Q&A: Meg Elsier Releases Fearless Expansion of Acclaimed Debut ‘Spittake (Deluxe)’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photography Credit: Jacqueline Justice
THE BEAUTY IN THE UNFINISHED — Rising indie-rock powerhouse Meg Elsier is pulling back the curtain on her creative process with the announcement of spittake (deluxe), an expanded edition of her widely praised 2024 debut album. The deluxe project offers a deeper, more unfiltered glimpse into the emotional nucleus of spittake, featuring 17 tracks, including live recordings, unreleased B-sides, and early demo versions that trace the blueprint of the original release.
“These B-sides, these demos, this deluxe—it’s a celebration of all the little choices that made spittake what it is,” Elsier says. “It’s a look under the hood. A practice in vulnerability. A lighter grip. I wanted to show how much beauty can exist in the unfinished and imperfect.”
Far from a typical deluxe repackaging, spittake (deluxe) feels like a companion piece with its diary-like, intimate reveal of what’s often left unsaid or unheard. It’s Elsier’s attempt to embrace the unfinished, the imperfect, and the in-progress. With her signature blend of gauzy shoegaze textures, fuzzy grunge guitars, and biting introspection, Elsier uses the expanded tracklist to blur the lines between polish and imperfection, performance and process. It’s a work that dares to feel incomplete in all the right ways, in contrast to the sometimes sterile sheen of over-curated releases.
The first offering from the deluxe, “sportscar [scrapped]” revs up from hushed, self-aware verses into a bold, driving chorus. Both sleek and bruised, the song channels the open-road freedom that comes with letting go of control.
“Artists and creatives have the ability to seem untouchable—to remain inches off the ground, and honestly that seems safer sometimes,” Elsier reflects. “But sometimes it seems like curation to the point of alienation. I wanted to start this off right and honest. That was the intention with Spittake. It’s the intention with the deluxe. And it’s the intention with the next album.”
Where spittake introduced Elsier’s voice to the world, its deluxe edition invites listeners into the creative rooms, emotional cracks, and in-progress sketches that led to it. It’s a bold and vulnerable move, but for Elsier, vulnerability is not a risk, it’s the whole point.
Photography Credit: Jacqueline Justice
LUNA: Welcome back and thank you for talking to Luna again. It's super exciting to have you back since the last time we talked about your spittake album. I would love to catch up and see how life has been treating you and what have you been up to since the last time we talked.
MEG: I feel like we really locked in on touring. We've been doing a lot of touring and making things with Jacqueline Justice — whether it's a photo shoot or videos. It's literally just been exploring different mediums of spittake. I feel like I black out and I don't remember how to release things anymore after an album is already out in the world. It was finding the live aspect of how to play songs that seem pretty hard to play live, and how we make it completely authentic and genuine while we're doing it.
LUNA: What inspires you to push boundaries within your sound? Are there any specific experiences, artists, or moments that have encouraged you to explore new musical territories?
MEG: I think it's literally anyone who you can tell they're so genuine and they'll refuse to compromise whatsoever, whether it's Björk or Chappell Roan. Specifically, women and queer people have been really the face of just being unapologetically themselves and who they want to be as artists and not compromising. After releasing spittake, I really craved having something to say. Where, at first I was really afraid to say anything, where now I just really crave it. I do really like the potential of you saying something enough that some people won't like it and there's a really beautiful thing within that of committing enough, or having this statement, when before I felt like for me as an artist, it was really tricky or easy to not say a lot of things.
LUNA: The deluxe edition of spittake feels like both a continuation and a revelation. What inspired you to continue the story and why is now the right time to revisit and expand on your debut album?
MEG: Spittake has so much life in it, and so that was a huge component of there were songs that we left that nobody had heard ever again. We recorded the album and we never played those songs live again, because we wanted to figure out what else was going. “Sportscar” was the funnest song to play live. It’s everyone's favorite. As soon as it got cut off the album even though we loved it, which was such a shock because it was so fun to play live. It was having so much that I didn't get to share, and then just feeling more comfortable and confident with whether it's the reception of spittake, or whether it was me playing live and getting to play to these audiences that I've never experienced where I wanted to show more. I feel really lucky that I was given a platform in general that people connected with that. Maybe I want to connect a little more with it.
LUNA: Looking back at spittake a year later, how do you feel about the album and its impact?
