FEATURE: Spotlight: Pixey — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Pixey

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FILL to step on the heels of NME…

and include too many artists they already selected as part of their ones to watch in 2021 feature, but I have been following Pixey for a little while now and love what she is doing. The Liverpool musician is guaranteed to have a great 2021, despite the fact that there is no idea when live music might return. I will mention her fantastic E.P., Colours, soon, but make sure you investigate and follow Pixey if you have not done so already – the links are all at the bottom of this feature. One of my favourite songs of hers is Supersonic Love – the opening track from that 2019 E.P. I am going to bring in a few interviews from her earliest days to fairly recently, as it provides a lot of background and useful insight. When she spoke with bido lito! back in 2017, we not only learn about a particular tough 2016; we get a feel of how Pixey writes and why her music is different to anything around:

“2016 started off badly for Lizzie Hillesdon. In the January, she fell very ill indeed after weeks of unexplained tiredness and lethargy. Struck down with a mystery illness doctors couldn’t get to the bottom of, she was forced to spend a month in hospital, some of it in isolation.

“First of all, they thought it was meningitis,” she explains. “Then, it was you haven’t got meningitis but we think you’ve had a brain haemorrhage. They said, ‘try not to panic because your brain haemorrhage might get worse,’ so I’m like, OK…” Good news was, there was no bleed on the brain but instead she was suffering from a particularly nasty viral infection. “When I came out I was just under seven stone. I couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t walk for a while, I was so weak.”

But out of bad circumstances, positivity often emerges unexpectedly, and, ironically it was these after effects that led to the singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer finding her music-making groove. As Lizzie convalesced, she explored and experimented with the Ableton production software her father had bought her but she’d never used. “I had all this spare time so I thought I might as well start writing some music, so I did. My first song was Psychodelic. I sent if off to Sean McGinty [at Radio Lancashire’s BBC Introducing] and he really liked it and he was like, ‘have you got any more, send us some more!’ I wrote Young on the day of my [on air] interview with him and sent that off to Radio Merseyside. Dave Monks played it as well, and it spiralled from there.”

Taking on the moniker of PIXEY (“my mum was saying, ‘if you want to do well, you mustn’t use your real name’. She was dead adamant about it!”), the Radio 1 Introducing playlist took Young’s catchy pop hook and joyful sentiments to its heart and enthusiastically championed the song. Pixey was swiftly snatched up by new northern record label ModernSky, also home to Liverpool’s Sugarmen and FUSS”.

“A lot of my songs are feel good. Young was just written for fun really. I didn’t want to have to perform my music kind of moody, cos that’s not me.” She cites George Harrison’s “beautiful, well-constructed, upbeat” 1970 album All Things Must Pass as a treasured influence on her work. “I’m not the most sociable of people but at the same time I’m not sitting in my room in the dark doing nothing. I love to get out there and do as much as I can. I want to reflect that in the music. Because, sometimes, if you take it mega seriously it taints it. That’s also why I love Mac Demarco, I think he’s brilliant. He doesn’t take it too seriously but he really cares about the music he’s making.

Pixey’s been told that her way of writing is unorthodox, and her production style and process as well. She mixes tracks as she goes along, to see where the song is going, instead of finishing up and going through it all from the beginning. “When you’re dyslexic it’s incredibly hard to do what your brain’s telling you to. With Young, a lot of mixing and producing was a complete accident, chance. I didn’t mix it to sound lo-fi, it’s just the way it sounded. In my head I wanted it to sound different. Because of my dyslexia, what I wanted to put down wasn’t what I was getting back, but I liked the end result anyway.”

Pixey taught herself to play piano and guitar, and learned production skills on her own too, as she worked on Young. Her approach sounds quite – dare I say it – punk?

“I sat down, recorded and dragged random effects on to see which ones I liked, and that’s what Young came to sound like! Complete random effects dragged on. I think if I had all the resources available to me to make it sound amazing, it wouldn’t have the same character and would be completely clean. I think sometimes when people have too much to work with, it can make it not unique, in a way. So, when you’ve only got something basic to work with you can do something different”.

I want to now switch and bring in an interview Pixey conducted with LOCK, as we hear more about Supersonic Love. Pixey also talks about her native North and, as she had already played some big gigs by 2019, which ranks as her favourite:

“Hey Pixey, how do you feel now that “Supersonic Love” is out in the world?

Hey LOCK! Total excitement! I’ve been sitting on this track for ages and really couldn’t wait for you all to hear it as I feel like it’s a small part of myself that I couldn’t wait to share.

The track features some seriously cool guitar melodies, what’s your first memory of playing?

My first memory playing the electric guitar is the day my knock off Epiphone from Amazon came in the post. I learnt how to play the same day I started writing songs, which is why a lot of my melodies are looped guitar riffs (as that was all I could play!). My guitar melodies evolved from there really, as my skills got more advanced.

You’ve played the likes of The Great Escape, Live At Leeds and Liverpool Sound City, what’s been your favourite festival to play so far?

I enjoyed all those festivals, but my favourite I’ve played to date has to be Highest Point fest in Lancaster. That’s such a lovely memory for me. I was playing the BBC Introducing stage and the audience filled out right before my set. I remember my band and I were on such a high.

The music scene in the North of England has always had an incredible reputation, how has it influenced your sound?

