beneath the lilypad

Alexandra Savior

Alexandra Savior chats to 1883 Magazine about her new album Beneath The Lilypad and more.

Combining mystique, dulcet tones, and a sonic palette that could be inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe novel, American songwriter Alexandra Savior is an unwavering creative force.

Since sharing a demo of “Risk” in 2015, which found its way onto the second season of True Detective starring Colin Farrell, Savior has created an undeniable allure around her musical persona. This was only amplified by the official debut single “Shades” in 2016. At the time, the Portland native was just entering her 20s and still learning the ropes of the industry after signing with Columbia Records in 2013.

In 2017, Savior released her debut album Belladonna of Sadness, two years after much of the work had already been laid down. It was a sublime debut, though somewhat overshadowed by the media due to her collaboration with rockstar Alex Turner as a co-writer.

For a time that should have been a thrilling ride—playing sold-out shows and building a rapidly growing cult fanbase—the momentum faltered when she was unexpectedly dropped by both her label and management. By then, she had already written much of her sophomore album The Archer, which wouldn’t see release until January 2020 via 30th Century Records. It was another stellar effort from the songwriter, though its true potential was somewhat halted due to the pandemic. Alongside battling mental health struggles, the artist has faced an unpredictable journey throughout her career.

However, despite all the ups and downs, Savior has remained steadfast in her commitment to her art. After nearly five years of working on her third album, Beneath The Lilypad, set for release on May 16 via RCA Records (a deal she signed last year), she’s now poised to share the most personal work of her career. Recorded over multiple studio sessions alongside her partner and producer Drew Erickson (Lana Del Rey, Father John Misty), the album delves into themes of love, ego, insecurity, and mental health. With the cinematic opening singles “Unforgivable” and “The Mothership,” Savior is more creatively liberated than ever before. Beneath The Lilypad is shaping up to be her magnum opus.

1883 Magazine’s Cameron Poole sits down with Alexandra Savior to discuss her new single “The Mothership,” what Beneath The Lilypad represents to her, stop-motion filmmaking, and much more.

Hi Alexandra, thanks for speaking with 1883 Magazine. We actually first met eight years ago at Oslo in Hackney for a different website—time flies! How has life evolved for you since then? It’s been a long period of time [laughs].

[laughs] Yeah! It’s crazy that it has been that long since. Was I playing a show?

Yes at Oslo!

I remember that, it was kind of a smaller one, right?

Yeah, it’s a lovely venue.

Nice. Well, it has evolved a lot I guess [laughs], I don’t even know where to start. I’ve put out almost two records since then, and I have a dog now.

Your new single “The Mothership” is out now. What was it like working with your partner and producer Drew Erickson—especially as the track serves as a love song to him, but also touches on your past mental health struggles?

Your third album, Beneath The Lilypad, arrives on May 16. After everything you’ve navigated—personally and professionally—what does this release represent for you now, especially after nearly five years in the making?

It feels like this release, when I first started writing it, I was in a really tough place in my life, and I was dealing with a lot of mental health struggles. It’s sort of like this journey; within the process of making the album, I went into psychosis, and I was hospitalised, and then when I came out the other side of it, I feel like I really changed completely as a person. Coming into being in control of my brain chemistry, and the fact that has been something that has really taken up so much of my life. Now, I feel like a fully formed, capable person, which I don’t think I was when we first started.

When I first started writing it, and even when we first started recording it, so for me it just represents overcoming the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to go through. I’m just really excited that it’s going to finally go into the world, you know.

Look, I appreciate you even talking about that because it can’t be easy speaking about these things to a bloody journalist and not a family member or friend.

Thanks for listening.

During that previous interview, you mentioned it was “rare” for you to get the opportunity to paint—have you been able to find more time for this passion lately? I know you did the cover for the new record, which is so cool.

Yeah, It’s been tricky because I have an autoimmune disease. One of the main problems is that I have really extreme arthritis and so I wasn’t able to play guitar, paint or draw because the pain was so intense. But now, I’m recovering, and I’ve been able to start working on things again. Actually, I was a little late today because I was making a model for a stop-motion, which involves painting and all that kind of stuff.

So it’s nice because the nice thing about being a musician or artist in this way is that, I’m not that good at painting [laughs], I couldn’t make a living off it, so that is why I did music. But I am able to use the music as a way for me to express myself creatively and have control over it, and just do what I am passionate about which is making stuff.

For the new album’s first single, “Unforgivable,” you created a stop-motion promo clip. What do you enjoy about this technique and is there anything else you want to explore further?

What I’m drawn to within the stop-motion is that so much is based around collage. With the stop-motion, I’m essentially creating a three-dimensional collage involving the same visuals that are in the album and single covers. I’ve always wanted to try it when I was working on my second record. But I was way too scattered to sit down and focus on something like that.

