Showing posts with label The Ghost Who Walks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Ghost Who Walks. Show all posts
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Friday, 24 September 2010
Karen Elson - "The Truth is in the Dirt" video
Video for "The Truth is in the Dirt", from her debut album The Ghost Who Walks. Video by the Belles of the Black Diamond Field.
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Karen Elson - Cruel Summer video on style.com
Karen Elson's Cruel Summer video can be seen at Style.Com
Karen Elson interview with Matthew Schneier from style.com:
Many of Karen Elson’s fans are more used to seeing than hearing the redheaded stunner: in countless editorials and campaigns, and on runways all over the world. But that changes tomorrow, when the multitalented English beauty (don’t call her a “model-slash”) releases her first album, The Ghost Who Walks. Her countrified ballads—recorded in her adopted city of Nashville and produced by her husband, Jack White—should earn her a whole new set of devoted admirers. Below, Elson spoke to Style.com about mournful music, onstage fashion, and her vote for the most heartbreaking sound there is. And click here to check out her acoustic video performance of “Cruel Summer” and hear her sound for yourself.
Your first album, The Ghost Who Walks, is out tomorrow. What sound were you going for with it?
I have a real love for melancholy songs that express the everyday—what’s the word? What’s the right one without sounding too depressing? Honestly, I like songs that are mournful and express heartache and longing. They just feel right to me. It feeds me in a very strange way. I’ve always had a long love of Hank Williams and Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline, and even Nick Cave and PJ Harvey and Mazzy Star. They all—in varying degrees of mournful—they all represent that. It just moves me, that’s all. When I started writing the record, it came out. I think every woman in the span of her life, even me in my thirties, I’ve experienced a lot. I’ve experienced all sides of life. I feel like I’m putting all of those experiences out in my songs, as a way of purging myself of things that maybe I’ve held on to for too long.
You mention country legends like Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, and the record has a very country feel. You and your family live in Nashville, one of the great country-music capitals—how did your surroundings contribute to that sound?
Naturally, being in Nashville, it’s hard not to have a somewhat country-esque vibe. Carl Broemel from My Morning Jacket played the pedal steel on the record, and when he came into the studio and started playing, I was just in love. Pedal steel with reverb is just the most heartbreaking sound to me—it’s just so gorgeous, I wanted it on every song. There’s definite country leanings, and that’s definitely a byproduct of living in Nashville. But at the same time, I liked those songs even before I moved to Nashville; I had a love for Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris. It just feels good to me.
You’re part of a musical family, and this record is something of a family affair—your husband Jack White [also of the White Stripes and the Dead Weather] convinced you to record, your brother-in-law plays in the band. Did working with them introduce any complications?
It was just what it was. Everybody in our life, we all just sort of contribute any way we can. I’ve been in the studio with Jack before, contributing some backing vocals on a song. Or Jackson [Smith], Meg’s husband, has come into town to play guitar on other projects Jack’s working on. Friends of ours just pop in and do that—it was really quite natural. It wasn’t this thing where it was all of a sudden, Shit, it’s my turn! Damn, better bring the family in. That’s just life down here. We all just chip in and make music and occasionally pat each other on the back and help each other out.
But Jack was incredibly supportive and is incredibly supportive of my record. I feel really lucky to have his support. It was essential to get me over myself—I had to get over myself big time—and have confidence. I was nervous about putting my music out there. “Model-slash-anything”—I cared too much about that. Once I stopped caring, I could get out there and sing my songs, but it took a lot.
There seem to be a lot of model-slash girls out there now—slash designer, slash musician, slash artist. Have you seen a lot of models with hidden talents throughout your runway career?
Actually, plenty. I think it’s such a shame that model-slash-whatever it is has become such a coined phrase for a pathetic thing. The models I know—and I’m probably speaking about a small percentage of the model population, so to speak—but the models I’ve worked with, they’re all interesting girls. Most of them have so many other things going on in their life, and modeling’s just a moment in time for them, it’s not the be-all and end-all. I think most people think that models are these sort of dim women who, all they have ever wanted to do in life is be pretty. What I found is the exact opposite: Most of the models have come into being models completely by surprise. They’re just taking it as a chance to travel the world and figure out more about themselves and use it as an opportunity in life. So, yeah, I know so many talented women who are models. But of course, there are a few who give [it] a bad name.