I feel very grateful to have grown up in the North of England, and to have spent a lot of my time in Liverpool especially. Merseybeat bands have always had a huge influence on my music, but I’d say I’m mainly influenced by the 90’s music scene the most. You can definitely hear it in my guitar riffs and drum samps.

What Northern artists should we be adding to our playlist?

Add yourself some new releases, including the bedroom artists! Pizzagirl is a good place to start. He writes, records and produces his music too, and is great if you enjoy 80’s synthpop. Another really great bedroom artist is Brad Stank, definitely get him on your playlist. And finally check out Zuzu! She’s a real example of what you can achieve as a solo female artist and her tunes are so so catchy.

Here at LOCK, we’ve been lucky enough to have a preview listen to your upcoming EP and it’s a vibrant collection of songs. Are you excited to release it?

I’m not sure excited is even the word at this point. I am ecstatic to share these first few songs for anyone that wants to hear them. This EP is the first wave of a whole load of songs I can’t wait to share in the future”.

Even though the Colours E.P.s came out a couple of years ago, I think it is tremendous. Pixey has released some great songs since then but, as many wonder whether we’ll get another E.P. in 2021 – or even an album -, I keep playing Colours and I seem to get something new from it every time I go in! Every track is memorable and wonderful and, the more you listen, the more powerful the songs become. Pixey’s social media numbers are climbing; I think so many more people need to check her out. The Music Mermaid reviewed Colours and had this to say:

“Some EPs make an impact so massive and so loud and so bright right from the get-go that you won’t soon forget them. Colours is one of them.

Liverpool-based indie-pop artist Pixey just has the it factor. What she accomplishes is done so seemingly easy but we know the truth — she works hard but she’s so talented that she manages to create punchy, passionate, powerful work effortlessly.

Colours opens with “Supersonic Love,” a dynamic introduction to Pixey’s distinct voice and masterful ability to arrange interesting soundscapes that flirt with unending details from buzzy little blips to surf-rock percussion to pop melodies. “On My Own” comes next and it’s just as soaring as its predecessor but there’s something much softer and more vulnerable to it — since Pixey is such a big personality adept at building indie-pop perfection, it’s about as close as she comes on Colours to tender balladry, heard mostly in those wailing strums and anxious claps, until the halfway point of the EP finds its title track, a really beautiful, twinkling piece that beats out the previous tune. We learn here that Pixey is capable of slowing things down — “Colours” is one long, sweet, slow sparkle, the single most honest effort from Pixey yet.

Things pick up again on “Hometown,” a sunny exploration of rapid-fire percussion and major surf-rock guitar work. The EP ends far too soon with “Young,” the 2016 single that first skyrocketed Pixey to attention. It’s perfect — it’s got a fuzzy, grunge-y, bedroom-produced quality to it that gives it both an edge and an authenticity, peeking up out of layers of warm, peppy pop elements. If Colours is a rainbow, then Pixey is the pot of gold at its end — she’s shimmering and lucky, an example of unapologetic, totally natural talent that’s resulted in a feel-good EP we’re desperate for more of”.

I guess it must be bittersweet for Pixey and other artists being highlighted for success in 2021 when live music has been cut right back and it is a very hard year to make an impact. We will get back to gigs but, before then, there is an opportunity for Pixey to release new music and reach more people. I will finish in a second but, first, I wanted to quote from an interview from Boot---Music from August of last year:

“‘The lockdown situation for me was actually a pretty productive time as I write, record and produce myself in my bedroom. I viewed it as more time to focus on my next records and musicianship. Without that focus I would have struggled.

Still, we would all love to go to concerts again, right? For Pixey who has already played gigs like Liverpool Sound City, BBC Merseyside and Live At Leeds, the question of what her dream festival to play would be, is an easy one:

‘Glastonbury – there is no question and it’s a classic. My dream is to take on the Pyramid stage to a huge crowd singing back my lyrics. Until then I’ll keep playing for the cats in my bedroom.’

And, although an audience made out of cats seems pretty awesome already, the chances of Pixey headlining the big stages are probably only a matter of time. With her upbeat guitar riffs, catchy lyrics and her all-in-all unique, refreshing sound, the self-proclaimed ‘indie Britney Spears’ makes music that seems like the perfect soundtrack for the festival season and gets you excited for life after the pandemic.

She herself described her music as ‘Dream Pop, but there’s so many influences in my music that labelling it as one genre is almost impossible! Some of my main influences are George Harrison, The Verve, De La Soul, Bjork & Britney Spears.’

While you can hear glimpses of these influences in her lyrics and compositions, Pixey really manages to pull you into her own world during every single song, like you are stepping into a colourfully painted scenery somewhere between Neverland and the scary, but equally addictive metropolis.

Songs like the intimate track Colours, or the expressive, fast-driven Hometown seem to show a very personal side of Pixey, which is why we asked her about her song-writing process:

‘Absolutely, they come from personal experiences. A lot of my more upbeat songs are just written for fun but some songs are written to cope with or understand certain situations that I’m in”.

Go and check out the incredible Pixey. She has already got the backing of NME and, as the year unfolds, more and more people will proffer her music and mark her out as a talent to watch closely! Although she might derive her name from her smaller stature but, when it comes to the music, the impact and impression it makes…