Karen Elson

MUSICIAN, MODEL, WALKING GHOST

What music are you currently grooving to? Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions’ new record, Until The Hunter, has been on a lot, and a friend got me Miles Davis’s Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud for my birthday, which is really beautiful. And I love Kurt Vile. Wakin On A Pretty Daze has such a good groove.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman. Every song is absolutely gorgeous. He has this way of being so tender while also quite harsh. Wild World is such a broken-hearted love song but it’s so brutal as well!

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? I collected tokens off a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box when I was eight or nine, from the Co-op in Oldham. I’ve got a twin sister and we got flexidiscs of Bananarama’s Robert De Niro’s Waiting, and one by Bonnie Tyler. I can’t remember which one was mine. Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins. That voice! I used to listen to everything on 4AD in my late teens.

What do you sing in the shower? Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talkin’ sounds brilliant in the shower.

What is your favourite Saturday night record? The Cure, Seventeen Seconds. I’ve always been a secret goth. Susan Cadogan’s Hurt So Good is a genius song for a party. And The Upsetters’ Chase The Devil. We’ll have wine and a dance round the table.

And your Sunday morning record? Little Bit Of Rain off Fred Neil’s Bleecker & McDougal is the most perfect thing for a Sunday. Also Bill Withers’ Use Me and Mazzy Star’s She Hangs Brightly. I’ll read the newspapers, make my kids pancakes, and try to do fuck all. That is the plan.

Karen Elson’s album Double Roses is out on April 7 on H.O.T.