You’ve got a long history in fashion. Have you given a lot of thought to how you’re going to dress onstage?
I definitely am very much aware of how style is very effective, and how a visual element in any live performance—it’s not the be-all and end-all; obviously the music has to stand up on its own two feet, it absolutely has to—but there is something to be said about a haunting visual element that complements the music.
What are you planning to wear in particular? I feel like I’ve seen you in a lot of orange dresses.
All of my stage clothes are vintage. They’re all Southern gothic sort of gowns and little country-esque outfits. I have been wearing peach dresses, cotton dresses that’ve been dyed a dusty shade of peach, with black lace embellishments here and there. I don’t know, it just feels right. I remember PJ Harvey, years ago, when she did To Bring You My Love, she had a really strong visual element. She looked like a semi-possessed, sort of forlorn and forsaken woman of the desert. I think it’s very powerful. I want to evoke not a similar image, but I want to use that idea of creating a character and having that character have clothes to wear.
The color orange is one that I tend to identify with you, thanks to your red hair.
I guess so—it really happened the way it happened; it wasn’t overly conscious.
We recently did a roundup of our favorite rocker redheads. There are a ton of them. Do you think there’s a connection—maybe a redhead rocker gene?
I wonder—I would love to know, to be honest! Melissa Auf der Mar is an old friend, and Jenny Lewis and Neko Case are two absolutely brilliant songwriters. I’m doing the red justice, I hope!
—Matthew Schneier
Monday, 29 March 2010
Karen Elson in the NY Times
From: The New York Times:
Karen Elson Is Dressing the Part, and Singing It
By MELENA RYZIK
LIFE is unfair and everybody knows it, but should you require a refresher, you need only to watch Karen Elson, the redheaded supermodel, design muse and wife of Jack White of the White Stripes, sing.
There she was Monday night at Le Poisson Rouge in the West Village, performing songs from her debut album in a voice that can go from retro-breathy chanteuse to rootsy belter in a few notes. It was the fourth stop in a whirlwind mini-tour that included Nashville, where she and Mr. White live with their two children, and Austin, Tex., where she played at the South by Southwest music festival. The shows were intended to introduce Ms. Elson as more than just a pretty face, or even a pretty voice, but as an artist in her own right.
At each gig she took the stage in a peach-dyed vintage gown and a 1917 Gibson Style O guitar to give a preview of her album, “The Ghost Who Walks,” which was produced by her rock star husband (who plays the drums on it) and is due out May 25.
At the New York show, a homecoming of sorts, the audience was filled with fashion and music folk: the bassist Melissa Auf der Maur; Agyness Deyn, the model and tastemaker; Grace Coddington, the Vogue editor. The latter sat close enough that Ms. Elson could banter with her about her coral suede shoes, a namesake pair — the Karen — made for her by Tabitha Simmons, also of Vogue.
Mr. White was not there — he is touring in Australia with the Dead Weather, some of whose members also moonlight for Ms. Elson. Her bandmates include Mark Watrous (who has also played with the Raconteurs, another of Mr. White’s bands) on fiddle and pedal steel guitar, and Jackson Smith — son of Patti and husband to Meg White — on electric. The video for the album’s title song, in which Ms. Elson alone sings and strums while her band stands around in the shadows, has already racked up more than 54,000 YouTube views.
This is not the way most bands get their start. But far from discounting her modeling career and famous collaborators, Ms. Elson is straightforward about the advantages they confer.
“If I wasn’t a model, I would never have been around interesting musicians, even had the financial capabilities to say, ‘I don’t have to work right now, I can sit and make my record,’ ” she said the morning after the Poisson Rouge show, over several coffees at the Breslin in the Ace Hotel. Though she has long been musically minded, “I could never have made this record five years ago,” she said. “This record only could have been made with Jack.” They were married in 2005.
Ms. Elson is hardly the first model to take up with a musician, or to aspire to make the transition from runway to stage. Recording an album is an ambition that stretches back at least as far as Twiggy, more recently attracting catwalk legends like Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. (Surely you remember “La La La Love Song”?)