Now because the record has been finished for so long, and getting ready for it to be released, I’ve had all this time. I think it helps create a world, when I see things in my head, it is nice to figure out how I can make it with my abilities, I couldn’t paint it, but with stop-motion, it is tangible and I find it easier to build the worlds with stop-motion.

The clip was 17 seconds but how long did it take to make? A lot of work goes into it even for just a short clip.

[points to the chessboard in her bedroom] I made that with collage, that was the thing that took the longest amount of time. I was looking through all these old Life magazines from the 1940s and finding dark, light hues. That’s what took the longest.

Actually making the film itself which was 17 seconds, it took us about three and a half hours.

I know “Unforgivable” has been out for a little while now but people will still be discovering it for the first time. In a previous interview, you mentioned in terms of excitement for this record, it felt a bit “anticlimactic” as the record has been ready for a while and you were getting the right team together. But still with it being your first song back in a few years, how did you feel in that moment when it was released? It seems to have had a really good reaction.

Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because this is what has happened with every single release or every album that I’ve put out, where it’s almost like you expect that everything is going to change. With the singles, there’s not a tangible release, or I’m not holding a record. Probably a similar feeling would be iff you posted something on social media, and everybody kept asking me within the weeks afterwards, ‘how are you feeling?’ But it doesn’t feel real yet to me.

You also told me during that previous chat how you’d just been recognised for the first time at a Rough Trade show two days before the Oslo performance. Obviously, as a musician, you don’t care about fame or anything like that, only the art. But I had a Google and now, you’ve got dedicated fan pages and people covering your songs on YouTube—how does that feel?

It feels really great. I’m always just shocked, and I feel a lot of gratitude to even know that people are listening to it. Because it’s not often that reality I’m faced with that, because it’s not like I’m walking down the street [laughs] and people are recognising me. But when it does happen, or whe playing shows, it just warms my heart because I feel like I feelmisunderstood a lot. That’s a big part. Since I was little, I never felt like I like fit in and then with my mental health, I feel very misunderstood. So when I see people react to it or cover the songs, it’s just like wow.

As much as we’re supposed to pretend like we don’t want validation. I think any person who’s invested in something and has created something wants people to feel what they feel, I think. It’s a great feeling, it’s nice.

The recognition is deserved. To pursue your vision and art, no matter what hurdles come your way, and putting out new music, no matter the wait, is fantastic. It’s not easy.

Thanks.

With Belladonna of Sadness you were with Columbia, and then 2020’s The Archer came via 30th Century Records. From those past experiences, what have you learned to truly value—and fight for—when negotiating your deal with RCA last year?

Oh, I think that I didn’t have a lot of creative control when I was working on my first record, or at least it felt that way. I think I was so young that I didn’t know and maybe didn’t have a lot of self respect, I guess [laughs]. Then I don’t know, I had these two completely opposing experiences, from being with a major label and then being with this small indie. It’s interesting, I guess, just knowing that the vision is going to be mine.

I’ve had such a great experience with RCA, because now that I’m older and know my direction more, I haven’t had many problems with it. But I think, just making sure that the creative vision is within my control, and just finding people to help me with it, rather than allowing it to be taken from me, is important.

Do you have any personal favourite moments from the recording process for the new record? I believe it was essentially just you and Drew for a lot of it, and how you’d go into a studio one month to record and because studios are expensive, it was then several months before you’d get back into the studio to record again. How many sessions were there in the end?

Oooh, well, so it’s interesting because with the singles, Drew played mostly everything, and I played a little guitar. But then with the rest of the album, it was a different process. The reason why it took so long is because at the beginning, we went in and we were recording to tape with a band. And so I would just be like: ‘Okay, here’s the song. Like, this is what I want it to be like’. Then we would just go in and I would sing and play in the booth, and then everybody would be out playing at the same time. That was really fun for me to experience. It was also the first time that II had strings on anything.

To just be in a room with people who are in the LA Philharmonic, it was insane. My brain couldn’t even attach to how it was happening, it was fun. Some of my favorite moments is that my dog got to come with us and he’d be running around, sitting under the chair of the cellist [laughs].

And working with Drew and the engineer, who is our best friend. So it was a very intimate and warm setting to make this record. I think it was about 20 days in total that we ended up [in the studio], but it was over the course of a couple of years.

Do you have any particular favourite songs from the new album that resonate with you the most?

I really like “You Make It Easier” because I wrote it right after I got out of the hospital. It’s sort of another similar kind of lyrical theme as “The Mothership”, just knowing that there’s this darkness and maybe some suicidal ideation going on, but that having someone there with me through it makes it easier. I really like that song.

