Interview: Vera Ellen 'HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT TIME' Album Release Tour

Winner of the Taite Music Prize for 2023's Ideal Home Noise, Vera Ellen and band have returned home to Aotearoa NZ, following an extensive jaunt in the UK and EU supporting Aldous Harding. Released in May, it's now finally time for them to celebrate Ellen's new album, HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT TIME, embarking on a full scale nationwide tour starting this week in Whanganui, Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Tāmaki Makaurau (note the newly updated venue Neck of the Woods).

Fellow songwriting star and Flying Nun Records labelmate, Jazmine Mary got on the line with Ellen to volley a bunch of hard-hitting questions in her direction. Read their conversation and catch Ellen with very special guests all around the motu at the following dates...

Vera Ellen
Heaven Knows What Time
Album Release Tour

Thursday 23rd July - Porridge Watson, Whanganui with Crossing Water
Friday 24th July - Meow, Wellington with Half/Angel
Saturday 25th July - Neck of the Woods, Auckland with Another Fucking Problem, CC:ME [new venue]
Sunday 26th July - Last Place, Hamilton
Thursday 30th July - The Loons, Lyttelton with Goodbye Starlet
Friday 31st July - Pearl Diver, Dunedin with Phaedra Love

Tickets via www.banishedmusic.com/tours/vera-ellen-heaven-knows

Fuck, Marry, Kill and interview with Vera Ellen

Jazmine Mary: Album releases and live shows are a generous celebration, a celebration with and for the public. Do you have a way that you celebrate your albums or your achievements for yourself?

Vera Ellen: I think it's really important to have those moments. And I think it's something I do not do naturally, that my natural inclination is just to go straight to what's next. Even in this moment, like getting back from that tour with Aldous Harding, I haven’t even really had any moment yet to reflect on it or anything. I think barring this moment I do try to be really conscientious. I think for me that comes in the form of reflection so I think writing and honestly, sitting in a park — it’s almost being alone and having breathing space. That is the best reward in place of acknowledgement.

I find it easier to allow that more or be more aware of other people needing to celebrate, seeing [my] band members and everything they achieve. You're like, wow, you should stop and celebrate. And then they're like, you should. Then they're like, okay, maybe we could. But thank you for reminding me of that actually, because I think it's fucking important. It's just very un-capitalist, you know, because I think we just always get told to keep moving forward.

On this record you're often lyrically having conversations to a specific someone or people and there's a real bravery in the lyrics. Is there ever a fear or a hope that the people that you're speaking to will know? Or is the ‘you’ more universal?

Yeah. Oh, I tell everyone that I write songs about them. 100%. I had a great moment actually on this tour where I performed one of the songs to the person I wrote the song about. I love to do that.

Tell us more. Who is it?

[laughs] I find it funny, and I think they find it funny too... it weirdly becomes a part of the healing, and I've done that since I was a kid. I used to write songs to my mum when I was angry, and I wanted to tell her stuff that I was angry about, but I didn't tell her, I didn't have the words to. So I would like sing her these songs and she would be like, oh, that's really good. You should sing that at this club competition thingy. And I'm like, really? Because it's about you. But I found I was getting like the feedback I wanted through these songs - that I can't say in person.

Yeah, I do write them specifically to people. But I think also, a lot of the “you” on this album specifically is probably more to myself and a lot of weird introspective layers of the self. Which is always fun too.

What were you consuming while you were writing this record?

When I wrote the album I was staying at this kind of farmhouse where I did the songwriter's residency. It wasn't my house, I was like staying in somebody else's house. They had a couple of records there. They had Carole King, they had Tapestry, which I just listened to on repeat. And then they had Neil Young and then Pavarotti. Those three records.

They call that the triangle of creation. Pavarotti, Carole King and Neil Young.

Exactly. The perfect triad. What was cool about being in that house was that the residency was actually usually for poets and writers. So they had a lot of books and poetry in there from these New Zealand authors that had been there before. Which of course now I can't really remember anybody's name, but I could give you some. I guess I was reading their poetry and interestingly enough, it was a lot of subject matter around place and identity. I think being in this kind of really isolated situation and then reading about other people's experience, trying to find themselves in foreign places and things like that was probably quite influential or part of it.

Other than that, I was specifically not consuming things. I had a little list of rules and one of them was no YouTube. I was just trying to close my mind a little bit and reflect more on all the experiences that were already there and sit with myself.

That’s lovely. You just mentioned sense of place. There’s a lot of place names on this album, it references a lot of American cities or places. Where is home to you and how does that inform your storytelling?

