Anika Pyle is Making Room for Sticky Feelings

May 04, 2022

Life is full of difficult feelings, some that are often hard to process and put into words. As a musician, poet, and interdisciplinary artist, Anika Pyle (formerly of chumped and currently one half of Katie Ellen) uses her work as a way to make space for these “sticky feelings” that comprise the human experience, especially those present in loss and grief. After the sudden passing of her father in 2019, the Philadelphia-based artist released Wild River— her debut solo album that explores the intimate bond between her and her father, and the subsequent grief she experienced in the wake of his death. Weaving together spoken-word poetry, family audio clips, and intricate melodies, Wild River is a beautiful ode to her complex relationship with her father, and serves as a direct throughline to communicating with him in his physical absence.

Since the onslaught of the 2020 pandemic, Pyle has only performed Wild River live a handful of times. But this May and June, she will be touring with Slaughter Beach, Dog and Trace Mountains that spans North America, performing nightly what is often a deeply-connective, emotional experience.

Interview by Maya Pontone
Photos by Jess Flynn and A utumn Spadaro

In April, office sat down with Pyle to talk about Wild River, her musical evolution, and her spring tour. Read on for the full conversation.

How are you doing today? How has your week been?

My day is good. I'm kind of down to the wire to get ready for this tour that starts in May. So every day feels a little more stressful than the last. But my calendar is sorted out now. And yeah, it's a beautiful day here in Philly. So I'm just trying to keep— what do they say? Keep your nose to the grindstone. Trying to just check things off my to-do list but yeah, I'm good.

So how did you get started in music and writing?

I've been singing and writing songs since I was five years-old, and I've always been drawn to writing in any format, so writing poetry, writing songs. I used to write a lot of stories as a kid. I think it was an accessible medium. All you need is a pen and a paper, and to write a song, all you need is a voice. I grew up kind of a poor little kid who had not the easiest home environment, so I think I was really drawn to creating a different world for myself through writing. Singing was a soothing activity for me, so I was always listening to the radio, and making up my own little weird songs on the playground. I sang in choir throughout school, and then I was also involved in musical theater. At the same time, I started writing my own songs. I would open for my friends punk bands in barns and garages, and played some shows at school. When I moved to New York, I was like, 'Oh, I'm a serious person. I don't play music anymore.' I didn't even take my guitar. It was my intention to study acting, and then I was like, 'Oh, that's useless too. Art is dumb. I'm going to study something else and be a scholar.' And I found that very depressing. My first year in New York was super hard. I was really sad and overwhelmed, so coming back to music was a life-saving activity for me. I had craved this creative outlet after studying so academically. When I graduated from school, all I wanted to do was sit and write poetry. I didn't want to do else. I didn't want to be this serious, adult person; I just wanted to create. So as tough as that period was, it was really helpful to see how essential a creative practice is to my spiritual well-being. When I graduated from school, I started a punk band with some friends of mine, and we ended up playing all around town and being able to go on tour and have some I guess what one might call ‘small industry success,’ some nice articles written about us. A lot of great, fun opportunities came from that. And that sort of like launched my so-called career in music, and I've been evolving ever since. That's the long-winded nutshell.

Several years ago, you made the decision to leave New York for Philly. What was that transition like? How is the music scene similar or different?

I'm originally from Colorado, and then I moved to New York City, 'the Big Apple,' when I was 17. When I moved, I went for school, and then I was in New York for almost 10 years before moving to Philly. I had met many people who lived here from playing music, so it was kind of a nice transition. I had a community that I was already a part of. My partner lived here at the time, so it was really a warm welcome. Definitely. Like everything in New York is just a little bit different than it is in other places. Because it's such a big city, there's so many people, everything is pretty dispersed. So one of the biggest differences is Philly definitely felt like a more accessible city, lin terms of creating art, sharing art, being in community with people. Just because in New York, you just have to hustle so hard to just survive. I really had to come down off of New York moving here. My energy was like still at an all-time high. It was so different to be like, 'Oh yeah, my friend lives down the street. I'm gonna go to their house for coffee,' which is something that never really happened for me, living in New York, because, you know, someone lived in Bensonhurst, someone lived in Queens, you know what I mean? We all just sort of lived dispersed. And so the music scene felt a little more accessible in Philly than in New York.

You mention accessibility a lot. Can you talk a bit more about how you cultivate or practice accessibility in your art? What does accessibility mean to you?

