Photo Courtesy of Eloise Alterman.
Written by: Oliver Heffron
Singer-songwriter Eloise Alterman crafts a moving melancholy of heartbreak on her new EP, Sad Bird. Her music incorporates aspects of the country, folk, and pop with personal lyricism, crafting vulnerable, touching songs from a unique perspective unraveled through an intimate specificity.
Born and raised in Detroit, Eloise Alterman left for Nashville as a teenager to pursue a career in music. After years of experience in the city's bustling scene, she turned to songwriting to work through the heartbreak. Her passion blossomed into a burgeoning career, the vulnerability in her songs connecting to a growing fanbase. Alterman moved west to Los Angeles to pursue the next steps in her career, pushing herself musically and personally, writing heartfelt music that retains the music city's songwriting spirit.
After a recent show back in Nashville, Eloise Alterman sat down for an interview with The Nuance to reflect on the performance, and her new EP: "The performance was great. I love being back in Nashville. I loved seeing familiar faces in the crowd.”
Photo Courtesy of Eloise Alterman.
While the Music City will always play a significant role in Alterman's life and music, she explains how her move to LA pushed her forwards as an artist and a person:
"I always grow more when I'm in a new environment, and I think I was just ready for a new environment. I've been here for so long, you know, you walk into a bar, they give you a free shot because they've seen you all the time. You have friends everywhere you turn, and it makes you comfortable, and I think it makes me stop pushing myself in a way. And when I got to LA, I was so uncomfortable all of a sudden. It made me have to make friends again, put myself out of my comfort zone, and eat alone at a restaurant. It's so hard to do. But it's really good for me."
Alterman grew up with a range of musical influences in different genres and eras, from Joni Mitchell to Elton John, Radiohead to Mumford & Sons, David Gray to Cigarettes After Sex, and John Mayer to Taylor Swift, with the throughline of empathetic and vulnerable songwriting:
"I would grab any sort of storytelling inspiration from so many different artists; whether it was the seventies singer-songwriters like Elton John or Billy Joel from the records I would listen to in my basement; to Taylor Swift in the car with my sister. I think it's so special to listen to artists from different times because at the end of the day; they're still doing the same thing; they're telling their story. So I respect them, no matter what, no matter what time they're from, you know?"
Photo Courtesy of Eloise Alterman.
Inspired by the personal lyricism of her favorite artists, Alterman turned inward during a time of intense emotion to produce the touching and unique lyrics on her aptly titled Sad Bird. She pieces together intense visions of betrayal and romantic loss, like the opening "Her," a powerful, physical image of infidelity paired with minor piano chords, guitar strums, and subtle production effects that focalize her voice first and foremost.
Photo Courtesy of Eloise Alterman.
Working with Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb, the music accompanies Alterman's voice without ever taking away from it, a strategy that's been working since the moment two got into a studio:
"[Dave] heard it, and he was like, let's put her vocal, you know, to the front. And then he heard the lyrics, and you wanted that to stand out the most. And then he would build the music just behind it to accompany it. But it was never the thing that was in your face the most. It just sat so beautifully with the words and with my voice. We became really great friends. And it was just it was such an amazing experience."
Drawing from the well of personal experience, Alterman sounds musically polished but lyrically genuine. Despite moving on from the experiences that inspired much of Sad Bird, Alterman now reflects on how her lyrics create a portal back to that time, with added perspective:
"I was very much in that heartbreak; it was very, very new. Moving forward, I can't keep going back to that. But I go back through my notebooks, and I'm a very empathetic person, so I can read a line and be like, 'Oh, my God, that hurts so much.' I've also had a very hard time letting things go; those pains are still in my heart. It happens so quickly: when you smell something or hear something, how you're just immediately taken back in that pain again. I can be in the backseat of my mom's car after a boy told me that he would never like me. I am immediately back there again, listening to like Taylor Swift's first album in my headphones. I'm just so crushed, so depressed, and I'm like, 'Why am I feeling this the exact same way that I did, then, and it still hurts just as bad?' So, I can write a song about it again, and it's maybe from a different perspective.”
Photo Courtesy of Eloise Alterman.
Photo Courtesy of Eloise Alterman.
It's easy to forget about the simple, metaphysical miracle that's intertwined in every song, yet Eloise Alterman's passion for songwriting is centrally grounded in the unique emotional transaction between two souls when one sings to the other, and she takes that link to the heart. It's also easy to think that artists can separate themselves from the content of their songs when they perform. The potency of those experiences somehow diffuses when reliving them in lyrics. But, the contradictory phenomena of performing sad songs to smiling applause are details that never miss Alterman:
"When I write music, and people sing along with the songs, and they love them, and you turn in music to your publisher, and the labels say, 'we want more and more and more, we love this, thank you,' I'm like, 'dude, you do realize what these songs are about, right? I'm dying over here.'"
Within the lines of her songs, Alterman can share and explore the darker corners of her mind and her memories, a place she feels separated from in her normal social life:
“My personality usually contradicts my music. Because I joke around a lot of stuff like that, I love to hide what's going on on the inside. Even the music video for 'Her' symbolizes the same thing: it's a beautiful ocean, and it's very light, but it's about someone who's unraveling, and it gets darker and darker as it goes on. “
Photo Courtesy of Eloise Alterman.
The song "Sad Bird Still Sings" presents the full portrait of Eloise Alterman as a musician, crafting a personal yet universally touching ode to persevering through heartbreak. Usually writing from her piano, facing the open California air from her second-story french doors, Alterman instills her surroundings and her interior world masterfully into the song. It feels like the morning birds beckoning a broken heart back out into the world.
With the release of Sad Bird, Eloise Alterman presents the lyrical care and musical talent that would make T-Swift proud. Give it a listen if you want to feel something and be reminded that a broken heart is never truly alone, at least not with the bittersweet release of a well-written song by your side.