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Aug 30, 2024 Web Exclusive By Mark Redfern Photography by Neil Shukla

My Firsts is our email interview series where we ask musicians to tell us about their first life experiences, be it early childhood ones (first word, first concert, etc.) or their first tastes of being a musician (first band, first tour, etc.). For this My Firsts we talk to Oceanator (aka Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Elise Okusami).

Oceanator’s new album, Everything is Love and Death, is her third full-length and is out today on Polyvinyl. It’s the follow up to Nothing’s Ever Fine, which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2022, and Things I Never Said, which initially came out in August 2020 via her own Plastic Miracles label and then was reissued physically in February 2021 by Polyvinyl. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2020.

“I feel like these songs are honing in on and parsing the same themes as previous records, more settled and clearer.” Okusami says of the new album and how it finishes what she started with the first two. “I’ve gotten better at listening to the rational part of my brain, the understanding that things aren’t going to work. I know better but I’m gonna do it anyway, because everything is love and death.”

Okusami worked with Grammy nominated producer Will Yip (Turnstile, The Wonder Years, Bartees Strange) on the album, spending a full month in the studio, which is longer than on her previous albums. Okusami plays guitar, bass, synths, and drums on the album. Her brother and longtime collaborator Mike Okusami plays bass and piano on the album, with Yip on drums and other percussion. Megan Siebe, Andrew Whitehurst, Eric Sherman, and David Haik all contribute additional instrumentation. “The feeling that these songs were giving me was that they needed to be a big, loud rock band with shredding guitars,” Elise Okusami says.

Read on as Okusami talks about the Disney villain that freaked her out, buying albums at Best Buy, a late ’80s/early ’90s heartthrob she had a crush on, and the adorable first job she had.

First broken bone?

I broke my middle finger on my right hand. I thought I had just jammed it because that used to happen all the time and then we were in the gym playing some sort of game and I grabbed someone’s shoulder and felt a crack. Got X-rays and apparently it had been broken and I rebroke it a couple times without realizing it!

First movie you saw in the movie theater?

The Little Mermaid. I spilled all my popcorn and when Ursula came out I got too scared and my mom had to take me home. Disney movies used to be quite frightening.

First album you bought?

[Green Day’s] Dookie. My neighbor had brought it over for us to listen to and me and my brother put it on and loved it. When he wanted it back I got my own copy at the Best Buy.

First actor or actress you had a crush on?

I think it was Christian Slater. I saw Heathers on TV and loved it. I went out as soon as it was over and got the DVD at that same Best Buy. Eventually got Pump of the Volume, True Romance, and a couple others on DVD. I couldn’t find Gleaming the Cube anywhere so I taped it from a Blockbuster rental.

First concert you went to?

The Wallflowers and Counting Crows was the first one we went to because I wanted to go, but as a kid I saw Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger. I think that might be the earliest one I remember, or possibly Raffi!

First music festival you went to?

HFStival. There was a radio station in DC called WHFS. They put on a festival every year. I think one year there were actually two. The first year I went I saw Limp Bizkit and The Chemical Brothers and a bunch of others. The second time I went I got to see Stone Temple Pilots and Rage Against the Machine. My friend’s parents took us and they sat up in the bleachers and let us go to whatever stage we wanted as long as we checked in at scheduled times.

First job you had?

I was a camp counselor in the summer for a bunch of years! It was fun. I liked working with the five to nine year olds. They were really sweet. I taught one to tie his shoes! When he did it by himself the first time he came running over to show me.

First car you owed?

1996 Honda Accord. That green color everyone had! It was my mom’s and then it was mine. I used to drive it to school every day until it got stolen when we were out of town.

First computer?

When I was really small we had an Amiga computer. Me and my brother used it to play Wheel of Fortune and Sidewinder, an..up-scroller? Kind of like Centipede or Galaga where you’re flying a plane and going up. You had to shoot bad guys.

First email address?

I still use it actually. It’s an AOL account. It’s what I put down for anything that needs an email like at a store or for a subscription or whatever. I will not be telling you what it is.

First social media account?

Probably Myspace. I remember having an account but I don’t remember doing much on it. I never really got into LiveJournal or any of those.

First instrument?

Piano, but it was brief. I took lessons for about a year when I was five or six. Then I started guitar at nine and in high school started drumming.

First band you were in?

In middle school I started a band with my younger brother Michael, and my friends David, Matt, and Jake. Me and Mike and David actually kept that band going through high school and recorded two albums at home.

First recording device?

We had a TASCAM 4-track I think. The big blue one that you record to cassette.

First professional recording session?

I think it was actually at a Converse Rubber Tracks when they used to do that. A band I was playing bass in was doing one and it was pretty cool. They had the whole studio and a bunch of really nice gear and everything. You got eight hours in the studio and at the end you got to put the whole session on a hard drive and take it away. Some of my second EP, Lows, was recorded at one of those. I think they shut them all down. They must have been losing a lot of money.

www.oceanator.surf

Oceanator was one of the artists on our Covers of Covers album, which came out in March 2022 via American Laundromat. She covered Elliott Smith’s “The Biggest Lie.” Check the cover out here.

Read our interview with Oceantor about Nothing’s Ever Fine.

Read our interview with Oceanator about Things I Never Said.

Read our review of Nothing’s Ever Fine here.

Read our review of Things I Never Said here.

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