I think home for me has really solidified in the last couple of years. I really understand now that home is not a place for me. Home is where I lay my head, and my family and people that know and love me, and my little trinkets like my rings and certain smells that I carry with me. It is nice to to know that, because I think that is different for everyone. It's nice to just accept that about yourself especially when you're someone who's always searching. You’re thinking that you're supposed to have some kind of solidified place or something and you feel strange that you're not resonating a thousand percent with one specific place. Yeah maybe it's just me.

That’s surprising to me because you're a Cancer as well, which is typically home bodies that go out. But I guess what you're saying is that home's your shell.

Oh my god my home is my shell — I know yeah, and that's why I have my trinkets and little things. Because I think that's how I create my home.

Are you in love?

I'm in love with the world.

I knew you would say that. I absolutely knew it. I knew it.

We're doing Fuck, Marry, Kill with your band. No, no, no. I kid. Fuck, Marry, Kill — writing, recording and touring?

Yeah okay oh fuck! Okay oh my god okay — all right I got it. It's marry writing, fuck touring and kill recording. Yeah absolutely, it's got to be marry writing.

Fuck touring, for sure. Sexy little tour. That's like, get your rocks off, and then recording's dead. It's dead. We love it, but it's expensive, it's hard, it's dead.

It's expensive, it's hard. I'm always recording in terms of making demos, which to me, that's actually writing. I'm going to marry that shit. I write and record at the same time, but in terms of actually doing the proper, "I'm in a studio now recording", I wouldn't say I particularly love that part of it. I find it a little stale... I don't necessarily love recording really. It's a necessary evil.

What did your relationship to control look like with the writing and the recording of this record?

Mm-hmm. Do you mean my control into... Wait, I'm just going to interpret it and not ask you what you mean. That feels... classic. I'm just going to take control of that question.

I think I struggle with giving over any control, but especially when it comes to my own creative vision. As I said, I kind of recorded all the demos and wrote everything in this residency. Then the next step for me is sending it over to Ben Lemi and then breaking it all down. I’m usually pretty present for the whole thing, doing all the recording and mixing, me and Ben in the studio kind of thing. It was pretty tight. It was mostly me and him. Then we would have my brother come in a little bit and the rest of the band did a couple of days. But I think the control for me is more like, where is my vision? Is this what I want? Where am I not allowing someone else's wisdom to like come in and inform this creation?

You just toured with Aldous Harding. Can I just have your rose and your thorn from that experience?

My rose was finding new aspects of myself as a performer, which felt like this new development that was really exciting creatively and really connecting with certain people. Like particular people at the merch table after certain shows, where I felt like I was actually making a genuine impact on somebody. That's the rose. And then the thorn is, um, oh fuck, there's so many thorns. The biggest thorn was just trying to wear 10 different hats and not being able to really focus on just the music and just the creative part of it. I think I came up to things on that particular tour I had never come up [against] before, in terms of the scale and the learning, I've never done anything like that. There was so much learning in really critical time periods.

How do you find the experience of being a “support act"?

You play a show and then no one wants to hear any specific songs, because no one knows who you are. No one knows at all. It's kind of fun like fighting for people... I get a bit of a thrill out of people expecting to not like you. You start getting used to that. Oh God, yeah, let's not psychoanalyse that.

Did you know that you would be a musician as a child?

I always thought being a musician would be the coolest thing ever. I used to draw album covers and be obsessed with rock stars and stuff. But I always thought that I was way too shy. I'd write diary entries and be like, I really want to be a musician, but I'll never do it. I'm far too shy.

I think the idea of actually executing that felt pretty out of reach. I was literally Googling how to get signed. It was crazy when I was a kid. I know, it's pretty strange. But yeah, there was always music growing up and my brother and sister and mum. It was definitely around.

What do you expect or want or need from your audiences with this upcoming tour?

I would love for them to learn to know the songs, to learn some songs and be able to sing along. That would be the coolest thing ever. I would expect they bring some level of either — just energy that is active, or it could just be a focus, some kind of intention of why they have come to the show. That would be amazing. And an openness to whatever the show ends up being.

Heaven knows what the time is…. What is it time for Vera Ellen?

Oh god, I really hate that just every part of my body was like, "Rest!"

No, that's good! That's really good, that's all you need to say. Oh, well, I hope I didn't bore you to death, and they were great answers. Thank you.

'HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT TIME' is out now via Flying Nun Records.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.