There's so many ways to approach the idea of accessibility. I mean, the first thing that I think about is monetary accessibility. So all of my music is free to download on Bandcamp, and you can pay what you want. That was something that a good friend of mine instituted early on in his career, and I really liked that because it's nice to have the option to have it if you can't afford to buy a record. I remember being the kid who couldn't buy merch, could barely afford it to get to a show, and so I think that that will continue to be a principle of mine throughout my career.

I don't know if this would really fall into the category of accessibility, but I try to use my music as a platform to do some fundraising for causes that I care about. I guess you can think about that in terms of a larger accessibility framework, like accessibility for existence. Funding trans healthcare or trans youth services, or Black progressive politics, and thinking about if I'm generating income, how can I divert some of it to making the world, in general, a more accessible place?

I have been thinking a lot about that with what it's like to play shows. I have some younger fans that can't get into bars, and I have some friends who only play all-ages shows. I'm trying to think about if that's something that I want to adopt as well. Right now, I'm not a large enough artist to dictate exactly how a headliner wants to take me on tour, but I can refuse the show if it's not all ages. But trying to think about these specific points of access, like, 'Am I playing venues where you can get in if you have a wheelchair?' Those kinds of questions. As I am playing more shows now, I think the largest point would be creating emotional accessibility for people. Something that I really want to do with my live performance is create a space for vulnerability, and create a space to access naming and identifying and feeling emotions. I don't think that I have many skills except for moving people into their feelings, and I find that to be an important practice. So the live set that I'm putting together right now for the tour is inviting people to access these deeper emotions and also has some somatic theory, like, 'What does it feel like to be in your body? What does it feel like to experience music in the body?' which I think is something that everyone in every body that is inhabited can benefit from.

Wild River is your first solo record outside of your work in chumped and katie ellen. Can you talk a bit about that process of releasing music under your own name, rather than with a group?

That was a very liberating experience for me. It's hard to figure out how you want to present your projects, and what they mean. With chumped, it was very clear what it was, but with katie ellen, it was a little more murky. It was just a totally different experience from my first band that was like, 'It's the four of us, so we'll never need anything else.' We split everything four ways, even constructing songs. But then with katie ellen, it was like, 'I don't really know if I want a solo project, but I want to have a band, but I don't know how to present it, and I like the idea of it being an alias.' I think that gave me some anonymity. So, it was really liberating to be to make a record by myself, with the help of my producer, to make the artwork, to press the record, to distribute the record— it was a really empowering, challenging, and life-changing. process. It's definitely weird to make t-shirts with your name on them. I can't get used to it. I tried to take my name off the t-shirt, but I guess it's supposed to be there. So I don't like that part, but everything else is pretty good. It's kind of scary. I sought some advice of other friends of mine who had been in bands, and then, started to release solo music and use their own name, and most people were like, 'It's hard to go back from that, but it gives you a lot of freedom.' And I have felt that. It unlocks the ability to do whatever I want, whereas, sometimes, if you're in a band, you feel pressure to recreate the same sound or approach, and I like that [going solo] is like, 'This is me, and I'm multifaceted, and I'm super weird, and I'm going to do something different every time, and that's okay.'

You’ve been very open about the struggles you’ve experienced with grief and trauma, especially in Wild River. How have your experiences informed your approach to writing and art?

When I wrote Wild River, I feel like I didn't really put it together. Like I had songs that I wrote in response to my father. I had songs and poems that predated that, but had some worth in the material and the feelings that I was trying to really come into, and I did it as an exercise in trying to access my own process. I have a hard time feeling grief. I went immediately into logistic mode. My sister and I are my father's next of kin, so it was dealing with a lot of, 'Where does this box go? How do you do someone's taxes when they're dead?' All these little, weird experiences that I never really anticipated. And I found that I was shutting out some of my own honoring my father and I's relationship, and dealing with some of the challenges of our relationship. So I used Wild River as a way to hold space for those feelings. My intention with sharing it with people is that in being honest about my process and some of the things that I was feeling; I hoped that it could create a vessel for other people to tap into those sticky feelings that you tend to push away or that don't always come up and you kind of have to pry at them because you don't want to touch them. I used to have a sticky note that said, 'What are my intentions for Wild River?' and I really just hoped that it would hold space for others processing grief and loss. I think that music is such an effective emotional tool. Not only the process of making it, but maybe even more importantly, the process of listening to it can help you tap into these areas that need tending to when you can't always get there just by using your own mind. It's like a talisman.

How has performing Wild River live changed your relationship with it?