Are there any potential UK dates planned, or should we wait for a bigger tour announcement?

There will definitely be UK dates. I don’t know the specifics yet, but this is just the beginning, so we’ll definitely be going over there. I love playing the UK—it’s always so fun. I love it there. So we will, I just don’t know when.

Finally, what is one thing you’d like to manifest for yourself?

I think I just want to manifest consistency within my life as a creative. To just be consistently making and releasing music because that’s been the hardest thing.

Well, the making is not the hard thing, it’s the releasing. It’s been so up and down for me, and I think I would like to have a solid foundation to do that [laughs].

Alexandra, I know you’ve done a lot of interviews, and they can be tedious sometimes, so I really want to emphasise how much I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. It’s been nice.

How Alexandra Savior fought for her own return: “I’m just going to do exactly what feels right

by Lucy Harbron

For her fans, the long-awaited return of songwriting talent Alexandra Savior after five years was incredibly exciting news. For the artist herself, though, “Honestly, it’s been a little anticlimactic.” But isn’t that how it always goes? When you want something so bad and have been working towards it for so long, it’s always strange when it actually happens.

In the moments after a dream is realised, there is always an odd, almost empty feeling where you sit back and think, ‘Oh, that’s that then.’ Especially if that dream has been building and building quietly in private, the moment you reveal it to the public as something so tender and hard-earned, there is always bound to be some weirdness.

Savior has been stewing in that weirdness for a long time now. The last time the world heard from Savior, from the outside, it probably looked like an artist riding high. Released through Columbia and helped by Alex Turner, with whom Savior also wrote for his The Last Shadow Puppets project, her 2017 debut Belladonna of Sadness instantly shot her to notoriety. To her fans, 2020’s The Archer probably looked like a continuation of that success, gaining major critical acclaim. But, by that point, Savior had been dropped by her major label, and when it comes to financing what she wanted to do next, a small indie label can never be much help.

When we talk about the injustice of money in the music industry, this is exactly what we mean. Savior, with her talent, renown, and hundreds and thousands of monthly Spotify streams, should be earning a livable wage and enough to continue pushing forward with her career. But, as we know, that is not the case. Pair that with Covid-19, which greatly impacted Savior and her health, and what you have is a grinding halt that no one, neither Savior nor her fans, expected. The rest of her tour was cancelled; she seemed to disappear.

Yet still, what seemed like radio silence from the outside was a busy creative period for the artist. The album that she’s sitting on and is now finally beginning to offer to the world has been in existence for almost all of that gap. The weirdness came in the waiting around and in the new way that Savior had to adapt to making music. With both of her other albums, the process was typical—she wrote, then she went into the studio and worked consistently until it was done. But with the circumstances surrounding this third project, that couldn’t happen.(Credits: Far Out / Angela Ricciardi)

“It drove me crazy at first, for sure,” she said, describing the painstakingly slow process. “I was writing for a year, and then we went into the studio in 2021,” with that already bringing up its own delays due to the band needing masks, clearing Covid-19 tests and careful health protection. However, there was one issue, more than most, that caused an incredibly stop-start way of working.

“I recorded it in fragments because I didn’t have a label,” she said. “It’s expensive to have a band and go into the recording studios. So we would go in for like four days, and then six months would go by. And then we would go in for four days, and then eight months would go by.”

When she told me this, my immediate response was—how on Earth do you keep a hold on your vision and what it is you’re trying to do when the world keeps stopping you like that? But for Savior, that was a strangely beneficial element, forcing her to realise what she needed to focus on. “I had made some mistakes in the past where I would not follow my instinct, and then that is always what leads me to feel, maybe some, I don’t want to say regret, but, you know, I think that is what leads to inconsistencies,” she explained. This time around, having to already endure a tricky creative context, a lesson was learnt: “The consistency is me. For this record, I was just like, I’m just going to do exactly what feels right.”

But again, the world threw Savior another curve ball. Despite her masses of fans who were awaiting her return to music, this rotten industry failed her, as it does so many. She knew she needed two more songs for the album—two singles that she could pitch to labels and try to get herself some backing. But, funds had run out. “I had absolutely no money. I was on food stamps and like was, you know, not able to pay rent, and it was a really difficult time, so we couldn’t pay for musicians. So Drew Erickson, who produced the record, he played everything.”

You’d never guess, but ‘Unforgivable’ is one of those songs, standing as testament to Savior’s talent and having the benefit of incredible collaborators and the strength that comes when an artist is determined to make it work no matter what. The fact that ‘Unforgiveable’ is so polished and gorgeous while made on an invisible budget is all the proof you need that artists will move mountains to realise their art, even though they shouldn’t have to.