By Katie Asha, Deputy Music Editor
Pixie McCann is a UK-based artist known for her alternative pop and immersive worldbuilding in her music. Her Spotify bio reads ‘making music for the weird girls’, and it appears that the primary weird girl she is making music for is herself – McCann is consistently and carefully involved in every step of her songmaking process, from writing to production, and her discography is incredibly well-executed and cohesive accordingly. The singer has a distinctive sound of childlike whimsy that still goes directly into the belly of the beast with existential topics. She frequently makes performance videos in forests or other outdoor settings with just herself and a looping machine, home turf for someone whose first experience of performance was busking.
On 12th June McCann released her sophomore EP, Indigo, Vibrant and New, which cemented her as someone to watch. She is in the middle of a run of UK festivals this summer, spanning from Truck and Latitude Festival to upcoming sets at Boardmasters and All Points East. The singer will also be bringing her headline tour to Bristol this Autumn on the 6th of October — a perfect start to spooky season and opportunity for a great night.
Pixie picks up the phone the morning after an overnight flight from LA, and answers honestly when I ask her how she is. ‘Really jetlagged, to be honest with you… I’m so thrown off time-wise.’ We are both outside: I am in Greece with suncream sinking into my shoulders, perched on the hotel balcony with slightly janky WiFi, and Pixie is sitting outside on what looks like a front porch, tools leaned up against a wall in the pixelated background behind her. We both exchange some pleasantries (‘It’s so weird how no one walks in America!’) and then jump right into the conversation.
I know that your first ever experience of performance was busking. Do you have any funny stories, or ways in which you think it forced you to develop certain performance skills quickly?
I once had a guy give me £600 in £20 notes over the course of two hours, which was bloody crazy. I’ve had people steal my mic and sing into it, stuff like that. But I think most of it just taught me to not give as much of a shit as I always do. At the time I was such an insecure person, but busking gives you a real-time education in caring less about what other people think. It’s the most humbling thing in the world. You know how people do shrooms for ego death? I never had to do that, I had it with busking.
How did you get into producing your own music?
Producing was totally accidental. I struggle to refer to myself as a producer or take myself seriously as one, probably because of some internalised sexism – I have this subconscious knee-jerk reaction of ‘of course that isn’t who I am’, but yeah, I guess it is.
When I first started producing my own songs, it was solely out of necessity – I couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it, and I didn’t want to not make music altogether, so I was just like okay, cool, I guess this is my only option. I watched maybe two YouTube videos and then just used instincts for the rest of it. I still don’t know how to do anything ‘right’: I show people my projects and they go ‘What is going on here?’.
I’d love to get to a point where I can confidently say that I am a producer. But I have gotten to a point, at least, where it’s one of my favourite things in the world now. It feels like such a different angle of looking at the songmaking process, and I love it.
You’ve described your songwriting process as something kind of involuntary, like emotional waste that has to come out. Does that mean you don’t always get to choose what you write about?
For sure, I definitely don’t really choose what I write about. Also most of the time when I write a song, I initially have no idea what it’s about until a couple of months later. I’ll listen back to it, and suddenly it will all make sense paired with what I had going on at the time: I was accidentally summarising and processing things happening to me through songs — songs or lyrics which at the time seemed completely impersonal to me. I won’t even realise what I was actually talking about until I look at them in hindsight.
It is quite scary how the art we make can reveal aspects of ourselves we don’t even mean it to.
Absolutely. I often say that I don’t think someone truly knows me unless they’ve listened to my music, because I think it’s the place where I am most myself. Pretty much everywhere else I exist, I have embellished, or muted, or changed some aspect of myself in some sort of way – but in my music I’m completely honest.
What time of day do you write best in, and why?
Really, really, really late at night. I can go to my garage at 7am and spend four hours trying to write a song, and achieve fuck all – and then I’ll go back to the garage at 3am and finish a song in twenty minutes.
I know that you make songs mostly in your garage. What is it about that that makes it such a safe or special space for you to write in?
For me it feels like an island – it’s quite untouched by other people. It’s where I keep all my diaries, and instruments, and everything – it just feels like the inside of my mind. It’s also extremely messy, because as I said, it’s the inside of my mind.
The title of this EP comes from a lyric in your song ‘Deja Vu’ (‘you indigo, vibrant and new’), and also an Adrienne Lenker lyric (‘I was scared Indigo / but I wanted to’). You’ve spoken before about choosing the title because ‘indigo’ represents an unsureness and ambiguity to you. Do you think ambiguity is a good thing in art, or do you think truly quality art is decisive?
I don’t think as a twenty one year old girl I could be decisive with my art – I don’t think it would be honest. I don’t think that anything I’ve created has ever been sure because I don’t think I’ve ever been sure about anything. So I think that it wouldn’t be my art if it was any other way.
I definitely hope one day in my seventies I’ll make an album that will be like ‘this is it, this is the answer’... but I’m not there yet. When I think about art, I think about something I can relate to and see myself in, and I hope young women can listen to this and relate to all the uncertainty, questioning yourself and your morals. I mean, how can anyone be sure about anything?
Sophie Stradling
You began working with a producer for the first time on this EP – did it take a lot of trust to allow someone else to have a hand in your previously solo creative process? What kind of relationship do you need to have with someone to facilitate that?
Hell yes it takes a lot of trust. He (referring to Joel Pott) is the first producer I’ve ever worked with – I’m very particular about who I work with, because I care so much about my music and it’s hard to hand a work in progress to someone who you feel might ‘drop your baby.’ But what’s so amazing about working with Joel is that I’m completely matched in that way; even though he has so many amazing and successful songs under his belt, he’s not been swayed or changed by his success: he just genuinely, really cares. I can’t say enough nice things about him. He’s just an absolute wizard.
What is your relationship to live performance like? Has it changed at all since the start of your career?
I love performing more than almost anything. It has definitely changed, because it all started with busking, which was just constantly flooding myself with rejection. Performing on a stage with people who actually want to see me is such a shift from that; the more people who know the words, sing along, and root for me, the more it means. It’s only getting better from here.
Featured Image / Mia Knott
Will you be going to see Pixie McCann in concert?
