No Pain for Us Here, issued under the name elke, marks a colorful art-pop rebirth for the singer-songwriter Kayla Graninger. Recording with her boyfriend, producer/multi-instrumentalist Zac Farro (Paramore, HalfNoise), Graninger let go of her creative crutches — abandoning a pre-conceived idea of what her music needed to sound like.
Her initial vision for elke was ultra specific — and more limited in scope than the sprawling No Pain (out September 10th via Farro's label, Congrats Records). Not that her concept wasn't admirable: She aimed to break down "barriers of gender roles" with her songs, intoning in a brooding, often unsettling low register inspired by songwriters like Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. "Very male-dominated, very male-inspired," she says of her early work. "I thought, 'Why do females have to be [stereotypically] female?'"
But back in her teenage years, Graninger wasn't so fixated on any particular artistic path. She wrote her first song around her freshman year of high school, drawing on the everyday pain of not getting along with her family. But her love of writing — lyrics, poetry, journaling — became the through line of her life: She had trouble developing any close friendships as a kid, frequently moving across the country from Illinois, Pennsylvania, to a Virginia boarding school to Las Vegas due to her father's job in the casino industry.
"I recently had the devastating thought of 'I'm never gonna have a soul sister because I've never stayed in one place long enough,'" she admits. "It was hard in that way, but I also understand people in a different way, and it set me up for a life of curiosity and exploration."
At age 17, she made her most pivotal move: heading to New York City and fully immersing herself in music. She found gigs in the city's East Village and Lower East Side — playing under a handful of monikers until she arrived at elke, the name of her mother & grandmother who had passed before she ever got to meet her. "When I started adapting my writing into my music as an adult," she says, "rather than just a chick singing other people's songs for them, I knew I had something I could be proud of, and chase to no end."
Graninger signed to Kobalt Records and recorded her debut EP, 2018's Bad Metaphors, with producer Shawn Everett (The War on Drugs, Local Natives, The Killers), who encouraged her to experiment.
Her follow-up EP, 2020's Visitors, veered into darker folk balladry and synth atmospheres, her voice often pitched at a low rumble. But that project feels tentative compared to her debut LP, which she recorded after a move to L.A. (Since then, she's relocated again (shocker!) — this time to Nashville.)
And it took the aforementioned skin-shedding to make No Pain a reality — an often strenuous process partly spearheaded by Farro, her producer and instrumental collaborator. Starting, as usual, with the images and rhythmic pulses of her words, Graninger developed songs at their L.A. apartment by crafting skeletal parts on guitar or Wurlitzer piano. They soon had enough material for an album, but they had to "work around each other's schedules" over a full year — a challenge only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Farro was instrumental in the album's expanded color palette: playing drums (along with occasional bass, guitar, and synth) and frequently encouraging her stylistic shifts — like the disco groove in "Mothers" (highlighted by a sax solo from Antonio Hancock), the dreamy indie-pop swirl of "Traveler" ("The destination, it was always inside of me," Granginer sings, autobiographically), and the jazzy, string-bathed sigh of "Endless Love."
The album's heartbeat might be "Vacuum," a stark pulse illuminated by the singer's unique observations — drawing out poignancy and humor from the titular, mundane household item.
"I decided a vacuum is what one needed first and foremost because in reaching distance from where I was writing the song was a book I was reading - "Pretend I'm Dead” by Jen Beagin. I had the line already written, "If I could give you anything, I'd give you this", and from there I had to decide what that was. Seeing the book ignited the idea of a vacuum because the main character cleans homes for a living, and I also have this weird attachment to the sensation of vacuuming, watching the dust get picked up. It's all my way of saying 'Wake up! Try harder & make something of yourself!"
The crux of recording No Pain was nailing down the vocals.
"[Zac] told me to sing a little higher and explore my range, and I got a little mad at him," Graninger recalls with a laugh. "We got into arguments. It started out easygoing, and hearing me [change stylistically] made it harder for me to sing in the studio. I'd have to leave and go sit in the car. I'd get overwhelmed. We butted heads because I really thought that was my thing."
Graninger was admittedly "stubborn" at first, trying to stick to a comfortable sound. But this album, she now knows, was about "cracking that layer." The same way some find peace from a lifelong home, having a distinct aesthetic can be satisfying. Moving may always be in her agenda, but so is her diehard obsession with music.