“After Carla Bruni, I expect every model to pick up a guitar,” said Dmitry Komis, a curator and writer who came to the Poisson Rouge show with the designer Zaldy, who styles the Scissor Sisters and who named Ms. Elson as one of his muses. (“She’s so down-to-earthy,” he said.)
Ms. Elson, 31, picked up a guitar — and a four-track — nearly a decade ago when she was living in the East Village, and taught herself to play. Since 2004, she has performed with the Citizens Band, a political cabaret act she helped establish. Before she left her hometown near Manchester, England, to model at 16, she fronted a salsa band.
“I was always singing, as a kid,” she said. “That’s honestly all I’ve ever wanted to do. But really, I doubt I would have ever done it” if not for modeling.
Growing up in “a sleepy, grim, Northern English town,” she said, “there was nothing expected of me. You grew up, you got married, you had kids, and maybe you worked in the supermarket. You didn’t have any aspirations to anything grand.”
Ms. Elson’s fashion career is beyond grand; she has walked or posed for nearly every major designer and photographer, carried campaigns for Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel, graced countless magazine covers and really no longer needs a last name.
So despite the musical credentials, she must now battle an attitude succinctly summed up by a fan at one of her Austin shows. “She’s great,” he said as Ms. Elson sang in a tiny pop-up shop for Third Man, Mr. White’s record label. “I mean, look at her. Look at her!”
Told of the comment, Ms. Elson shrugged it off. “You know, models, people roll their eyes,” she said. She herself was one of them. “I for years just believed that this had to be a personal project,” she said of her music. She feared ridicule: “like it’s like me trying to get more attention. I was cautious because if there’s something bad out there, it’s doubly as bad because you’re a model. It’s like, oh, stick to the day job.”
Now she is in the position of both being in thrall to her looks — because they’re a big part of what makes people interested in her — and pushing against them.
Her album leans toward dark, spare Americana in instrumentation and themes. Ms. Elson wrote the guitar parts and lyrics, and the band and Mr. White did the rest. Ms. Elson said she listened to Harry Smith’s Smithsonian folk anthology for inspiration. Onstage, eyes closed, she weaves like a 1960s folkie.
The title track comes from a nickname she had as a child — Ms. Elson says she was teased about her appearance — but the story is even more gruesome: it’s about a man who murders his lover. “Have you ever been in a relationship where you see a gleam in the person’s eye you’re with and it’s like, wow, you’re scary, you hate me?” she said. “Pre-Jack, there was a lot of anxiety even the men I was dating had, about me being a model or maybe me earning more money than them.”
She credited living in Nashville with helping her gain perspective. She and Mr. White set up house there five years ago and have two children: Scarlett, 3, and Henry, 2.
She wrote the album largely in her walk-in closet and recorded it with Mr. White and friends in their backyard studio. (Real estate is unfair, too.)
Still, Ms. Elson said, South by Southwest, with all the insiders and hype, was daunting. “Put with all the industry types and like, ‘All right girl, sing’ — it very much felt like that, like, O.K., I’ve got to prove myself,” she said.
Mr. White did not respond to requests for comment. But he has been hands-on in the album’s marketing, said Kris Chen, a vice president at XL Recordings, which is releasing “The Ghost Who Walks” with Mr. White’s label. But the album “was carried by her voice,” Mr. Chen said.
Asked who the audience is for her music, Ms. Elson said, “I have no idea.” Still, she plans to tour, likely without Mr. White. “Getting my sea legs, that’s I how I describe it.”
Ms. Elson doesn’t expect to give up modeling. “I think that would be really pretentious — ‘I’m sorry, I’m now a musician,’ ” she said. “Other than viewing them as the golden handcuffs, I might as well just appreciate it. I only hope I can improve the idea of model-slash-anything. I only hope I can do it justice.”
Karen Elson Is Dressing the Part, and Singing It
By MELENA RYZIK
LIFE is unfair and everybody knows it, but should you require a refresher, you need only to watch Karen Elson, the redheaded supermodel, design muse and wife of Jack White of the White Stripes, sing.
