I couldn’t be happier to tell you that my second record, Good Story, will be out on October 24th via Royal Mountain Records.
After spending the last decade of my life laser-focused on crafting a personal narrative, I spent the last year deconstructing that impulse. I looked at what telling the story made possible, and what it made impossible.
For the longest time, I thought that the story was the whole point. Getting down to the bottom of things, plotting them, became a lifeboat not only for my psyche but for my career. My life began to depend, in all senses, on my ability to narrativize myself and communicate the presentation of that self effectively. An effective narrative, I came to realize, is a reserve with limited returns.
But I still love to work the magic — I love knowing that a bad time can be a good story, that experience without meaning is only missing a few narrative beats. I love the limits of the story, agency that was once out of reach returning through the act of creation and recreation. And the story saved my life. Here, I think of a quote from
’s The Möbius Book: “There's nothing wrong with inventing a story to explain something real to yourself.”Since finishing the record, I’ve been reading a lot of material that grapples with the meta-narrative: Delillo, Yuknavitch, Morrison, Lispector, Roth… I’m not reinventing the wheel here. The story about the story has been told over and over again, too.
My impulse is to prepare you aptly for this collection of songs — to tell a good story of it which, of course, is to market it. I resist this, because I’ve worked hard on these songs, and I’m excited for you to hear them in their own container.
For now, the lead single, Like the Boys, is out now. You can listen to it wherever you listen to music, and you can also watch the video that I directed below.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you to the many of you who have followed me for years, through the various stories I’ve woven. I am truly, extremely grateful for your support.
Speaking of! I pressed a limited edition glitter vinyl of Good Story in only 150 copies. I wanted to share it with you first. Here’s the link. The password is LIKETHEBOYS
Thank you, love you, more soon…
xoxo Eliza
yay!! SO excited to hear this! you are tapping into something very interesting here. when one is so good at telling their story (I relate) it starts to feel more like a cage you are stuck in, then the lifeline it used to be. because of course, over time the story will change, even your own story. I have always felt I am better at telling my story than feeling it. it’s a natural resource that I do worry, can it be tapped into too many times before it looses its truth?
Obsessed with all of this! Also love you and max swapping shirts throughout the video lol