It almost feels like a meditation or a prayer, in some ways, to honor the feelings that were present when I was making the songs. It's a connective activity to speak directly to my dad, which I think was a profound experience when I was writing the songs. Especially “Orange Flowers,” which I wrote the day after I found out that my dad had passed. I kind of just got up and was like, 'I don't know what to do.' I wanted to send him a message, and so I think that now playing the songs live feels definitely like a meditative space where I can get in touch with some of the things, the people that I have lost and want to pay homage to. It's definitely a really powerful experience to play these songs with other people. I wasn't sure if I would ever have a band to share these songs with, and I really have found that to be a comforting and illuminating process. I feel like sharing songs with others and creating together is always a scary experience, but definitely when the songs are really intense and emotional and kind of sad, it's really nice to have some other people to share in that. I haven't had much opportunity to play them live— I think I've only played like five shows with these songs— so I'm excited to see what happens in May when I'm playing them every night and reapproaching them with others.

The process of making art involves so much trial and error. In "Failure III," you say, “Everybody is a failer// Nobody is a failure.” As an artist, can you elaborate on your own experiences dealing with failure, and how you’ve learned to get through it?

I think the sentiment of that particular poem is meant to say that everybody fails. We all f*** shit up, all the time. In our careers, in our personal lives, in our relationships-- nobody is perfect, we all make mistakes. But we are also more than our mistakes. The entrenchment of a label, like failure, doesn't really leave room for growth or grace for the human experience. Not only making art, but also running an art business, it's all about making mistakes. Some of the best advice I ever got was from a wise old woman named Bim, and she is very talented visual artist. She was just like, 'Can you just let yourself be bad at something?' You can't get good at something, unless you're bad at it. I mean, there are people who have talent, but talent is developed through trial and error. And so is your life, just developed through trial and error. As a person who struggles with perfectionism, I think it's very hard to accept failure. It's been a challenge not to look back at some of the moves I've made in my career and be like, 'Damn, I should have done that differently.' But I didn't. And we accept that, and then we learn. Wisdom is sort of the accumulation of mistake-making, so that we don't make the same mistakes. And some of us like to make them over and over again. But, I don't think that you can allow yourself to create without allowing yourself to fail. As another wise person once told me, 'It's all just a patch on your coat.' It's all just a little bit weird, and you put it together, and at the end of your life, you have a big beautiful blanket. Some squares you like more than others, but you can't make a quilt without a bunch of different, weird little f****d up squares.

Can you talk about some of your creative influences? Any artists in particular whose work has informed your own?

Oh my gosh, so many. It's so varied. I take a lot of inspiration from my friends who are creating. But I feel like some of the most influential pieces of art, for me, have been books. There's a book that I always come back to, it's called Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. It's a young adult literature book. It deals with death and dying; city versus country; identity and family. It's just something that I keep coming back to, and have thought a lot about in my life, and has a direct throughline to Wild River. There's a reference to a lake in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which I first experienced through this book when I was eight years old, and then later experienced it in real life, and it was so beautiful that it has just left a lasting impression on me. I'm really inspired by nature. I wouldn't say that nature is necessarily an artist, but something that is the original artist. The way that nature forms the Earth that we live in is just so incredible, and I think the natural world is the space that I've come back to, to center myself and experience creativity. But I also really loved the Spice Girls as a kid, and I think that just keeps on coming up for me. So, so many inspirations. But I would say a lot of my inspiration comes from reading books and being in nature. Musically, it always changes, and is all over the place, always. I've been really into Brandy Carlille's music, and I've been obsessed with the new Hurray for the Riff Raff record— those are my two current contemporary inspirations.

In the last year, you’ve started a Patreon. Can you talk a bit about how that community has impacted your creative practice?

Oh, yes, I love my Patreon. My Patreon is a great accountability tool. It keeps me writing every month. It keeps me playing every month. It keeps me thinking about my creative practice, and constantly reevaluating what I'm doing, and it keeps me connected, which was the biggest reason why I started it in a very kind of lonely, disconnected time. I play a live stream every month, and it's really nice to just see the same faces. Whatever I want to do there, they're there for, and I know that they really want to be there. So, it opens up this space of experimentation and honesty and it's really nice to have. It's like my 'accountabili-buddy.' I love to follow what my patrons are doing, and I've just formed so many beautiful relationships out of it. It's been really, really nice. I love it.

Your set to go on tour in the spring. Are there any other upcoming projects that you would like to tell us about?

Yeah, so I'm going on tour, and later this year, I'll be releasing some new music that I'm really excited about. I just got the mixes back. So nothing to formally announce, but planting a little seed that I'm working on releasing some things with some visual components, and I think it'll be really nice.

Music

Jesse Jo Stark Is in a Genre of Her Own

April 19, 2024

In the midst of a total solar eclipse, I got the chance to talk about music and style with Jesse Jo Stark.

