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Photo by Maria Torres

They say you can’t go home again, but if you’re singer-songwriter Elke, home is just a song away. Her new album Big Mike is an exploration of love through the lens of childhood naivety and wonder, all scored by warm, stripped-back instrumentals. 

“I’m always revisiting [the past],” Elke told OnesToWatch. “My mom calls me her ‘little historian.’”

She explained that that feeling of nostalgia is “more noticeable in this record because I cut straight to the point,” adding, “My center of gravity was to cut any nuanced lyric. I’d gone through so much heartbreak in the past year that I knew being clear would carry the songs, and help guide my voice.”

Songs like “Pusher” and “Failed Attempt” bring listeners back to childhood summer days, with simple instrumentals and playful lyrics. On the former, Elke urges the song’s subject, “Let’s go on three” — familiar words for anyone who’s ever held hands with a friend and jumped into the unknown. 

Elke pointed to 2007, her family’s “peak,” as a specific moment she hoped to evoke — “Everyone was succeeding in their own pursuits and we ate dinner together each night. My dad would walk through the door after work and say, ‘Where’s my beautiful wife?” And my brother and I would flock to him.”

“It’s that feeling of synchronicity in a household that was not built on a foundation to last, but damn, that year was good,” the artist explained. “We never get our best childhood year back, and I sit with the harsher reality of my family now.”

That bittersweet feeling of looking back on a better time is best communicated through the album’s closer, “The Stranger.” Over a soothing, strumming guitar, Elke admits, “Nothing’s the same when I return,” but “I still go back to get let down.”

Elke brought that deeply personal touch to the album’s music videos as well, directing two of Big Mike’s music videos herself. She described the experience as “unreal,” explaining that “the visual component is essential” when it comes to creating a video.  

“I usually write songs with a visual in mind,” she said. “The feeling of the finished product being so close to the idea is like catching a dream to share so you don’t have to bore people with the description. It’s a completely different sensation.”

Big Mike’s songs are a return to the best parts of childhood, while still holding the knowledge of adulthood. Or, as Elke herself puts it, “It’s the closest to home I’ve ever expressed.”

Listen to Big Mike below: