“It’s more like a house party than a dance club,” says Meg Elsier ahead of her opening performance at on Thursday, June 19. Gesturing to the tiny venue—a glitzy wooden stage with old-fashioned lightbulbs framing the curtains, a bar crammed into the back left corner, and an open floor that could fit about 200 people—the indie singer-songwriter shares her excitement over her “special” performance. That night was the first of four gigs she supported for Liz Cooper, another indie rocker making a name for herself in the Nashville scene. The two met each other in the city, joining a web of like-minded indie artists in the Tennessee rock scene. Now, they’re double-billed. “I watched her play in this scene that also took me in,” she admits, buzzing with energy. “It was a community that welcomed me and everybody! To be able to play these shows in front of all the friends we have in New York…it means a lot.”

Meg Elsier may be relatively new to the indie rock scene, but she’s hitting the ground running. After she released her debut record spittake last year, the singer-songwriter and her two accompanying bandmates have been travelling across the states supporting alt rockers like Blondshell and Cooper. Performing songs from spittake — as well as a saccharine, cheeky, alt rock rendition of Gwen Stefani’s “Cool”—the singer-songwriter showcased her ability to command a large crowd, even if the gig comprised mainly of close friends and dedicated fans packed together. Bubbly, confident, and unafraid to dish out the messier sides of spittake’s themes, she confessed to attending “the worst f—ing party ever,” (“oldnews”), “how I’m the most immature person in the world,” (“baby”), and dedicating a song to “the most annoying man on the planet” (“forlyleinsanfrancisco”), all while reveling in the intensity of the humming amps, a steely heavy guitar, thick bass, warbling synth tracks, and, once in a while, a cathartic scream.

In this economy of quick album turnarounds, “cycles” and “eras,” and pushing one-off singles and EPs to keep an artist’s name in circulation, many artists across genres aim to bring the carefully-crafted storytelling aspect of records back to the center of production. The more famous examples of JPEGMAFIA, who recently acquired all his masters and is now releasing “Director’s Cut” extended editions to present them how he originally intended, and Charli xcx’s year-long reworking and promoting of brat illuminate this attitude of reclamation—of giving physical, creative, and media control of the music back to the artist. On a much smaller scale, indie artists like Elsier want the same thing. “There’s no reason to wipe something away early because you think people’s attention is finite,” she says. “Whatever [the album] is supposed to be, it’s supposed to be. You should fight for that!”

Meg Elsier at the Union Pool in Brooklyn by photo by Bobby Nicholas lll

Elsier began working on spittake in 2023, but instead of moving on, she wanted to linger with its story as much as possible. “[It] was the first thing I ever did and released,” she says. “I feel like I took my time with it, which I really appreciated. Like, I built this foundation that I really like.” But with all the bumps and missed turns that come with navigating one’s first big art project, the first go-around might not have said everything she wanted. She’s now working on a deluxe version of her album, reworking and releasing six new tracks taken from old demos,
scrapped singles, and unfinished songs that she wrote for spittake. “I truly believe that’s how it was supposed to be released in the beginning,” she adds. “There was so much more to it, and with the parts that did get released…people just connected with it! [The deluxe version] just feels like a fun way to connect with people even more and give the story what it deserves.”

During the performance, the band devoted much time to playing unreleased tracks, sometimes announcing them, sometimes just letting the music pour out the speakers. It is clear how much they build upon the violence, wryness, callousness, and sore spirit of spittake. One of the standout tracks—not just from the selection of unreleased songs, but of the whole performance—was “Cheater.” A slow, raw ballad that swims in the frenzied droning of guitars and clicking of the pedals, this song presents Elsier at her most vulnerable, letting Elsier’s voice turn frail and soft as she sings of betrayal and heartbreak—something she typically hides behind a louder, angrier, and confrontational belt. On the contrary, her performance of “sportscar,” a scrapped track that released the night before her Union Pool show, was much wilder and upbeat, channeling more of a country rock flair as she reflected on the exhilarating yet quickly-imploding changes in her life. Both bonus songs encapsulate what it’s like tbe on the receiving end of God’s spit, to paraphrase her titular track’s hook. It certainly blows to feel like you’re constantly getting hurt, ridiculed, and emotionally kicked around. But to wipe off the germs, get up, and show the wounds that didn’t end up killing you with confidence—that’s the spunky attitude at the heart of Elsier’s diary of a 20-something-year-old punk in Nashville.

Her experience writing and promoting spittake allowed Meg Elsier to see how her music can serve as a means to figure out her own point of view. “I think I just want people to know me more,” she says before getting ready to go on stage for that night’s show. “What better way than to be like, ‘Hey, this is the demo I made in my bedroom that sounds nothing like this song [from the original record], but this is where that came from!’ Or like, ‘We scrapped this song because we didn’t quite find it until now.’” And if it takes longer to find the right words to tell her story, then so be it. Now that she learned how to make a record, Meg Elsier can do whatever she wants with it. Nobody owns the lyrics, melodies, production, or real-life inspiration except her.

photos by Booby Nicholas lll
words by Victoria Borlando

Meg Elsier photo at Union Pool photo by Bobby Nicholas lll

order Spittake by Meg Elsier HERE