Music / Features
Track by Track:
El Tee - Everything Is Fine
El Tee - Everything Is Fine
There is something subtly ironic about an artist as unflinching and open in her songwriting as El Tee using a pseudonym to disguise her real name. However, on Everything Is Fine, Lauren Tarver appears completely unmasked - her debut album revealing a wondrous collection of indie-folk that dives deep into its creator’s journey of self-realisation and self-acceptance.
El Tee has found herself at this point by a curious path. She first moved to Paris from her native Northern California in 2014, where she played guitar in her friend’s post-punk outfit Gomme. Two years later, the move to Melbourne happened, and she’s not found herself able to leave its music scene since. Since 2016, she’s been developing her own sound, moving further away from post-punk into more considered singer-songwriter territory.
El Tee’s music is an act of empowerment: “I find redemption in finding myself”, she sings on the first track ‘How I Like It’, but there are pockets of loneliness along the road. The aching ‘Stranger’ immediately follows, sounding like a twin piece to Julia Jacklin’s ‘Comfort’. While there is the customary honesty and vulnerability associated with the singer-songwriter archetype, a hardened rock rhythm shelters the softer underbelly, particularly reminiscent of Sharon Van Etten - it’s also such a duality that made Stevie Nicks’ solo work so successful.
El Tee is accompanied by a backing band while performing but it's her magnetic and unsparing voice that dominates one’s attention. Her sound feels almost country with its lucidity of vocal delivery and quietly twanging guitar.
The record showcases a supreme marrying of light and dark. Everything Is Fine constantly switches between intimate moments of doubt with rasping tracks of hardened clarity. This is seen in the closing two songs of the album. The titular ‘Everything Is Fine’ is driven by a tense guitar line, as looming and ominous as the towering New Zealand mountains that El Tee drives through during the song’s narrative. She manages to reach a level of acceptance of her anxiety, maintaining “everything is fine if you want it to be/if you want it to be.” The Laura Marling-esque ‘Good’ is then suffused with much contemplative doubt, El Tee sighing “maybe I am who you want me to be/maybe I’m just not that good”.
We spoke with El Tee as she told us the events that led to each song on Everything Is Fine, which you can read below.
El Tee’s music is an act of empowerment: “I find redemption in finding myself”, she sings on the first track ‘How I Like It’, but there are pockets of loneliness along the road. The aching ‘Stranger’ immediately follows, sounding like a twin piece to Julia Jacklin’s ‘Comfort’. While there is the customary honesty and vulnerability associated with the singer-songwriter archetype, a hardened rock rhythm shelters the softer underbelly, particularly reminiscent of Sharon Van Etten - it’s also such a duality that made Stevie Nicks’ solo work so successful.
El Tee is accompanied by a backing band while performing but it's her magnetic and unsparing voice that dominates one’s attention. Her sound feels almost country with its lucidity of vocal delivery and quietly twanging guitar.
The record showcases a supreme marrying of light and dark. Everything Is Fine constantly switches between intimate moments of doubt with rasping tracks of hardened clarity. This is seen in the closing two songs of the album. The titular ‘Everything Is Fine’ is driven by a tense guitar line, as looming and ominous as the towering New Zealand mountains that El Tee drives through during the song’s narrative. She manages to reach a level of acceptance of her anxiety, maintaining “everything is fine if you want it to be/if you want it to be.” The Laura Marling-esque ‘Good’ is then suffused with much contemplative doubt, El Tee sighing “maybe I am who you want me to be/maybe I’m just not that good”.
We spoke with El Tee as she told us the events that led to each song on Everything Is Fine, which you can read below.
How I Like It
‘How I Like It’ was written as a protest against and an acknowledgement of losing yourself to someone else. I wanted to capture the struggle of unknowingly surrendering identity, value, self-worth - all in fear of disapproval and rejection.
I wrote this about a time in my life when I felt shame in a relationship, like I wasn’t enough. Yet when looking back, I now feel more shame in the fact that I would let someone make me feel at all inferior for being authentic. 'How I Like It’ is a nod to any experience where you let someone else be the keeper of your value and worth.