MEG: I feel like when I released it, it was a my hands were off and I'm going to let it be other people's now and be vulnerable. I'm happy with it, so that's how it should be let out. Now, I feel a lot less lonely, and I feel the fact that people have connected to it. Sonically, I found it unique. I've had a reception of people really getting it, which makes me feel less alone, and then people really understand that you don't have to sound pretty, you can completely blend things, and you do not have to be put in a box. I think because I got rewarded, it was received so well that now that's all I want to do. I'm not afraid, and that's just from people and the reception. I feel more confident and a lot less alone.
LUNA: Did you take any creative risks or experiment with new approaches on the deluxe compared to original spittake? What felt different this time around in how you expressed yourself?
MEG: All of it and none of it. It was weird. The demos are probably the thing I'm most proud of, and the imposter syndrome is slightly there, but not really. Spittake was like a first draft. It was this published thing, and now I'm being like, ‘do y'all want to read my diary entries of what this shit is about?’ It's slightly terrifying, but I am really craving connecting with people more on that, where I'm like, ‘I'm clearly not perfect. We learned that the first time. Let me double down on this.’
It's some of my favorite things to absorb from artists. For example, Sufjan Stevens released that 10 minute demo. It's my favorite where you get that side of an artist that you didn't know. I think those sides that you don't see are more intimate. I'm so proud of the demos and so scared of when it came to going back to the songs that we cut. It was so hard and so easy at the same time. There's a medium of blending where you are now because influences change like that. This album came out a year ago, but we wanted to keep it within the vein of what we were trying to do, which is why we didn't rerecord. We did some, but we wanted to work with the steps that we did out of respect for spittake and what we did during that session. That was really fun, but really interesting, like time traveling, navigating of being ‘I'm over.’ It was a really unique way to work on music that I haven't done before.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on the album — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who meg elsier is right now?
MEG: “Saturdaymourning” has always been so devastatingly deep and important to me. A year later, that song has been on my mind, and I'm more proud of it. The more that I've been taking time and reflecting with the album, even if we didn't add that demo or anything, I feel like that's slightly reflective of where I am now. It just shows how something like it organically came out in this way, and it was made to be something completely different, like it was supposed to be how it is on the album, but its initial coming was way different. I feel like that's where I am now. I just can tell when things are coming out normally,
LUNA: “Sportscar [scrapped]” kicks off this new chapter. What’s the story behind that track, and what themes and emotions do you explore?
MEG: “Sportscar” is super interesting. There was a huge potential that the album was either going to be a spittake or it was going to be a check engine light sign, not even words. I think people are used to me being obnoxious, but because cars were floating around in my head. There's cars mentioned in the album throughout spittake, but once “Sportscar” was cut, that side story no longer slightly belongs in the 11th song. The deluxe is taking that side road that we didn't miss, but we went down, we realized it was the wrong way, but now we get to show it. Let's go on this detour and check it out. I feel like that is the epitome of the deluxe in general.
LUNA: Last time we talked about your visual storytelling and maximalist fashion influences and how it’s always been a healing outlet for you to explore. What were some fun or memorable visual elements you’ve incorporated for this deluxe era?
MEG: Jacqueline Justice and I were really playing with the idea of being inspired by live performances, and for me learning touring and how you connect an album live, and how important and otherworldly that is. We wanted to explore that with the deluxe, because I feel like it was a muscle I learned to flex after I learned after spittake was released. For all of the live videos, we have little Easter eggs of fucking everything that we've done in every little video. We just had so many little connections and little callbacks to it, but it highlights how important and how much I still love playing with costumes and visuals and for performance, not even just vocally or emotionally,
LUNA: What’s fueling your fire right now—musically or personally—that’s pushing you into this next chapter?
MEG: A lot of growth. Writing is truly the only way I'll ever be able to figure out what the fuck is going on in life, in my head, in general. There's been a lot of digesting stuff like that, but also we're moving in a month to New York. I'm literally closing a chapter in my life, which is very interesting. I donated 50 trash bags of clothes. It’s weird when you're actually shutting a door on something. And it's weird working on the next album. I know this is going to influence it, I just don't know how yet. Stay tuned. We'll figure that out together eventually. I feel like a lot of shit is shifting, and I think there's a lot of growing pains and stretches that I'm excited to explore.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
MEG: I'm blonde now, so everything has shifted for me. Everything is different. I've made an album before, but I have no idea how to make a second album. I'm going to be the same chicken with my head chopped off, just feeling everything too intensely and trying to make that into an album. Our energy shifted, that's making stuff awesome and very confusing and cool. I feel more prepared.
Photography Credit: Jacqueline Justice
