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Oct 13, 2023 By Tim Cundy Photography by Alexa Viscius

While speaking with Ella Williams, known by her stage name as Squirrel Flower, it’s easy to see how the ideas of control have been on her mind lately. As paradoxical as control can be at certain times, Williams finds it important to know when to let go of modern life cynicisms and allow the natural world to remind her she’s still alive. Williams’ newest album, Tomorrow’s Fire, is out today on Polyvinyl and in it she explores those ideas of control through the lens of distorted guitar, introspective lyrics, and ethereal vocals.

This would be the first full-length Squirrel Flower record produced by Williams, co-producing alongside her collaborator Alex Farrar. Her two previous albums, I Was Born Swimming and Planet (i), have earned her a growing number of listeners from not only Chicago, but New York, Los Angeles, and London. She’s been stepping into the headliner spot with ease and playing bigger and bigger venues, but she is not naive to the effect success can have on an artist’s control over their life.

I first listened to Williams’ music a couple of years ago, not long after she moved to the city, and since then it’s been great seeing how Chicago has influenced her songwriting, whether it be through her collaborations with groups such as Grapetooth and Tenci or through her music video work with filmmakers such as Lua Borges, John Jadkowski, and Weird Life Films. I’ve always had a special appreciation for the integral sense of community tied up in the Chicago arts, particularly when it comes to music. It provides an environment of support between artists and fans that makes each show you buy a ticket for feel like a participation in something unique, as if the music played anywhere else doesn’t sound quite as good as it does on a Chicago stage.

I spoke with Williams on the phone to talk about her upcoming tour, strategies she takes to not lose her mind on the road, her thoughts on the themes of Tomorrow’s Fire and her growing interest in learning the accordion. Even with a busy schedule, including a morning full of press interviews, Williams remains completely present in the conversation, adamant about finding some sort of truth in the answers she provides to my questions. “I feel like a lot of the time,” she tells me. “Talking with people about my music helps me realize things about it that I didn’t know before.”

Tim Cundy (Under the Radar): How’s the prep for your tour going?

Ella Williams: It’s going, you know, it’s good. I tour manage myself so it is definitely a lot of work, especially as my shows get larger and the tours get longer. Tour managing for a European tour also has very unique challenges, but it’s also fun to see all of the pieces fall into place. It feels like a full time office job right now.

Are you in charge of finding openers for all your shows too?

Sort of, like I always have a say in who opens my shows. I have a bunch of openers for my October tour and I’m trying to find people for November now. Usually I like to put word out and get recommendations from the public because you can find hidden gems that way—and just to see what the hell people are listening to.

Is this your biggest tour that you’ve done so far?

I think it’s the longest tour? It’s nice to have that big holiday break in the middle, but thinking of it all as one tour, it is the biggest tour I’ve done and it’s a lot of the largest venues that I’ve headlined as well, so stocks are up.

When I was looking at the tour dates I was trying to think of what I would do to keep myself grounded, like do you have strategies for yourself in terms of what you’re listening to or how to keep yourself focused on each upcoming performance?

Every time I go on tour I have lots and lots of strategies. Usually around week two they all go out the window and it’s just demon mode all the time. You’re just doing whatever you can to get through the day. Not even that it’s bad, but you just get in a way where you feel like you’re floating. You’re so on the fringes of the world when you’re on tour. At a certain point I find it easier to almost dissociate from it all. I think there’s a way to embrace the nature of floating along while also being present and putting on a killer show every night.

In my old days of DIY touring, every day on tour would feel like a vacation and it would bring very exciting opportunities to meet exciting people and it was a kind of a party all the time. I find that as I get older and tour in these new ways that are not DIY, it’s important to let myself off the hook and be like, “It’s okay that you’re not exploring every town that you play in.” I can be gentle with myself and not have all these crazy experiences because it’s not vacation. There can be moments where it’s incredible and feels like vacation, but I think just letting myself off the hook on much longer tours and floating along is how I get through it. Aside from that I like to do yoga on the road and stay off caffeine and booze as much as I can just to protect my nervous system so I can put everything into the shows. I love it with all of my heart, but you have to just find this rhythm that—for me—feels very different from my daily life.

I feel like touring could be such an easy thing to idealize from an outside point-of-view too. Do you ever get homesick while you’re on the road?

It’s hard to say. I don’t think I do really. I guess it depends where home is for me, which is something I don’t always know. I guess I’ve felt homesick for Chicago while being on tour, but I’ve also felt homesick for just crawling into my parents’ house and taking a break from life. I don’t often get the feeling that some people talk about like, “Oh I really miss my bed.” I feel like hotel beds and hotel rooms are probably nicer than any place I’ve lived in. The past couple of years it’s been a treat when we are staying at hotels, and then I come home and I’m homesick for the Holiday Inn Express.

Your Spotify description describes your music as witch rock. How would you describe the genre of witch rock?

[Laughs] I think it’s just that. It’s just witch rock.

It’s what the witches are listening to.

