Brethren helps raise Elle King’s ‘Spirit’
ANASHVILLE, Tenn. few weeks ago, Elle King was in a rehearsal hall in Nashville going over guitar licks from a new song with her band mates. The musicians, who were trying to get a handle on the new material from King’s upcoming album, were all sporting jackets that read “Brethren” on the back.
“It’s impossible for any guy to hit on me because I am constantly surrounded by, like, at least eight dudes at a time, all in matching jackets,” the 29-year-old King jokes.
The posse of long-haired men once came in handy, though, when King got in a fist fight with another woman. “They just kind of picked me up and took me out,” she says.
King decided to name her band the Brethren because they had all come together like a family to record and write songs for “Shake the Spirit.” It’s the follow-up to her 2015 debut, “Love Stuff,” which resulted in two Grammy nominations for her hit song “Ex’s and Oh’s.” Writing with members of the band in Los Angeles and recording together in a studio in rural Texas helped King get through a particularly tough, emotional year.
‘I was a wreck’
The singer had eloped in 2016 with Andrew Ferguson, a man she met just weeks earlier. A year later, King announced on Instagram that they had split. Throughout it all she was in a deep hole of depression, dealing with substance abuse and what she’s described in a social media post as post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I was really digging the bottom of the barrel and I was a wreck,” King says. “I was just so sad all the time.”
That’s when her Brethen showed up to support her. Guitarist Cameron Neal and Paul Devincenzo, who plays bass, started going to her house in L.A. and writing for days on end.
“We knew that writing for her was helping her to get to a better place,” Neal says. “If she wanted to stay at home for 10 hours a day and just write, we would do it, surrounded by disco balls and furry blankets. We always saw the best in Elle when she was picking up a guitar and playing music.”
What came out on the album, due out Friday, are songs such as “Good Thing Gone,” an emotional roller coaster in the vein of a classic Motown torch singer. King sings, cries, wallows and whispers her feelings: “I never fully had faith, you see, ’cause I always knew you’d fall out of love with me.”
“Every song was just like another layer away from just this sadness and this darkness,” King says. “We’re all very together and bonded through this experience.”
She gathered the band in a Denton, Texas, barnturned-studio to record the songs, some of which had to be done in one take because she started crying.
“I just remember crying and singing like, ‘Girl, you gotta get through this, you gotta get through this. Use your pain,’ ” King says.
‘I came out of it OK’
She keeps it light-hearted for most of the record, though. King jokes about a certain sexual act in “It Girl,” calls out a cheating ex by admitting her own infidelity on “Man’s Man,” and delivers her own version of a crying-in-your-beer country blues number on “Sober,” where she promises, “I’ll fix it all when I’m sober.”
The album ends on a redemptive note called “Little Bit of Lovin.’ ” The guitar-heavy rock anthem features King’s raspy, growling vocals backed by a choir of harmony singers.
She originally wrote the lyrics as “There ain’t no more lovin’ left in this heart of mine” but decided that wasn’t right. She changed it to “I still got a little bit of lovin’ left in me.” At the midpoint of the song, she gives an empowered sermon on love, strength and hope.
“It was like my spirit was singing to me and being like, ‘Yo! Snap out of this, girl!
You got this and you can do this,’ ” she says.
King has a reputation for being a strong-willed and tough-as-nails woman, a rock ’n’ roller of the old-school variety. But she admitted to some trepidation about singing the new songs live, especially now that she’s not relying on crutches such as alcohol.
“I don’t want to hide behind anything anymore,” King says. “It’s nerve-racking to go onstage, because when you’re drunk, you’re like, ‘I don’t care! This is great!’ ”
Mostly she wants people who have been as lonely anddownashertohear the music and find a light at the end of the tunnel, evenifthatmessageof self-love doesn’t sound very hardcore.
“There are people out there that don’t know how to love themselves,” King says. “I don’t care if people say that’s not rock ’n’ roll or whatever. I am rock ’n’ roll as hell, man. And I went through all of this and I was just so broken and I came out of it OK, and better. Way better.”