Alexandra Audrey Drewchin, aka Eartheater, has just released her latest album, „Heavenly Body: If I’m the Bottle You’re the Message“, and played a show at Berlin’s beautiful, red-plush-seated Theater des Westens. The next day, we get to sit down for a chat.
We instantly click. Eartheater’s new album is fully dedicated to the experience of giving birth and becoming a new mother. But our shared experience of motherhood isn’t the only thing we have in common. We talk a lot about juxtapositions and how we both need two very opposite poles in our lives to be happy and content. Noise and silence. Alone time and company. The city and the countryside. Concrete and grass.
Those juxtapositions come together in Eartheater’s music as well. Her songs are lush and eerie, her lyrics, especially on this album, often refreshingly blunt. Her voice floats over orchestral arrangements and electronic beats. In the end, we hug and agree that we found our conversation equally inspiring. That is the most beautiful outcome you can have from a 30-minute encounter with someone who has already spent a full day talking to people.
I had a spontaneous childhood memory during your show yesterday, and I would like to tell it to you, if it’s okay.
Oh, cool!
I must have been four or five, I was still in kindergarten, and somebody, as a present, had given me this headband with little golden antennas. I was obsessed with them. I wanted to wear them every day. I even asked my mom to make me a golden dress to go with them, for a costume party. At some point my mom lost her patience and told me: “You need to stop wearing these antennas. I’m not going to the supermarket with you again wearing them.” So I stood in front of the mirror and pretended to retract them into my head. This way I could go out of the house without my antennas being visible. But I knew they were still there!
Oh my God!
I saw you on stage and had to think of my alien antennas.
I think I have these alien antennas as well that no one can see (laughs). Maybe you saw mine for a second! We’re the same (laughs). You know, that’s so cool, because now that I moved back into the house that I grew up in, I have all of these spontaneous memories that I think I am remembering for the first time. Because you know, when you remember something, each time you remember it, it’s a carbon copy of the previous time you remember it. So it slowly distorts. That’s why we can’t actually trust what we remember a lot of the time. But sometimes we’re remembering something for the first time, and it’s so vivid and emotional. You can almost smell it. In the last two years since we bought the farm, there have been so many times I’ve been struck by these really intense memories.
I heard you live part-time on a farm. I didn’t know it was the house you grew up in. How did that happen?
So yeah, I was born in that house and my mom sold it when I was 15. It’s gone through maybe three or four different owners. Two years ago, my husband and I found it on the market and bought it back. It’s really been a dream come true. I wrote some of the songs about it.
I feel so much what I heard you say once, that you need the country life and the city just as much to be happy. I totally get that!
(Laughs) It’s real. That’s me. I can’t just be one.
Maybe that also reflects in your music as well – because it’s so eerie and so down to earth at the same time? It’s such a juxtaposition.
For sure. If you put something that’s a little bit rugged and rough next to something that’s really ornate and refined, the identity of those two things only magnifies each other. And I just love that. I love the way ugliness next to harmony only makes the harmony more angelic.
I also feel like it keeps you alive and on your toes, to be out in the country and then come back and learn to live with the sound of the city again.
My mom lives in the country on her little farm. While I’m here, she’s now staying in the city to help my husband watch the baby. But she’s not used to being multiple days in the city. And the noise pollution is the thing that’s exhausting her more than anything. The constant churning machine noise that’s grinding into your brain.
But what a wonderful arrangement. You know your baby is in the best hands and you can enjoy travelling and living your art on stage!
Yeah! Exactly. All the other tours and dates up to now, I have been with the baby. Some with my husband and some without. That’s been fine as well. The LA shows, those first shows, I was alone with the baby. I hired a babysitter to help me. A totally different feeling. And what’s nice is that I have been able to reconnect with so many friends I haven’t seen in years.
I know it’s a bit of an overused question, but please tell me how you came up with the album title. It is so cool.
