INTERVIEW: Eliott releases debut album 'just calling to tell you i’m ok': “I didn't know that I was going through these things until I sat in the studio and wrote them down on a piece of paper."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Jess Brohier

Australia’s Eliott today releases her debut album just calling to tell you i’m ok. Born out of turmoil - a relationship breakdown, personal growth and mental health struggles - it is a remarkable album that has all the warmth and emotional depth that comes with personal revelation, telling of the experiences – good and bad – that have shaped the last few years of Eliott’s life.

Eliott’s music has always trodden a line between multiple genres and she has a remarkable ability to create music that pulls in different sounds while being beholden to none of them. There is a comforting familiarity mixed with an indefinable uniqueness that allows an immediate connection but also sparks intrigue about what you are about to hear. The twelve tracks on just calling to tell you i’m ok mix up electronica, pop, soul, country, rock and indie, which all happily coexist within a coherent whole. Created in bits and pieces since 2018, Eliott never set out to make an album, but after she applied for, and was awarded, a two-month residency in Paris at the beginning of 2020, just calling to tell you i’m ok started to take shape. “I didn’t have the intention of going over there to write an album,” she says. “It was nice to have that freedom of just writing and not having a deadline, or ‘You need to have this song in by this time’, or ‘This is an album’. I was just doing it because I love to write.”

The album begins with ‘Only 25’, her new single, which in one song seems to symbolise the angst that preceded the album’s creation. To a staccato electronic beat mixed in with gorgeous piano, Eliott sings “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life / And I’m only on the cusp of twenty-five” in the song’s opening line. As strings are added in the second verse, she sings about the pain and doubt that accompany the realisation a relationship is over: “Cos I just held on hopelessly / I wondered if we’re meant to be / I couldn’t stand the sight of you that night / And if I know what’s good for me / I’ll just pack my bags and leave”.

The next phase of the relationship breakdown is explored on ‘I Miss You All the Time’, which depicts the struggle to find normality and balance after a person who has been such a big part of your life is suddenly not part of it anymore. Beginning with a distorted music-box tune, guitars and drums come in as Eliott sings through the steps she is taking to get over her ex, in full awareness that none of them work – and perhaps she doesn’t want them to. The break-up aftermath reaches its final stage on ‘Happy On My Own’, a shimmering, pared-back electronica track that features Vancouver Sleep Clinic, sees Eliott convince herself she will be happy by herself, while questioning her decision to walk away.

‘Tell Me’, the album’s lead single, is an uplifting yet melancholic electronic song that openly and honestly details Eliott’s struggles with mental health as she pleads with her mother for help – “Tell me, Mother / When will I know what to do? /… How do I keep up when I don’t wanna get up this time?” – before ending on the plaintive plea “Tell me it’s alright”. ‘Oh My Heart’ has an off-kilter beat behind a piano as Eliott encourages herself to keep on going, despite the thoughts racing around her head: “I’m doing my best, but it goes on and on.”

Elsewhere on the album, ‘Draw a Gun’ is a gorgeous, brooding piano ballad that explores how we can retreat into our heads, where memories of happier times can fill us with sorrow. Another highlight is ‘Energy’, with a rockier sound and a stop-start beat, which looks at the pitfalls of comparing our lives to the far more glamorous-looking ones on our social media feeds: “All of this scrolling makes me feel smaller / I just used all of my energy”.

Eliott has been releasing music for six years, and the journey to just calling to tell you i’m ok has brought her great professional success balanced by great personal challenges. But working through her feelings in creating this album has perhaps brought Eliott to her greatest creative achievement yet. Without a doubt one of the great debut albums of 2023. We recently caught up with Eliott to chat more about the creation of the album.

Hi Eliott, so lovely to chat to you today. just calling to tell you i'm ok what a peach of an album, congratulations.
Thank you so much. I'm so excited. I feel like it's been a long time coming to get all that work, and I'm just ready to let go of that person that wrote it. It feels pretty crazy that it's finally out.

I imagine it's almost been a skin that you wore, that was a part of you. As much as it's new for us, you've been wearing that and processing that for so long.
Definitely in the production phase of doing the album, or even the the writing phase, it felt like a therapy session to me. I was writing things that I didn't even really realise I was going through. I was saying, ‘I need to get all this out on the table, how I'm feeling’. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on a lot of things, and a lot of things that I went through, but at the time didn't really acknowledge them.

I wanted to talk to you about the title, just calling to tell you I'm ok. Is that catharsis for you? Or is that for other people? I feel like the album is almost like this constant swell of painful dives and then reassurances.
Yeah, and I think that's what I've wanted from the album. It wasn't going to be this body of work that holds too much sadness, but that there's some hope in between the lines. ‘Just calling to tell you I'm ok’ is really like a message to my friends and my family. I went through a pretty rough 2020, a lot of things happened and they were the ones that pulled me out of that. So it's a love letter to my family to say thank you.