There she was Monday night at Le Poisson Rouge in the West Village, performing songs from her debut album in a voice that can go from retro-breathy chanteuse to rootsy belter in a few notes. It was the fourth stop in a whirlwind mini-tour that included Nashville, where she and Mr. White live with their two children, and Austin, Tex., where she played at the South by Southwest music festival. The shows were intended to introduce Ms. Elson as more than just a pretty face, or even a pretty voice, but as an artist in her own right.
At each gig she took the stage in a peach-dyed vintage gown and a 1917 Gibson Style O guitar to give a preview of her album, “The Ghost Who Walks,” which was produced by her rock star husband (who plays the drums on it) and is due out May 25.
At the New York show, a homecoming of sorts, the audience was filled with fashion and music folk: the bassist Melissa Auf der Maur; Agyness Deyn, the model and tastemaker; Grace Coddington, the Vogue editor. The latter sat close enough that Ms. Elson could banter with her about her coral suede shoes, a namesake pair — the Karen — made for her by Tabitha Simmons, also of Vogue.
Mr. White was not there — he is touring in Australia with the Dead Weather, some of whose members also moonlight for Ms. Elson. Her bandmates include Mark Watrous (who has also played with the Raconteurs, another of Mr. White’s bands) on fiddle and pedal steel guitar, and Jackson Smith — son of Patti and husband to Meg White — on electric. The video for the album’s title song, in which Ms. Elson alone sings and strums while her band stands around in the shadows, has already racked up more than 54,000 YouTube views.
This is not the way most bands get their start. But far from discounting her modeling career and famous collaborators, Ms. Elson is straightforward about the advantages they confer.
“If I wasn’t a model, I would never have been around interesting musicians, even had the financial capabilities to say, ‘I don’t have to work right now, I can sit and make my record,’ ” she said the morning after the Poisson Rouge show, over several coffees at the Breslin in the Ace Hotel. Though she has long been musically minded, “I could never have made this record five years ago,” she said. “This record only could have been made with Jack.” They were married in 2005.
Ms. Elson is hardly the first model to take up with a musician, or to aspire to make the transition from runway to stage. Recording an album is an ambition that stretches back at least as far as Twiggy, more recently attracting catwalk legends like Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. (Surely you remember “La La La Love Song”?)
“After Carla Bruni, I expect every model to pick up a guitar,” said Dmitry Komis, a curator and writer who came to the Poisson Rouge show with the designer Zaldy, who styles the Scissor Sisters and who named Ms. Elson as one of his muses. (“She’s so down-to-earthy,” he said.)
Ms. Elson, 31, picked up a guitar — and a four-track — nearly a decade ago when she was living in the East Village, and taught herself to play. Since 2004, she has performed with the Citizens Band, a political cabaret act she helped establish. Before she left her hometown near Manchester, England, to model at 16, she fronted a salsa band.
“I was always singing, as a kid,” she said. “That’s honestly all I’ve ever wanted to do. But really, I doubt I would have ever done it” if not for modeling.
Growing up in “a sleepy, grim, Northern English town,” she said, “there was nothing expected of me. You grew up, you got married, you had kids, and maybe you worked in the supermarket. You didn’t have any aspirations to anything grand.”
Ms. Elson’s fashion career is beyond grand; she has walked or posed for nearly every major designer and photographer, carried campaigns for Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel, graced countless magazine covers and really no longer needs a last name.
So despite the musical credentials, she must now battle an attitude succinctly summed up by a fan at one of her Austin shows. “She’s great,” he said as Ms. Elson sang in a tiny pop-up shop for Third Man, Mr. White’s record label. “I mean, look at her. Look at her!”
Told of the comment, Ms. Elson shrugged it off. “You know, models, people roll their eyes,” she said. She herself was one of them. “I for years just believed that this had to be a personal project,” she said of her music. She feared ridicule: “like it’s like me trying to get more attention. I was cautious because if there’s something bad out there, it’s doubly as bad because you’re a model. It’s like, oh, stick to the day job.”
Now she is in the position of both being in thrall to her looks — because they’re a big part of what makes people interested in her — and pushing against them.
Her album leans toward dark, spare Americana in instrumentation and themes. Ms. Elson wrote the guitar parts and lyrics, and the band and Mr. White did the rest. Ms. Elson said she listened to Harry Smith’s Smithsonian folk anthology for inspiration. Onstage, eyes closed, she weaves like a 1960s folkie.
