NUMBER THREE

Hello you.

In 5 days I will be 25.

That’s crazy to me, but probably crazier for you. I was saying to someone the other day how strange it is that I’ve never been someone who keeps diaries, given my propensity for catching moments like the deranged lepidopterist I am. Then I realised, you dummy, all you DO is keep diaries! Making albums is the ultimate way of marking the time, giving you and I these signposts that help us remember our lives. I just now remembered these posts I used to write on major birthdays. My life was so insane, and whole years would just swallow me up. The posts were me trying to make sense of the fact that time was passing, even if I couldn’t always feel it. Maybe that’s a diary after all. I might fuck around and write something sentimental on the 7th, we’ll see.

In honour of my birthday week, I have treats for you!!!

Here is the music video for FALLEN FRUIT.

In the Solar Power video, you were introduced to the island as a lush paradise — glistening water, blue skies, not a grain of sand out of place (barring that pesky beach trash…). Cut to: humans doing as they do, getting greedy, treating the land with disrespect and stripping it of its beauty. There’ll always another pristine place to start again, right? The gardens that were once lush and fruitful are now on fire. The fishing boats are busted up and overturned. All that’s left of the peaches are their pits. Amid all that, my character makes a choice.

Here’s a couple of beautiful pics Ophelia took onset:

In other exciting birthday week (the worst notion, should be banned) news, please welcome two black sheep to the fold — Solar Power’s bonus tracks, HELEN OF TROY and HOLD NO GRUDGE, which will be available on streaming services Friday!!! These songs were fun explorations on the album journey. They didn’t quite fit into the tracklist for whatever reason but they’re both big tunes. HOT is just me talking trash to make Jack laugh, basically. We wrote it super quickly in the tiniest room at Westlake where we did a bunch of Melo and it was fun the whole time. It’s super off the cuff lyrically, almost ad-libbed, and you can hear me starting to figure out some album themes — “So I took a happy face, and it’s coming on like a charm / I don’t wanna get lost, I wanna worship the sun / and if you want, you can come”. HNG is a sort of composite portrait of when relationships turn sour, being trapped in the ice but remembering the warmth. Every couple lines, the person I’m singing about changes; one minute it’s a childhood friend, next a crush or a colleague. When this happens to me, I find myself hyper-aware of the space where the closeness used to be, my tongue finding it over and over like the socket of a lost tooth. I came to the conclusion that when it comes to holding grudges, I am just not that bitch. “Acting my age, not my horoscope / guess that’s growing up.” She’ll drink to that.

Love you so much. I’ll pop back in later in the week.

Sending the last of the 24-year dry-aged wild artisanal kisses to you,

Ella xxxxx