I think I make music that is sometimes heavy, like sonically heavy, but also introspective. It deals with spiritual things and nature and the ebbs and flows of life. There’s definitely folky elements to it, but at the end of the day—with this new record especially—it’s rock ’n’ roll. I don’t really like the term “indie rock.” When somebody who I feel doesn’t know a lot about contemporary music asks me what kind of music I make I say “indie rock” because it’s just the easiest thing to say, but I don’t really know what that means. [Witch rock] feels very true to who I am and what I make.

Yeah, indie rock is such a catch all.

It’s like anything. It could be anything.

With this being your third album do you feel the process you go through to create music has become easier to have a handle on?

In terms of production, yes. In terms of songwriting, no. I would say the very beginning of the creative process, like the seed of a song, is something that is forever a mystery to me. That part of the process is very fluid and very dependent on who I am and where I am and what I’m doing at any given time. You can’t force it.

In terms of production, I feel like I’ve gotten to this point where I know exactly what I want and pretty much exactly how to get there. Obviously I’m not an engineer, but in terms of arranging, capturing the mood, and finding the sounds, I feel like I’ve never been so self-assured and confident. That’s why I wanted to produce this album. I co-produced it with my collaborator Alex [Farrar] and being one of the producers was very important to me because I felt very ready to be fully in control of all of it this time around.

Do you still start a song in the same way with a guitar?

For a lot of the songs on the new record, yes, but like “Intheskatepark” I wrote on a little toy synthesizer in 2019. I wrote some of the songs on synthesizer. I wrote some of the songs without any instruments. When I pick up an instrument to write, the song will be changed based on which instrument I pick up, and that’s a very freeing thing to know because if I ever feel stuck, I can just switch to another instrument. Lately I’ve been playing a lot of accordion actually.

Accordion definitely sounds interesting. It’s a crazy instrument to see played in-person too.

It’s such a good instrument and it’s so fucking hard. It’s like, really, really hard. But yeah, maybe my next album will be Italian accordion music.

That sounds amazing.

You heard it here first.

These music videos that you’ve put out seem like they were a blast to make.

Yeah, it was so fun.

When you’re making songs are there ones you know you want to see visually?

For “Full Time Job” I did have this vision from the get-go. I wanted to reference some performance art I made when I was studying art in college. I would get a camcorder and go around filming myself cleaning places that didn’t really make sense to clean. I’d wear a housewife dress and set up the tripod and film myself just scrubbing train tracks on the edge of town or cleaning dirt roads. I was interested in playing with the ideas of domesticity and power and gender roles and all those lovely things that college students like to think about.

A lot of this album comes from reflecting upon my past self and past art. Those videos I used to make fit perfectly in terms of what the song is about when it comes to control and lack of control. I had the idea of incorporating those actions into it, but then I wanted to end the video smashing a guitar to sort of signify that fucking release. The relinquishing of control. We shot it all in one day and we started at 5:00 AM and ended at 7:00 PM. We did everything chronologically pretty much, so the guitar smashing happened at the end. We filmed it during a period that was really stressful for me, like I had to move the next day and there was a bunch of other shit going on, so when I had to smash the guitar I didn’t really think I’d be able to do it. I was really, really nervous, but it ended up being the most cathartic thing I’ve ever done. After I did it, I started crying a little just because the release that I felt was so incredible. I’m very grateful for Lua [Borges] and John [Jadkowski] for rolling with that idea and helping it come to life while adding their own twists as well.

I know it can be hard to pin down, but as you were putting the songs together was there something you were noticing as a theme to the project as a whole?

Yeah, I think the songs always reveal [the theme] to me as opposed to me setting an intention to write an album about something specific. A lot of these songs I wrote in a time of desperation while surrounded by immense creative collaboration and community. It was during a time where for several months a lot of people really close to me in Chicago didn’t have work. We didn’t have any money but we had lot of time, so we would just get together to play music and talk about music and make art and just kind of go crazy together. I didn’t write the songs with other people, but I was really inspired by that energy, especially with songs like “When a Plant Is Dying” and “Finally Rain.” Those two songs are directly about and for the people that I was hanging with at that time.

I think at the root of a lot of the songs is how challenging it can be to be a young person in the world right now. We’re all just trying to live creative lives and not succumb to nihilism or being numb. That might sound really negative, but I think a lot of the songs are really rooted in hope.

I definitely get that feeling in “When a Plant is Dying.” The lyric that stuck with me was “These days it takes a sunrise/To remember you’re alive.” I feel like there’s this sense of doom or dread, but there’s still a perseverance there, especially when you see something uniquely beautiful such as a sunrise. It gives you a moment to just check-in with yourself.

Yeah, like using nature as a grounding force, especially in the era of technology when it’s so easy to feel numb all the time because of overstimulation. Just getting out, taking lessons from nature and getting jolted back into what it is to be a creature on a planet. That’s something that helps me a lot. But yeah, I think one root of the album is in the song “Finally Rain.” It’s the last line that goes, “If this is what it means to be alive/We won’t grow up.” That’s sort of a double meaning because on one hand it’s like, “Holy shit, the Earth has an expiration date.” On the other hand it’s saying that we have a better way to live and we don’t need to just accept things and live within the status quo. There’s a beauty in being naive in the sense of being optimistic and caring for one other and making music and, in a sense, not growing up.

www.squirrelflower.net

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