SUPERKNOVA
ON HER NEW ALBUM, PLAYING WITH GENRE, AND DEFINING QUEERNESS
SuperKnova is the solo project of singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Ellie Kim. On her debut – 2017’s Splendor Dysphoria EP – the talent and vision of the Chicago artist already shone through. I sat down with Ellie to talk about her journey so far and the making of her new album American Queers.
I know you’ve played music since you were a child. What was the initial spark that made you want to play?
I was 8 years old, I think, and a classmate or friend of mine got a guitar. We were just hanging out and it seemed like fun. Green Days “Brain Stew” was the first song I learned. It’s like one of those pop-punk songs that’s really easy to pick up and learn how to play. It felt very natural, it felt like something I could do. Because before that I really wasn’t good at much else. I was terrible at sports, I wasn’t really good in school at the time. It kinda snowballed from there.
Is that the kind of music you were into when you were younger? What is the background of your musical taste?
Definitely pop-punk. Green Day, Weezer, that kind of stuff that was popular back in the day. In that very brief moment when pop-punk was popular. And then hearing Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” was one of those moments – you know, people talk about moments that change their life. I hadn’t heard anything like that and I wanted to play a guitar that sounded like that. That was a guitar inspiration for me for sure.
So you played music throughout grade school and high school, and you went to college and studied guitar, right?
I played in jazz band and pop-punk bands in high school, and then I studied jazz guitar in college.
For a newbie, what’s the difference between jazz guitar and regular guitar?
It’s very different, jazz is all about improvisation. There’s always a loose structure in jazz music, and then it’s about making up melodies and solos on the spot. Most people think it sounds harder, but I find it easier because you can’t be wrong. It’s not like classical guitar. There’s a saying in jazz: “If you play a wrong note, play it again.”
So all through college, I played in every style of band you can imagine – jazz, rock, metal, country, R&B, all of it.
So your taste is very eclectic. I can hear that in your music.
Thank you, I think that’s something that’s really fun about what I do. I’m glad that all that is coming through.
You must have a lot of strange or wild or funny live performance stories.
I played in a country band for short while, like a working class bar band, and we were on this small tour playing rural, central Illinois small towns. We played in a town with a population of 200 people or something wild like that. This was before I came out and transitioned, so it wasn’t as crazy as it would have been had I been an out trans woman playing a small town country band. We were the only entertainment playing at the only bar in town and everyone showed up. Literally the whole town was there. The mayor was there.
Almost like an official delegation welcoming your band.
Exactly. And they were telling me stories about the culture there around drunk driving. They were like, “In the city they think drunk driving is so horrific, but people drive drunk all the time down there because there’s only like twenty people out and about and if you veer off the run you just run into the corn and sleep there for the night.” It was wild.
I know you are a multi-instrumentalist – what are all the instruments you play?
I play guitar, I sing, I play piano. Keyboard, synthesizer, drums through MIDI…and through the power of MIDI I play pretty much every instrument that can be sampled.
What was the moment like when you decided to embark on the solo project of SuperKnova?
I took a hiatus from playing these bands for a couple years and I wasn’t pursuing music at all. This was also the period when I was coming to terms with my identity and starting to come out. Music is a natural outlet for me since I’ve been doing it for so long, so I was using it as a diary or personal therapy. Even though I played in all these bands, I was rarely a songwriter and I never thought of myself as a songwriter. Only a guitarist. I was writing these songs and it was feeling good, but I still thought about it as something I was doing only for myself.
When I started playing with friends, they told me “You should put this out on the Internet” but I didn’t think anyone would want to hear that. I also was dealing with internalized transphobia, thinking no one would want to listen to a deep-voiced trans woman making music…I don’t think that anymore, but I was going through a lot at the time. And then I had one friend who kept hyping me up until I finally caved and put stuff up on Bandcamp.
That’s a good friend!
Truly! It’s really due to them that I started all this, because I was really not going to do it. Plus, once I worked through some of my own issues I realized how much I would have appreciated seeing someone like myself making music when I was finding my identity. So I put my EP Splendor Dysphoria and to my initial surprise people liked it and some people even bought it.
Then, in August 2017, BandCamp had one day where they were going to donate all profits to the Transgender Law Center in response to Donald Trump banning trans people from serving in the military. So on that day people were searching for trans artists to support, and my music was discovered by a lot of people…I gained a lot of fans through that. And I love BandCamp for that to this day, they are such a pillar of the DIY and indie community.
Was the songwriting process for any specific song especially revelatory or special to you?
Yeah, from my new album, the song “Serotonin Serenade”. I went through a spell of really bad depression last year for several months. Anyone who’s had that experience will tell you it’s a real chemical thing, it’s very different from just being sad or down or something. It’s almost indescribable how disconnected and distorted I felt. Frank Ocean’s Blonde album was one of the few things that still emotionally connected with me, even outside the lyrics. The music sounded like how I felt. So I wanted to create that myself in a song and “Serotonin Serenade” was the result. And when I listen to it now it really takes me back to how I felt in that moment.
The new album is called American Queers. Where did that title come from?
I wanted to make an album that was very explicit about what I’m trying to say and represent. I love complex music that is full of metaphor and allegory, but at the end of the day I’m tired of pop stars being vague about gay themes or gay topics. I’m like “No, let’s name it. This is a gay album and this is gay and queer music I’m making.” It’s all explicitly from a queer experience.
How do you define that word-queer?
It was a pejorative twenty years ago and now it’s been reclaimed, but I see it as an umbrella term that rolls off the tongue easier than the alphabet soup of LGBTQIA etc…I use it as a one syllable substitution for all those letters.
You’ve spoken a lot about the DIY ethos as well and it being important to you. Why do you value that so much?
Like I said, I’ve done music for a long time. I always saw music as a business full of racist, transphobic, homophobic, misogynist, capitalist gatekeepers who tell artists what people will or will not consume. DIY is important to me because that framework lets me produce my own stuff, release my own stuff, promote my own stuff…plus the DIY tradition of putting together shows has been important to me finding other artists that share my worldview.
Did you have a song from this new album that you were most excited for people to hear?
Maybe “Shot and a Pill”. I’ve been performing that for a while. It’s very personal and explicit. Before I performed it I used to give a little monologue that I called a queer church sermon. The song is about finding yourself and the struggle of living in a world that doesn’t allow people to be themselves, especially outside of this queer Chicago arts scene that I’m privileged to inhabit. The title is a pretty obvious trans reference to the medical transition that some trans people go through. I’m excited for everyone to hear it on the record, but I want everyone to hear it live. Its best live.
Do you feel your sound and aesthetic as SuperKnova has evolved or changed?
Absolutely. The sound has evolved similar to how Ive evolved as a person. American Queers is a more loud and out there sound which mirrors the more out and proud person I am now. Splendor Dysphoria was a queer record too, but it was more internal and exploratory. American Queers is like “I’m here and queer and I’m blatant” and that’s reflected in the synths and the loudness of the guitars.
by Stevie Logan
Photos by Shea Petersen for Bops & Flops
