Human Kitten - Sound In The Signals Interview
For those not familiar with your music can you tell me a little about how you got started and what got you into music?
Elijah:Well, when I was 14, I started teaching myself basic chords so I could cover Paul Baribeau and Kimya Dawson songs, and it just sorta snowballed from there. Previously to doing music, I'd written lots of poems and short stories, along with stacks of comic strips sitting in my closet. So the urge to start writing songs came about organically, at least once I was decent enough at playing guitar. I really only started making music as a way to scratch the itch of artistic impulse, a way to explore different content that I couldn't communicate as easily or directly through humor or narrative. Music lends itself to a more episodic format, which lets me share so many vastly different sides of myself. So making art has always been personal to me. I am very confused by who I am and why I feel the way I feel, but art helps me unload without fear and understand myself in ways I never could have if it weren't for having a medium that allows me to. However, I've been aggressively sharing my artwork since day one, regardless of how personal it's been. Selling comic books for 50 cents in homeroom in elementary school eventually became selling 7-inch records for 5 dollars in a garage in California. So it was a natural progression. I was never making any money (each copy of the comics would cost a dollar or two to make at the library, so I was essentially paying to put them in my classmates' hands), but making money was never the point. Creating and sharing art has always been a primary way that I express myself. I've never been good at face to face interaction, but yelling at an audience, posting a video, or handing out a comic book, has always been super comfortable for me in comparison.
This line on your Facebook bio stood out to me: "I accidentally became a musician." Can you tell me the process from where you started to the point you realized you had begun finding an audience for your songs?
When I started getting messages that were similar to ones I'd sent some of my favorite musicians, it started to hit home and I realized that the music I was creating had actual worth. I'd been making so much art in so many different mediums since I was a kid, at this point, I never really expected anything to stick or make a lasting impression on anyone. But with the release of my self-titled album, I realized that I had finally created something larger than myself, something that breathes its own life. It stopped being a music project and started feeling second-nature, like an extra appendage.
Your songs delve into some really interesting, revealing, and times wild lyrics. When you write a song what comes first the lyrics or the songs? Lyrically how do you want the songs you're writing to be received by listeners?
A lyric becomes a melody, which becomes more lyrics, and so on. That's how it usually goes. My music is heavily reliant on language and the way we use it, especially conversationally. Like a drunk stranger, I pop into your life for a half-hour to tell you my life story and then I disappear. My relationship with music is made to mimic that of a healthy relationship. The trust I'm unable to find through the people in my life, I project onto the blank canvas of the potential audience, sharing with them my darkest moments of shame and most cathartic moments of clarity. It's therapy for me and in turn, I hope it can function as therapy for other people. I just don't want anyone to idolize me as result of my lyrical content. Depression isn't desirable. I'm a very sad person and I live a very unhealthy life. Trying desperately to be good is my only redeeming trait. I take criticism to heart and dwell on my mistakes until I can manage to milk something productive out of them. I'm a mess, but I'm self-aware, and my lyrics are supposed to celebrate the perpetuity of that sentiment.
One track I think is a big standout for me from you is "I'm Trash". Can you tell me a little about the songwriting process for that song in particular and where your thought process was at when you wrote it?
My first semester at Towson University, my roommate didn't speak English very well and I didn't really know too many people, so I slowly coiled into myself. Prolonged loneliness and isolation can easily amplify desperation and this song encapsulates the desire for human contact grinding against the cyclical futility inherent in using/abusing social interaction as a reaction to depression. It's about how unhealthy viewing people as a cure to mental illness can become if it remains unrecognized for too long.
If you had to pick one song (or EP/album) that would be a good starting point for people who haven't heard of Human Kitten what would pick and why?
I don't know which songs of mine are good anymore, I've written so many of them and they hold such distorted values in my head when compared to how other people view them. Off each album, people seem to like: I Would (Eumoirous), I Don't Want To Be Sad (Human Kitten), Imperfect Stranger (Manic Pixie Dream Boy), and Sex: Male; Gender: Whatever (y tywysog bach). My favorite Human Kitten songs are always the ones I haven't released yet though.
I guess that about wraps it up. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have anything else you would like to add?
I just starting working on my fifth album, I'm Afraid of Everything, and I have big plans for it. Aiming for a summer release. I've also got a few tracks showing up on a few different compilations that are being released over the next few months. Still primarily working with Driftwood Records on physical releases and merch, and I don't have any (even tentative) tour plans in place, but hopefully the future will have me in all sorts of living rooms and basements playing songs, selling vinyl, and petting dogs. A boy can dream.
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