Best of What's Next: Karen Elson

Photo by David Swanson

Karen Elson wears many hats. The Mancunian first caught the world's eye as a high-fashion model, a gig that landed her a role in The White Stripes' "Blue Orchid" video, where she met her now-husband, Jack White. Her musical career began in 2004, when she and some friends—prompted by Bush's reelection—formed New York-based political cabaret The Citizens Band. She and White now live in Nashville with their two young children, and it was there that Elson crafted and recorded The Ghost Who Walks, her solo debut, coming May 25. Elson recently took some time to speak with Paste about her high school nickname, living in Nashville and the ghosts that haunt the South.

Paste: How's everything going with the album?
Karen Elson: I've been talking people's ear off about it, to be honest.

Paste: Are you getting sick of it?
Elson: It's not that I'm getting sick of it. I'm just getting—you know, I hate to say the same thing over and over again. I start feeling like a broken record. I keep trying to be creative and answer a question a little differently. But there's just that moment where, you know, I've been asked the same model question all day, and I'm sosick of talking about it.

Paste: Do you feel like all of the talking about the album has given you further insight into what it means or what it's about?
Elson: Absolutely. It's very strange how that can happen. When I was writing the songs, occasionally I'd have an idea of what I was trying to express or get out there. But after... it just happened. I hate to say that because it's not very interesting, but the songs would just come out. Now, I've been talking about it so much, it's interesting how a lot of different things get revealed. Particularly, I was talking about "The Ghost Who Walks" the other day, and it dawned on me that — obviously the title "The Ghost Who Walks" was a nickname I had when I was a kid. It wasn't a bad one. It was actually quite better than a lot of the rest of them. It dawned on me that I was only writing about how at times I feel like a ghost myself, completely haunted by things in my life and felt a sense of being detached from the world. It might be quite interesting how much unconscious stuff comes out and you don't realize it until later.

Paste: Are there any other examples?
Elson: Consciously, I guess a song about my experience as a teenager was "Stolen Roses," where it was more conscious than a lot of songs I've written. I was trying to write about how, as a teenager, I felt—my God, I just felt really cold. I felt really emotionally, for lack of a better word, just unable to express myself. Unable to tap into any deep emotion. And I was just trying to write about that experience, to be honest. I wrote about it quite consciously and tried to use stolen roses as the idea that mentally there was always this space for me to go, and it was my imagination. It has been that way my entire life. I am an almost chronic daydreamer. In a way, it's a defense mechanism I have when things are getting too heavy or when I feel overwhelmed by certain situations, I can go into my imagination and things can be summoned.

And then I guess I consciously wrote "The Birds They Circle" about how people love tragedy. You know what I'm saying? In Nashville, we have these birds called turkey vultures, and they're bloody evil-looking creatures. Whenever there's roadkill or a dead animal in our garden, there's five or six of these birds circling. I used the analogy as how people love tragedy and they love sometimes to look at other people's misfortune at a distance and take some weird perverted pleasure at watching another person have a hard time in their life. I wrote that song about that, but it wasn't until I started talking about it that I realized that it actually was about that.

Paste: I had planned to ask you how this songwriting process had been different from your work in The Citizens Band, but it sounds like in a way it's really similar in the sense that in The Citizens Band, you write with the purpose of political commentary. It sounds like in these songs you've brought up, each one of them has a real purpose and something that you're trying to—
Elson: Get of my chest. Those things, I can compare the two, and it's also very different. When I've been writing songs for The Citizens Band, it's more of a collaborative thing, where, in a room together it's all of us chipping in and adding a little. It's more... I wouldn't say extroverted, but it's more of a collaborative. But the songs I wrote on this record, with the exception of maybe a few, were written in very isolated environments and actually completely opposite of how the songs in The Citizens Band are written. It was more vulnerable. I use the lyrics in two different ways. I guess in one sense to tell how I'm feeling, but in another sense to disguise things. I don't want to write my diary down for the world to see. I don't care about that. I'd rather write a story and put my emotion in that just so I can relieve myself of the pressure of the emotion. I'm not making it so autobiographical, though it's my emotion in the song.

Paste: What made you feel drawn to this Southern gothic, 20th-century Americana and folk as a stage on which to set these stories?
Elson: I'm from Manchester, and a lot of people I know in America love that Manchester is this sort of European musical mecca, and in a lot of ways it is. But I've always had the same feelings about America. Maybe it has to do with not being from America and somehow being one step removed that I romanticize the Southern gothic sound. There's just something that, even though I'm not born and raised here, I just feel a kindred spirit to this place. I like reading stories about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. I've always felt a kindred spirit. I read that Willa Cather book, O Pioneers! and it's just such a beautiful history. I can't explain it. It just feel so connected to it. Maybe I'm romanticizing it too much. There's something in me that feels that time and place is very much a part of my soul. I know it sounds hokey [...] I think it's in me. I can't explain it. It's in me.

Paste: The songs sound like it. They sound lived-in.
Elson: I think that every time I try to write a song that maybe, if I make too much of an effort to write a song in a particular genre or to imitate something else, it always sounds crap. I realize to isolate myself and put myself in a situation where I'm only dealing with myself and my emotions and also challenging myself to write a narrative, all the aspects come together. It's never an easy process. It took me a long time to get comfortable lyrically with my style of writing. Again, when I moved to Nashville, I just felt a real—there's something about this place. I can't explain it. It just feels like a part of my soul. Sometimes I wonder what all that means, but I guess we all have those moments in life where you feel like you were born at the wrong place and the wrong time, and I definitely have that feeling quite often.

Paste: What about living in Nashville is particularly inspiring to you?
Elson: I'm surrounded by music here. There's just a spirit here. I can't put my finger on what that is. Music is everywhere, beautiful music. You go downtown walking to a bar, and on any given night there could be four or five 65-year-old guys drinking beer and playing bluegrass music. Or, across the street where me and Jack live, Hank Williams used to live. There's just so much history in Nashville when it comes to songs and songwriting, all that good stuff. There's just so much love for it. People in Nashville love music. No one talks about these musicians in any kind of derogatory way, even if you're making this ridiculous country mega-hit about your dog. People just have respect for you. There's an overwhelming sense of kindness in Nashville that really makes me feel like I'm welcome here.

Paste: That's certainly a valuable thing.
Elson: It is! I'm reading a book about Tammy Wynette right now, it's by the guy who wrote Neil Young's biography [Jimmy McDonough]. There's a specific quote that I think Bob Dylan said about Nashville or the South. It's about how Nashville or the South is just filled with ghosts, angry and heartbroken. Actually, here, I found the quote. It's, "The Southern air is filled with wrestling ghosts of disturbed spirits." And there's nothing else that can be said about living in Nashville. I feel that. I feel the spirits in the air and in the songs, and it's very powerful.

Listen to "Stolen Roses" from The Ghost Who Walks on the Paste & Starbucks Music Channel.