Stranger
‘Stranger’ is about moving on - going through a breakup with your long-time partner, which also means simultaneously losing your best friend. I wrote this from the perspective of a friend who was struggling with just that. It's a bizarre experience, transitioning from lover and best friend to complete stranger. You know that one day you’ll feel better and move on. But it’s hard to believe it when you’re experiencing the conflict of not wanting to be with that person yet missing them, wanting to hold their hand, or wondering how they’re doing.
Keep Walking
Like many of the songs I was writing at the time, ‘Keep Walking’ is about acknowledging the shame felt in the breakdown of the relationship, and trying to create a new narrative of validity and empowerment. This was inspired by, quite literally, the confusion I felt when I was left alone to find closure. When writing this song and looking back, I realised that I should have seen it coming - or rather, I did see it coming, but didn't want to believe it. After all that inner dialogue, the final word was to move on and walk away.
‘How I Like It’ was written as a protest against and an acknowledgement of losing yourself to someone else. I wanted to capture the struggle of unknowingly surrendering identity, value, self-worth - all in fear of disapproval and rejection.
I wrote this about a time in my life when I felt shame in a relationship, like I wasn’t enough. Yet when looking back, I now feel more shame in the fact that I would let someone make me feel at all inferior for being authentic. 'How I Like It’ is a nod to any experience where you let someone else be the keeper of your value and worth.
Stranger
‘Stranger’ is about moving on - going through a breakup with your long-time partner, which also means simultaneously losing your best friend. I wrote this from the perspective of a friend who was struggling with just that. It's a bizarre experience, transitioning from lover and best friend to complete stranger. You know that one day you’ll feel better and move on. But it’s hard to believe it when you’re experiencing the conflict of not wanting to be with that person yet missing them, wanting to hold their hand, or wondering how they’re doing.
Keep Walking
Like many of the songs I was writing at the time, ‘Keep Walking’ is about acknowledging the shame felt in the breakdown of the relationship, and trying to create a new narrative of validity and empowerment. This was inspired by, quite literally, the confusion I felt when I was left alone to find closure. When writing this song and looking back, I realised that I should have seen it coming - or rather, I did see it coming, but didn't want to believe it. After all that inner dialogue, the final word was to move on and walk away.
Space
‘Space’ is about giving so much to others but forgetting to look out for yourself. I wrote this after I had been involved with someone long distance - and then right after, someone who lived just down the road. These two situations couldn’t have been more different from each other - both in context and in geography - yet I found that in both cases I myself was the same. I was so focused on the other person’s needs and feelings that I wasn’t valuing my own. In writing this song, I acknowledged how much blame and accountability I held for others’ inability to show up. I came out with an understanding that even though I was capable of showing up for someone else, not everyone deserves my time, my space, or my anything.
‘Space’ is about giving so much to others but forgetting to look out for yourself. I wrote this after I had been involved with someone long distance - and then right after, someone who lived just down the road. These two situations couldn’t have been more different from each other - both in context and in geography - yet I found that in both cases I myself was the same. I was so focused on the other person’s needs and feelings that I wasn’t valuing my own. In writing this song, I acknowledged how much blame and accountability I held for others’ inability to show up. I came out with an understanding that even though I was capable of showing up for someone else, not everyone deserves my time, my space, or my anything.
I Don’t Care
This song is a bit of an “eff you”. It speaks to those who think that they’re important, and don’t take the time to acknowledge that you are, too. Especially in the beginning of the dating-dance, when it’s ego vs. ego, and the guard of vulnerability is up. I had this experience with someone I had gone on a few dates with, who just wouldn’t let their guard down and was assuming that I had all these expectations. It’s like, hold up, I don’t care about how great you are and I don’t care if you have baggage, because I’m also great and everyone has baggage, so get off that pedestal. It feels like a waste of time sometimes, dating.
Hold On
This was the first song I ever wrote. And I really believed it was formative to my songwriting and sound. I had just discovered the song ‘Acrobat’ by Angel Olsen, and I loved how she just sat on one chord but changed the melody. Being that I wrote this such a long time ago, it amazes me that it still resonated thematically with other songs on the album. It speaks to the cowardice of others to take the chance and own up to their feelings or actions. I guess it’s the Aries in me, having little patience for those who don’t act on what they want or how they feel.
