So stay tuned!
The EP is out and you’ve done your first headline shows, which is amazing. What’s coming up for you in the rest of the year. Are you looking ahead or just seeing what unfolds?
What’s coming up for me next is literally planning the next thing. I’m gonna be writing a lot more. I’m kind of in a phase right now, where I’m literally planning what the next era is going to be like. That’s kind of my favourite part, to be to be honest, other than literally meeting people at on tour.
And cemeteries.
That’s all my favorite part. That’s why the job is good, because I get to do so many different things.
Shaking Hands With Elvis is out now via Interscope Records/Universal Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Allison Ponthier you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