(Laughs) To me, this album was really about the physical state of being a human. There were so many crazy moments of alignment that happened. So, today is September 1st, which is the day when we found out that the farm I grew up on was for sale. Also, that was the day I conceived the baby, because three weeks later, when I went to the birth center, they were able to see exactly when the baby was conceived. It’s a mathematical equation essentially, when cells propagate. That to me seemed like a miracle. It seemed like a miracle that we were able to buy the farm back. It was miracle after miracle after miracle. It was just humbling. So that’s why I wanted the title to feel sort of magical.
But then at the same time… the way that Eartheater has all those anagrams in it. All these different words exist in Eartheater. Heat and heart and art, eater and theater… One of the games I play is when I use a word, I see what other words are in it. Even if I’m the only one who notices it, it kind of gives it more depth. “Heavenly”, for example, has the word “heave”, which is what you do when you’re giving birth. You’re heaving, you’re pushing. It implies strength and pain and struggle. Even though “heavenly” feels like the heavens, the divine encompassing grace, I love that it has this opposite, earthly, corporal message in it as well. And I also am a true believer that anything good comes from pain, comes from hard work, from struggle. From something that doesn’t start heavenly.
You really are quite blunt on this album. At one point during your show yesterday I thought: I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone on stage sing: “My baby is too big for my cervix.”
(Laughs) It felt really refreshing with this album to just skip the metaphors. Just say things directly and be like, this is exactly what happened. Especially so soon after it happened. Because it feels so epic still. It’s not a distant memory that I’m referring to. This is happening. It was refreshing!
Then tell me, when exactly did you write these songs? Did you write them all after you had given birth?
I started writing the album when the baby was three months old. The only song I wrote before was the song “Nova”. I wrote that when I was pregnant, and that’s when I realised that I wanted to call her Nova. So I started writing when I was three months postpartum. But some little one-liners were already written from my pregnancy or right after. I would flip through my notes and kind of go, “Oh, what’s that?” And then a song would build from that.
Three months postpartum? I have so much respect for you. The last thing I felt like when I was three months postpartum was being creative. Everything was very overwhelming and frankly a bit numbing.
I absolutely had those feelings as well, for sure. I found it pretty hard to be alone with the baby a lot. I am not gonna lie, I made sure I had friends and family around all the time. And that made it so much easier. But I had those weird bursts of energy as well. I found being with the baby the most tiring thing. So when I had someone to hold the baby, I’d then suddenly be like: “I’m gonna oil the whole entire floor! Sand the staircase! Repaint the staircase!” And to me that felt relaxing, compared to nursing and burping… even though I loved it. It’s exhausting, being with a baby!
But then being creative! I felt so dumb for a long time after giving birth.
(Laughs) You know, I have really great managers, I really appreciate them. They encouraged me to be creative. We had talked about the idea, me wanting to write an album with Dave Sitek about everything that’s happening. It helps to have a team to make me stick with it. When you’re alone, it’s much easier to not stick with your word. A lot of the time my husband and I really aligned. He had work in LA and I was like: “Perfect, you go to work, I go to work, we get the nanny…” There was motion and energy happening. That’s what I think helped maintain my mental health through all of it. I think more than physically, it’s mentally an unbelievable transition. Especially while you’re physically healing as well. My body definitely got kicked in the butt from the whole thing.
But now I really, really appreciate that I started it and had to finish it. It kept me on my toes and I really also appreciated having moments when I would let the village help me with the baby. Because then I couldn’t wait to get back to her as opposed to being like: “Oh my God, can someone please take the baby?” I’m very grateful for the way it went down.
And I can imagine that working together with someone was very helpful as well.
Yes! Totally. This is the first album that I made with just one producer. And I think that if I had to do all the instrumentals myself or work with a bunch of producers, it wouldn’t have been so streamlined. Part of why it really worked is because we’re so specific. We had an incredible engineer, small crew. We were in his house, he’s got 700 different types of teas… We had the best little treats, so many flowers blooming outside his window, just a very cosy, lovely atmosphere to record an album in. He would make me feel so good. Nothing about it was too cool. It was just fully passionate.
You can be so proud of yourself. You basically gave birth twice in such a short time.
(Laughs) Ha. Yeah! It’s true.
