“For me its about letting out everything I feel. You know, the bath water is getting cold and we need a refill, but the waitress only has black coffee. Sometimes you have to learn the only person who can tell your story is yourself.”
WHO is Elvis Arthur? A singer-songwriter who uses the piano as his orchestra. But, WHAT is Elvis Arthur? An ocean you’ll need a bigger boat for.
At first thought you might think you were listening to Tori Amos, the voice comes in and you think, maybe a child of the Wainwright family? Listen deeper and you’ll hear him ripping his heart out with the decorum of someone sitting at the presidents dining table. His siren sounds, everyone in the room falls to the floor apart from you, as if you are the only person intended to hear. This is Elvis Arthur. How is he doing that?
Born in New Zealand, the son to an American model and a part Maori local rockstar, he grew up in an equilibrium of being free to be himself but also aware he was the odd one out, “Growing up in a place colonised by the English, when you are half American and part indigenous, those who’s identity and country was taken from them really leaves you in a limbo growing up.”
Music was everywhere he grew up, with his father playing Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and the Beatles, while his mother blasted LCD Soundsystem, Kate Bush, Blondie and Bic Runga for the runway.
Elvis first began to play piano at middle school, “There was two uprights next to each other in this abandoned music room, one half way up the wall and one I could hardly fit under. Someone years before had put a chart on the wall with all these chord shapes so I said to myself, “I’m a pianist!”. I would disappear from every class for a year so I could to play one of them, or both at one time. Luckily my math class was easiest to escape, just up the hall.” From then he would go after school and play with his father or attend drug-driven music making nights with his fathers friends. At age 17 for his college graduation he sung a song that features in the EP, “Cargo 200” in front of the “Whole school and all their mothers” in dedication to a classmate who had killed themselves that year. He says, “that night we healed together a little bit. I wanted no one to forget she was comin’ with us.”
Feeling daunted by life outside of school and the possibility of disconnecting with music, the only means of self expression he feels “fits me like a zoot suit, nice and roomy so I can fit all of myself in there.” He chose to study music a university. “I was the worst student, but the time was important to me. I met myself while studying music, although really, I’m built to pick the world apart through songs, not lectures.” As part of his graduate portfolio for university, Elvis laid the groundwork for what would grow to become Little Antichrist.
This is Elvis to date - his songs stark in their honesty yet intricate and bewitching in their narrative. Grappling with triumph, world-ending fire, loss, power play between the sexes and frozen dessert, all the while pulling you deeper into a world of emotional understanding that so often go hidden.
