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Jun 11, 2019 By Pixx (Hannah Rodgers) Photography by Pixx (Hannah Rodgers) Web Exclusive

For our recurring Self-Portrait feature we ask a musician to take a self-portrait photo (or paint/draw a self-portrait) and write a list of personal things about themselves, things that their fans might not already know about them. This Self-Portrait is by Pixx (aka British musician Hannah Rodgers).

Pixx released her sophomore album, Small Mercies, last week via 4AD. Small Mercies is the follow-up to 2017’s The Age of Anxiety. It was co-produced by Simon Byrt and Dan Carey. Small Mercies doesn’t pull any punches and gets into the damage done by organized religion, our environmental crisis, self-love, and more. Album-opener “Andean Condor” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list and it tackles gender politics. “Mature males tend to be at the top of the pecking order/It’s stale/Detest it cos you want to,” Rodgers sings in the #MeToo anthem. “Dance for me boy/Give me a twirl/I want to get to know you/But I probably won’t blow you.”

Rodgers had this to say about Small Mercies in a press release announcing the album: “I felt more of a drive to write about certain subjects with this album. Man negotiating with God, God negotiating with man and man negotiating with the planet. I find it hard to have an understanding of relationships in general—I think everyone does—and the addictive tendency that we have to look for something that’s eternal is something that intrigues me. So, if you love God maybe what draws you to that is the idea of something that’s never going to end and that really intense love often takes place in human relationships, too.”

Read on as Rodgers, who is 23, writes about her parents, grandmother, what she almost did instead of becoming a musician, and more.

1. I was really into romance when I was a child. I once told my teacher that my mum found my dad wondering through the Highlands of Scotland and that’s how they first met and fell in love. I was obsessed with the fact my dad’s Scottish too. I wanted to move there from England.

2. I played football for 10 years from the age of nine. As I got into my teens I started to notice how mocking boys my age were of it. It didn’t bother me too much because I was faster than most of them at the time.

3. My grandmother is from India but I don’t know anything about her background. She doesn’t talk about it much. All I know is that she was born in Howrah. She’s a very beautiful woman, her nickname is Pixie which is what inspired mine.

4. When I was a child I lived almost completely in my own world. Schooling felt like prison to me. If I had kids I’d hope to bring them up in Finland, they don’t go to school until they’re seven years old and they get so much more freedom. I don’t think it’s right to grade children when they’re still so young. It’s a killer of imagination and a bringer of self-doubt.

5. Just before I got offered a record deal with 4AD I was planning to move to France and become an au pair. I had the intention to keep writing out there but my plan was just to escape London. I’m really glad I stayed.

6. My brother Luke who’s a few years older than me has given me almost every book I’ve ever read. He’s taught me a lot without saying many words. I am eternally thankful to him.

www.pixxmusic.com

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