“Are you here, are you waiting for the moment to arrive?” is just that: are you present, or are you not going to commit? Pick one, because I don’t have the patience to wait around to find out.
Inside
This was another song I wrote a long time ago. Like ‘Hold On’, it transformed overtime - maybe over three or so years - to become what it is today. The first time I recorded it was in 2012 in the stairwell of my university art building. The stairwell has such beautiful and big natural reverb and people would often go in there to sing. Someone even once was playing the trumpet and a professor came out to yell at them to stop. I recorded the first version of ‘Inside’ on Garageband at the bottom of the stairs. It sounds nothing like it does today.
Lyrically, this song speaks to escaping reality in the best ways and the worst. Sometimes it’s therapeutic to escape, and sometimes it's detrimental.
Party
Again, back to stuck in this toxic relationship where I felt gaslit, disempowered, and anxious as hell. The lyrics paint a picture (at least in my mind) of sitting in an empty room, waiting for a call, frozen with anxiety. Another picture is painted of being up late in the early hours of the morning and just waiting until it’s early enough where someone back home in California was awake who I could call to help me calm down. And even though you’re sitting in this turmoil, you’re feeling terrible, you still are in denial of accepting it for what it is. And even through the panic attacks, the episodes of anxiety, the anxiety medication, I still found myself wanting to be there for that person who was making me feel that way.
Everything Is Fine
This was one of the first songs I wrote in a very descriptive, narrative way about an experience I had in New Zealand. I went on a roadtrip with a friend in February 2018 and was so full of anxiety the whole time. It was bottled up and I couldn’t shake it. I literally felt trapped by the mountains of NZ. It all came to a head when we got to a service station in Fox Glacier where I came to the truth and realised how I felt was actually valid. Even through all this, I knew that however things turned out, it would be OK. ‘Everything is Fine’ speaks to different meanings of the phrase. It’s a dismissal of sorts - everything is fine, although maybe it isn’t. It’s a reassurance, whether you believe it or not, to say it’s fine. And lastly, it can be said with full truth, conviction and hope - everything is and will be fine.
The first verse narrates the moment when my friend and I ran out of petrol just 10 or so kms from Fox Glacier, where the next service station was. We pulled over at a campsite (lucky us) and slept there in the car. The next day we went to the neighbour’s farm to ask if he had any petrol. Kyle, the farm caretaker was there, and he put a few litres of petrol in our tank. He was kind, and had a few pigs and a dog that were adorable and friendly. When we got to Fox Glacier, we wrote Kyle a postcard thanking him. I told my friend that I’d write a song about him and send it to him later. Instead, I wrote a very emotional song about the anxiety I had during those 24 hours. Nothing explicitly about Kyle, but he did act as a relief from that anxiety, and helped in that way as well. I’ll probably somehow try to send him the track once it’s released.
This song is a bit of an “eff you”. It speaks to those who think that they’re important, and don’t take the time to acknowledge that you are, too. Especially in the beginning of the dating-dance, when it’s ego vs. ego, and the guard of vulnerability is up. I had this experience with someone I had gone on a few dates with, who just wouldn’t let their guard down and was assuming that I had all these expectations. It’s like, hold up, I don’t care about how great you are and I don’t care if you have baggage, because I’m also great and everyone has baggage, so get off that pedestal. It feels like a waste of time sometimes, dating.
Hold On
This was the first song I ever wrote. And I really believed it was formative to my songwriting and sound. I had just discovered the song ‘Acrobat’ by Angel Olsen, and I loved how she just sat on one chord but changed the melody. Being that I wrote this such a long time ago, it amazes me that it still resonated thematically with other songs on the album. It speaks to the cowardice of others to take the chance and own up to their feelings or actions. I guess it’s the Aries in me, having little patience for those who don’t act on what they want or how they feel.
“Are you here, are you waiting for the moment to arrive?” is just that: are you present, or are you not going to commit? Pick one, because I don’t have the patience to wait around to find out.