The title track comes from a nickname she had as a child — Ms. Elson says she was teased about her appearance — but the story is even more gruesome: it’s about a man who murders his lover. “Have you ever been in a relationship where you see a gleam in the person’s eye you’re with and it’s like, wow, you’re scary, you hate me?” she said. “Pre-Jack, there was a lot of anxiety even the men I was dating had, about me being a model or maybe me earning more money than them.”
She credited living in Nashville with helping her gain perspective. She and Mr. White set up house there five years ago and have two children: Scarlett, 3, and Henry, 2.
She wrote the album largely in her walk-in closet and recorded it with Mr. White and friends in their backyard studio. (Real estate is unfair, too.)
Still, Ms. Elson said, South by Southwest, with all the insiders and hype, was daunting. “Put with all the industry types and like, ‘All right girl, sing’ — it very much felt like that, like, O.K., I’ve got to prove myself,” she said.
Mr. White did not respond to requests for comment. But he has been hands-on in the album’s marketing, said Kris Chen, a vice president at XL Recordings, which is releasing “The Ghost Who Walks” with Mr. White’s label. But the album “was carried by her voice,” Mr. Chen said.
Asked who the audience is for her music, Ms. Elson said, “I have no idea.” Still, she plans to tour, likely without Mr. White. “Getting my sea legs, that’s I how I describe it.”
Ms. Elson doesn’t expect to give up modeling. “I think that would be really pretentious — ‘I’m sorry, I’m now a musician,’ ” she said. “Other than viewing them as the golden handcuffs, I might as well just appreciate it. I only hope I can improve the idea of model-slash-anything. I only hope I can do it justice.”
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Stolen Roses
This acoustic performance of 'Stolen Roses' was shot in Laurel Canyon, California. It was directed by Maximilla Lukacs and Sarah Sophie Flicker.
Karen Elson at Le Poisson Rouge on March 22, 2010
From LePoissonRouge.com:
Karen Elson's forthcoming album The Ghost Who Walks marks the debut solo release from the singer/songwriter. After finding success as a model at an early age, Karen has kept her musical career on something of a slow burn until now. She's been garnering widespread critical acclaim as a founding member of Manhattan's celebrated political cabaret troupe The Citizens Band for several years, and her beguiling voice has appeared on recordings from Robert Plant and Cat Power, but it wasn't until 2009 that Karen entered the Third Man Studio in Nashville, Tennessee to record 11 of her own songs. With production by Jack White, the forthcoming album is set to be released on Third Man/XL in the summer. Karen Elson's performed at Le Poisson Rouge on March 22, 2010. This was first New York City show as a solo artist.
Songs: a cover of "Milk and Honey" and the title track from her album " The Ghost Who Walks":
Karen Elson's forthcoming album The Ghost Who Walks marks the debut solo release from the singer/songwriter. After finding success as a model at an early age, Karen has kept her musical career on something of a slow burn until now. She's been garnering widespread critical acclaim as a founding member of Manhattan's celebrated political cabaret troupe The Citizens Band for several years, and her beguiling voice has appeared on recordings from Robert Plant and Cat Power, but it wasn't until 2009 that Karen entered the Third Man Studio in Nashville, Tennessee to record 11 of her own songs. With production by Jack White, the forthcoming album is set to be released on Third Man/XL in the summer. Karen Elson's performed at Le Poisson Rouge on March 22, 2010. This was first New York City show as a solo artist.
Songs: a cover of "Milk and Honey" and the title track from her album " The Ghost Who Walks":
Friday, 26 February 2010
Karen Elson - "The Ghost Who Walks" (Live Acoustic)
From The Huffington Post:
Karen Elson has more than just a pretty face--she has a beautiful voice, too. The redheaded stunner is set to release an album this summer, produced by her husband Jack White of the White Stripes. Elson has already posted a preview of what we can expect on her website.
Watch her perform her single "The Ghost Who Walks":
Karen Elson has more than just a pretty face--she has a beautiful voice, too. The redheaded stunner is set to release an album this summer, produced by her husband Jack White of the White Stripes. Elson has already posted a preview of what we can expect on her website.
Watch her perform her single "The Ghost Who Walks":
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