As I’m on the phone with her from New York, Stark is on a tour bus with The Veronicas, driving through the Colorado mountains to enjoy some time off in between shows. The Veronicas have just started their Gothic Summer North American Tour, and Stark is opening the show. What’s special about this tour for the lifelong music obsessive is the sense of powerful feminine energy encapsulating the tour. “We just started [tour], but it’s been really lovely. I’m obsessed with the fact that we’re all women — it feels like a very powerful crew. The Veronicas are lovely, the crowds have been so fun, and the venues are beautiful. It’s gonna be a good month.”

Photography Sophia-Liv Maguire
Styling Marc Eram
Interview Angelina Hazzouri
Talent Jesse Jo Stark
Hair Antoine Martinez with PARADIS using Roz Hair
Makeup Sydney Szramowski
Photo Assistants Mia O’Neal, Rashaun Richardson
BTS Ms Josephine
Creative Producer Olivia Roper-Caldbeck

This is Stark’s second time touring since the release of her full-length debut album DOOMED in late 2022, which was very well received and led to Stark’s first sold-out international headlining tour on behalf of the album. Previous to her solo tour, she’s opened for various notable acts, such as Guns N’ Roses and Jane’s Addiction. I asked Stark, who’s been writing and playing music since age 11, what it was like to prepare for her first sold-out headlining tour. Unsurprisingly, before any tour, Stark goes into what she describes as “bootcamp mode” — dancing every day, vocal training, rehearsing with her band, and of course, working on her outfits. “That’s the sort of homework I love,” she says, smiling. (Even though we’re on the phone, I can tell she’s smiling when she talks about the outfit part. I’d smile too if I had her tour closet.)

What’s unique about Stark as a musician is that she has ultimately created her own universe by embracing every aspect of her creative upbringing, her raw talent, her fascinating influences, and her unwavering beliefs in not needing to fit into a certain box when it comes to her art. She creative-directs and styles all her own looks, referencing an ever-evolving list of influences that range from Vegas showgirls to Halloween to old films to her parents in the 90s. “I think when I was younger, I had this rebellion against what I was made from,” she tells me, “but now it’s just my blood. I constantly reflect on my childhood and everything I was taught and everything I saw. My brother and sister and I are constantly pulling influences from our parents from the past. I think, more than ever, I’m heavily influenced by them.”

Stark, the daughter of founders and owners of the self-made American fashion brand Chrome Hearts, and now its creative director and designer, is someone who always knew what she liked, but as she describes it, had to ‘go through the motions’ that come with growing up and knowing one’s identity. Today, her self-efficacy is palpable — and it’s inspiring.

...when I was younger, I had this rebellion against what I was made from, but now it’s just my blood.

When she’s on tour, Stark is growing with herself and with her art — she’s not afraid to take life as it comes and learn through the process. With every show, regardless of whether it was on her DOOMED tour or this tour with The Veronicas, Stark understands the importance of human connection through music. Seeing faces of music lovers like herself, meeting those who have traveled to see her, and visiting familiar and unfamiliar cities has reminded her that she loves being on the road. “The growth that happens on tour is so important to me as an artist.” Sometimes we have to leave behind what’s familiar in order to rediscover what’s important, and Stark is a proponent of this growth mindset.

Growth doesn’t just happen on tour with Stark — this evolution of herself happens within genre as well, and for Stark there’s no such thing. Since her first release Driftwood in 2017, the artist’s sound has shifted year after year, but in a harmonious way that still feels central to her gothic Americana roots. When asked if she’ll experiment with genre in the future, Stark confidently answers, “I think I’ve only experimented with genre. I don’t think anyone knows what genre I am.” (She calls herself a “horrific hillbilly” — a perfect descriptor.) Steadfast in her belief that we as humans can constantly evolve in our work, Stark thinks it’s antiquated to fit yourself into a certain box and focus on one specific trade in order to succeed. “If you look at us as people, we’re seasoned. We change all the time. I want to experience different things.”

Since Driftwood, a two-song EP rooted in rock and country, Stark has experimented with more robust beats and 808s on DOOMED, and her most recent single “skeleton” features a softer, grungier punk sound. Without fitting into a specific genre, Stark’s music is undoubtedly and wholeheartedly her own, transcending the boundaries of what many artists struggle with when finding their sound. “I don’t think we should have to label ourselves in any way, shape, or form; so I’m not going to. I will continue to make all types of different music.” Fuck yeah.

If you look at us as people, we’re seasoned. We change all the time.