Inside
This was another song I wrote a long time ago. Like ‘Hold On’, it transformed overtime - maybe over three or so years - to become what it is today. The first time I recorded it was in 2012 in the stairwell of my university art building. The stairwell has such beautiful and big natural reverb and people would often go in there to sing. Someone even once was playing the trumpet and a professor came out to yell at them to stop. I recorded the first version of ‘Inside’ on Garageband at the bottom of the stairs. It sounds nothing like it does today.
Lyrically, this song speaks to escaping reality in the best ways and the worst. Sometimes it’s therapeutic to escape, and sometimes it's detrimental.
Party
Again, back to stuck in this toxic relationship where I felt gaslit, disempowered, and anxious as hell. The lyrics paint a picture (at least in my mind) of sitting in an empty room, waiting for a call, frozen with anxiety. Another picture is painted of being up late in the early hours of the morning and just waiting until it’s early enough where someone back home in California was awake who I could call to help me calm down. And even though you’re sitting in this turmoil, you’re feeling terrible, you still are in denial of accepting it for what it is. And even through the panic attacks, the episodes of anxiety, the anxiety medication, I still found myself wanting to be there for that person who was making me feel that way.
Everything Is Fine
This was one of the first songs I wrote in a very descriptive, narrative way about an experience I had in New Zealand. I went on a roadtrip with a friend in February 2018 and was so full of anxiety the whole time. It was bottled up and I couldn’t shake it. I literally felt trapped by the mountains of NZ. It all came to a head when we got to a service station in Fox Glacier where I came to the truth and realised how I felt was actually valid. Even through all this, I knew that however things turned out, it would be OK. ‘Everything is Fine’ speaks to different meanings of the phrase. It’s a dismissal of sorts - everything is fine, although maybe it isn’t. It’s a reassurance, whether you believe it or not, to say it’s fine. And lastly, it can be said with full truth, conviction and hope - everything is and will be fine.
The first verse narrates the moment when my friend and I ran out of petrol just 10 or so kms from Fox Glacier, where the next service station was. We pulled over at a campsite (lucky us) and slept there in the car. The next day we went to the neighbour’s farm to ask if he had any petrol. Kyle, the farm caretaker was there, and he put a few litres of petrol in our tank. He was kind, and had a few pigs and a dog that were adorable and friendly. When we got to Fox Glacier, we wrote Kyle a postcard thanking him. I told my friend that I’d write a song about him and send it to him later. Instead, I wrote a very emotional song about the anxiety I had during those 24 hours. Nothing explicitly about Kyle, but he did act as a relief from that anxiety, and helped in that way as well. I’ll probably somehow try to send him the track once it’s released.
Good
I began writing this song when I lived up in Far North Queensland in the tropical rainforest for a few months. I lived in a small house that didn’t have doors or windows, and after borrowing an acoustic guitar from a friend, bought an electric and a small amp from a cash converter in Cairns. I remember trying to record a demo of this and bird sounds being so loud in the background. This song speaks to not feeling like you’re good enough, trying as you might to live up to someone’s expectation of who they think you are or what they want you to be. The repetition of the same lyrics was an important part of this. It’s a nagging idea, not being good enough. But at the same time it speaks to trying to overcome those negative, repetitive thoughts and beliefs, and working towards figuring out that it’s going to be alright.
I began writing this song when I lived up in Far North Queensland in the tropical rainforest for a few months. I lived in a small house that didn’t have doors or windows, and after borrowing an acoustic guitar from a friend, bought an electric and a small amp from a cash converter in Cairns. I remember trying to record a demo of this and bird sounds being so loud in the background. This song speaks to not feeling like you’re good enough, trying as you might to live up to someone’s expectation of who they think you are or what they want you to be. The repetition of the same lyrics was an important part of this. It’s a nagging idea, not being good enough. But at the same time it speaks to trying to overcome those negative, repetitive thoughts and beliefs, and working towards figuring out that it’s going to be alright.
Everything Is Fine is out everywhere today - head to everythingisfine.store to purchase the album on limited edition 'rose petal red' vinyl.
