Elke
Artist
From Stunt Company Management:
Elke wrote her first song around her freshman year of high school, drawing on the everyday pain of not getting along with her family. But her love of writing — lyrics, poetry, journaling — became the through line of her life: she had trouble developing any close friendships as a kid, frequently moving across the country from Illinois, Pennsylvania, to a Virginia boarding school to Las Vegas due to her father’s job in the casino industry.
“I recently had the devastating thought of ‘I’m never gonna have a soul sister because I’ve never stayed in one place long enough,’” she admits. “It was hard in that way, but I also understand people in a different way, and it set me up for a life of curiosity and exploration.”
At age 17, she made her most pivotal move: heading to New York City and fully immersing herself in music. She found gigs in the city’s East Village and Lower East Side — playing under a handful of monikers until she arrived at elke, the name of her mother & grandmother who had passed before she ever got to meet her. “When I started adapting my writing into my music as an adult,” she says, “rather than just a chick singing other people’s songs for them, I knew I had something I could be proud of, and chase to no end.”
Graninger signed to Kobalt Records and recorded her debut EP, 2018’s Bad Metaphors, with producer Shawn Everett (The War on Drugs, Local Natives, The Killers), who encouraged her to experiment.
Her follow-up EP, 2020’s Visitors, veered into darker folk balladry and synth atmospheres, her voice often pitched at a low rumble. But that project feels tentative compared to her debut LP, which she recorded after a move to L.A. (Since then, she’s relocated again (shocker!) — this time to Nashville.)
And it took the aforementioned skin-shedding to make No Pain a reality — an often strenuous process partly spearheaded by Farro, her producer and instrumental collaborator. Starting, as usual, with the images and rhythmic pulses of her words, Graninger developed songs at their L.A. apartment by crafting skeletal parts on guitar or Wurlitzer piano. They soon had enough material for an album, but they had to “work around each other’s schedules” over a full year — a challenge only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Farro was instrumental in the album’s expanded color palette: playing drums (along with occasional bass, guitar, and synth) and frequently encouraging her stylistic shifts — like the disco groove in “Mothers” (highlighted by a sax solo from Antonio Hancock), the dreamy indie-pop swirl of “Traveler” (“The destination, it was always inside of me,” Granginer sings, autobiographically), and the jazzy, string-bathed sigh of “Endless Love.”
The album’s heartbeat might be “Vacuum,” a stark pulse illuminated by the singer’s unique observations — drawing out poignancy and humor from the titular, mundane household item.
“I decided a vacuum is what one needed first and foremost because in reaching distance from where I was writing the song was a book I was reading – "Pretend I’m Dead” by Jen Beagin. I had the line already written, "If I could give you anything, I’d give you this”, and from there I had to decide what that was. Seeing the book ignited the idea of a vacuum because the main character cleans homes for a living, and I also have this weird attachment to the sensation of vacuuming, watching the dust get picked up. It’s all my way of saying ‘Wake up! Try harder & make something of yourself!"
The crux of recording No Pain was nailing down the vocals.
“[Zac] told me to sing a little higher and explore my range, and I got a little mad at him,” Graninger recalls with a laugh. “We got into arguments. It started out easygoing, and hearing me [change stylistically] made it harder for me to sing in the studio. I’d have to leave and go sit in the car. I’d get overwhelmed. We butted heads because I really thought that was my thing.”
Graninger was admittedly “stubborn” at first, trying to stick to a comfortable sound. But this album, she now knows, was about “cracking that layer.” The same way some find peace from a lifelong home, having a distinct aesthetic can be satisfying. Moving may always be in her agenda, but so is her diehard obsession with music.
From Audio Femme:
In the eyes of Nashville-based Kayla Graninger, who performs art pop under the moniker Elke, words are gifts. As a lifelong reader of poems, books and lyrics, she turned her attention to music full time at the age of 24 after having an epiphany when talking to a friend and fellow writer. “She always told me, ‘Don’t miss an opportunity to say something.’ That was super essential as I’m trying to find a voice,” Elke tells Audiofemme. “I think words are super important and I think they get taken for granted, so I see myself having a purpose in that way. I’ve always paid attention to words. When somebody says something that uplifts you or it’s an arrangement to say something that wakes you up in a way, I really was striving for that.”
Raised in Illinois, Elke left high school at 17 to pursue a modeling career in New York City, yet came to the city equipped with a guitar in hand. She channeled her passion for words directly into her 2018 debut EP, Bad Metaphors, as well as the singles she’s released since. “The Bad Metaphors EP was really honing in on words and what they meant to me. I went about that wanting every word and every part to say exactly what it meant to say,” she says. “That was really good practice for me and a good confidence booster too.”