This goes beyond just music — in terms of her personal style, the same mentality applies. We discuss the idea that clothing and dressing is a sort of playground, and personal style comes from within. Stark isn’t about following trends, but rather, she thinks it’s important to tap into different stylistic elements that amplify who we are at our cores. On her DOOMED tour, Stark wore a lot of leather and stuck to a fairly dark color palette. Right now, she’s into more bourgeois satin and lace, experimenting with different textures and wearing things that feel slightly daintier and more delicate. On this current tour with the Veronicas, Stark is making it more of a point to take everything in — absorbing inspiration from every city, writing songs on the road, recording video on a friend’s super 8 camera, styling and wearing new outfits, learning and performing new covers — ultimately growing through the whole experience.

It’s endearing and inspiring how well Stark knows herself. A Los Angeles native, she proudly tells me that the tour finishes on May 5 in her hometown, a show that she’s especially excited for. While we can’t predict what thoughtfully-curated outfit she’ll wear or what songs will be performed, with new music already underway, one thing is clear: Jesse Jo Stark is just getting started.

Music

9lives' Latest Single Continues to Push Sigilkore

April 19, 2024

The versatile artist, producer, and pioneer of the sigilkore genre, 9lives, has recently unveiled his latest single "CANADA" featuring jnhygs. In less than two years since his emergence onto the music scene, 9lives has carved out an impressive niche for himself as a prominent figure within the digitally-driven sigilkore movement. "CANADA" sees him teaming up once again with experimental dance artist jnhygs, following their successful collaboration on "XTAYALIVE".

With aspirations to establish himself within the mainstream arena of experimental music production and artistry, 9lives is blending his distinct dark production style with collaborations with a diverse array of influential artists who trust him to create innovative sonic landscapes. "CANADA" marks his second release of 2024, as 9lives continues to champion the burgeoning sigilkore movement, pushing the boundaries of genre, evolving into a multifaceted artist, and solidifying his status as a rising star with an expanding audience.

Image by Connor Pritchard

Reflecting on their latest project, 9lives shares, “In early 2023 jnhygs found my music and we started chatting through TikTok, releasing our first song together called "XTAYALIVE"." He adds, We’ve been friends since this song had a viral moment, and fans have been heavily requesting for us to work together again all over our videos.” Describing their creative process, he explains, “I sent a bunch of new ideas to jnhygs via Discord and she sent back vocals to “CANADA”, which I then used to create melodic layers and extra percussion to complete the song.

Music

Eclipsed at Vampire Weekend

April 16, 2024

It had been about a week since the goosebump-inducing communal howls at the moon, as it covered the sun through a cloudy Austin, Texas sky, left me needing to take a seat—suspended in awe of the totality of the event and the synergistic break from routine. I overheard someone say, “I mean, it feels like we’re all going to die, but in a way that’s okay, you know?" under the shadow of the eclipse's peak, ceremoniously brought in as the band performed “Jonathan Low,” (in Vampire Weekend's familiar ironic hue) a track they wrote for the third movie in the Twilight series, Eclipse.

It had been five years since the band had released an album. In celebration of their latest album, "Only God Was Above Us," ticket holders wrapped the streets in blocks outside the venue for the band’s first Stateside show in about two years. Event managers searched to replenish the venue’s stock of eclipse glasses, while the band prepped a show reminiscent of 'getting the boys back together again'.

Words and photography by Rianne Akindele

In between newly released songs like “Classical” and “Capricorn”, the boys filled the almost two-hour-long show with old favorites like “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”, “Diane Young” and a genre evolved rendition of “Sunflower” as the crowd danced barefoot feeling the Earth’s energy intertwined with their own and the vibrations from the amps on stage. People stole glances at the imminently darkening sky, artists doodled, friends grabbed onto each other to scream the lyrics in each other’s faces, and onlookers from the highest level of the parking garage across the street cheered on in a symphony of nostalgia and anticipation.

Adding to the layers of the celestial afternoon, the band invited to the stage the likes of Thomas Mars from Phoenix, Dave 1 from Chromeo, and guitarist Brian Robert Jones, inducing further levels of indie revival euphoria.

As the show drew to its close, and the zydeco/country-rock “Cocaine Cowboys” medley fiddled through the air, a conversation could be picked up between two sisters in search of their Lyft driver through closed-off streets,

“I wish this happened more often.”
“Eclipses or shows like this?”
“Both.”

It’s moments like these that remind us of our shared humanity and the power of collective experiences; a gathering of souls under the same sky, sharing the joy of music and a wonder of the stars above. Perhaps it’s the rarity that allowed such transcendence, reverence, and gratitude to be felt. Either way, what a beautiful moment in time it was.

Here are a few shots from the Monday afternoon: