interview with alexandra savior discussing her new album, the archer (6 february 2020)
transcript below the cut
ZAN ROWE: And right there, the sounds of Alexandra Savior, 24 year old out of Portland, Oregon, giving us The Archer, her brand new record. You heard the title track. Last week that was our feature album here on Double J. It came out about three years after the release of her debut album, Belladonna of Sadness, but this is really the first time we’ve met Alexandra, who’s had a heck of an entry into the music business. I caught up with the Portland native in her current hometown of Los Angeles and began by asking her what went on in the space between those two records.
ALEXANDRA SAVIOR: Well, I finished Belladonna of Sadness in 2015, so... so much has happened since then obviously. After I did a little bit of touring for the record in 2017, ‘18, I got dropped from Columbia and I moved back home to Portland. I wrote the record sort of in my bedroom at my mom’s house. There weren’t really any thoughts for it or for labels or anything, and then my friend Brian was in town recording with Broken Dolls and he asked me to come do some backing vocals, and then I went out there and he asked what I’d been working on and I showed him the album. He signed me to his label 30th Century and I went and recorded it with Sam Cohen in 2018. It’s taken some time to get the visuals together and everything.
Z: That’s a long time to wait to release a record.
A: Yeah, yeah, I mean that’s kind of always how it goes in my experience.
Z: When you were writing these songs, you know, you go home to Portland, you’re living with your mom again, I imagine a very different experience to when you were a teenager writing that first album and there was a label waiting for the outcome. Did it change the way that you wrote your songs?
A: Totally, I think that I was a lot more comfortable - maybe I guess the best word for it is confident, I was more confident in what I was making. It didn’t feel like there was a right or a wrong to whatever I created, whereas before it felt like it was possible for me to write a ‘wrong’ song, cause the label had to approve it. So not having anybody else’s opinion being inflicted on me, it was easy for me to feel like I could have freedom.
Z: How old were you when you got started in the biz and you were writing songs and other people were involved and having an opinion on these songs?
A: I think I was 15, 15 or 16? The first time I went to New York and recorded and started writing with songwriters I was 16, so it was pretty crazy to have that so early on.
Z: It feels like a baptism of fire in many ways, like I can’t imagine when you’re trying to find out who you are, having so many people giving opinions of who you’ll be?
A: Yeah completely. I think it taught me how to fight for my own identity, but at the same time as you’re developing your identity it is difficult to know the difference between who you are and what you’re expected to be.
Z: Well, I love the opening song on this record, “Soft Currents”. It feels very explicitly to me like it’s kind of foreshadowing an album of growth, you know, that there’s been pain but you’re turning the page though, am I sort of on the right track, is this very much an introductory to The Archer?
A: Yeah I would say that’s pretty correct! I think I wrote it after I had just given up on trying to make this record happen, trying to make my career as a musician happen, and I didn’t really understand why so I wrote this song kind of just feeling like it was my way of letting go of my career and taking responsibility for that being my fault, if it is? And then like a week later i got signed. But yeah, it definitely felt like a release.
Z: It feels like a heartbreak record as well, but is it not only a relationship heartbreak, but maybe the heartbreak of having that professional experience?
A: Yeah, the theme is definitely manipulation and trying to come out from the other side of being told negative things about yourself so that you can be under the control of others, and a lot of that had to do obviously with the industry but also some personal relationships.
Z: Did writing the songs help to put that sadness and that feeling of betrayal to rest? Did it help get your power back?
A: Yeah I think in my songwriting in general there’s always a tinge of vengeance which is always therapeutic.
Z: I’m trying to imagine you writing these songs when you’re in your mom’s house in Portland and surely that in itself is kind of a weird feeling to go back to the place of your childhood. But paint the picture, for me Portland seems like a very green place, there’s the whole Portlandia vibe to it as well, but from this is born a kind of gothic cinematic sadness. Paint the picture of where you’re writing these songs for The Archer in Portland.
A: I was living in the attic of my mom’s house, it’s rainy, it’s cold, I had moved back home and none of the people I grew up with are there anymore, they’re all off living lives... and it felt like I had jumped the gun on my adulthood and I was kind of back where I was when I was 18. I think there was sort of a crash of energy and I felt like I needed to recover emotionally from a lot of things, so there was a lot of just sitting on my mom’s couch with my guitar in the rain, while it’s raining outside.
Z: With that power of retrospect, I know that it’s obviously been very tough for you, but has rebuilding kind of resetting and starting again been a good experience for you?
A: Definitely. I felt misrepresented before in my career and now I have so much control over every single thing, you know, every single detail that comes out and that feels really nice and that’s how it should be, so in that way it feels good to be like, I know what I’m putting out is genuine and I’m gonna change and grow, but right now this is who I am and what I feel.
Double J on Twitter: While @zanrowe’s away, we’re digging through the Take 5 archives and bringing you some of the best stories from your favourite artists. Today we head to 2015, with My Chemical Romance’s @gerardway and the songs that made him.