You said that you had a hard time in 2020, and you went into writing this album not knowing you were writing it on a trip to Paris. Talk to me about that.
So I was over in Paris, it was the beginning of 2020, literally right before all the lockdowns started. I was over there on a writing trip. I didn't have the intention of going over there to write an album. But as soon as I got into the studio with my friend Jack, it just poured out of me. I guess it comes back to that thing where I didn't know that I was going through these things until I sat in the studio and wrote them down on a piece of paper. I was like ‘holy shit, I need to get out of this relationship. I need to love myself more, I need to do all these things’. It was nice to have that freedom of just writing and not having a deadline or not having ‘you need to have this song in by this time’ or ‘this is an album’, it just felt like I was doing it because I love to write. It took me back to that place of just loving to write and I think I fell in love with music a little bit more as well.

Why do you think that changed?
I think I just stopped taking care of myself. I was in a long term relationship, which really didn't help me because I felt like it just sucked the life out of me. I was doing all these things for this person and not getting it back, and then in turn losing sight of who I was and what my values were and what I wanted from my life. I kind of just dropped everything including my passion for music. It just felt too much at that time.

On this album there are some incredible collaborations, you've worked with some amazing people. There is of course 'Happy On My Own' with Vancouver Sleep Clinic. I just love this, it's so beautiful melodically and lyrically, and the way your voices come together. Can you talk to me a little bit about this collaboration and how the song came together?
I had written the song a couple years ago with my friend, Nick Acquroff and it was always just kind of sitting there. I remember just going into the studio with [producer] Gab Strum and saying to him ‘I think we need a duet on the album and I think this is the song to do it’. We were kind of mid-COVID so I couldn't go and meet Vancouver Sleep Clinic, it was all just over Zoom. I DM-ed him on Instagram and was like, ‘Hey, do you want to put a verse down for one of the songs on my album?’ He was so kind, and he he got it back to me within two days. Gab and I had a lot of ideas for other people to do it, but as soon as he sent that demo to us, we're like, ‘Yeah, this is the one.’

I also wanted to talk to you about opening track on the album, 'Only 25'. Please tell me how this one came together because I think it's absolutely beautiful.
Oh thank you. It's funny, because that is kind of the beginning of the story that I'm trying to tell about myself, and then by the end of the album we reach 'Just Fine' which is a letter to myself being like, ‘you're gonna be okay, you're gonna get through this’. For 'Only 25' I wrote it with my friend, Simon Lam, and I wrote it a week before my 25th birthday. I had that whole quarter life crisis - ‘What am I doing? I'm turning 25 next week, and I feel like I haven't got any of my life together. I'm in a relationship that's falling apart’. That song is really me realising that I need to get out of this place that I'm in and break free of everything that's holding me back. I’ve reached that point when you get to the bridge of the song where I finally realise I need to walk away from this person that I am and from this person that I'm with, because I just wasn't enjoying anything. Like I said before, that was a really hard year for me, but also probably one of the biggest learning experiences and best years as well. It was so bad, but so good for me.

Absolutely. And I'm also loving the fact that you're really calling it ‘Only 25’. There seems to be so much pressure to be an incredible thing by the time you're 20 now, and I don't know where it's come from!
Especially being a female in the industry, there's a thing around that as you're getting older, it's harder to break through as an artist, which is crazy to me. But the more I'm surrounded by amazing females, the stronger I'm becoming.

Read the full six page article with Eliott in issue 14 of Women In Pop magazine, on sale now

You have been navigating the Australian music industry since 2017. How have you found carving deeper your own space in this beast, so to speak?
It's a really tough one and I'm so inspired by so many people around me all the time. But it's hard not to sometimes compare yourself to other people in this industry, like ‘why haven't I gotten this far?’ or whatever. But I've got lots of friends now in the music industry, and without them, I don't know what I would do. It's definitely getting easier, but it's been a long road to get here. It was only within the last couple years that I've really felt like I deserve to be here. I'd always had this gnarly impostor syndrome, even in a room with artists I would always just be so anxious to be in that room. But now I can go into a room and I know my worth a bit more. It can be a scary place at times, but I've learned to trust my gut a lot.

just calling to tell you i’m ok is such a personal album, but it's also very open. You're a very giving artist, because you just seem to have this desire to sort of pull everyone in and go, ‘Okay, who else can we get in on this’
Some of my best songwriting is the most open songwriting and honest songwriting. Someone like Julia Jacklin, I’m in awe of because she can suck you into a melody or a lyric and make it feel like it's your story which I love. I didn't intentionally do that, but I'd like people to take it as their own and have their own kind of journeys with each song.

just calling to tell you i’m ok is out now via Island Records. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Eliott you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Read the full six page interview with Eliott in issue 14 of Women In Pop magazine, on sale now.

just calling to tell you i’m ok Album Launch Shows
August 12 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
August 19 – The Lansdowne, Sydney