Much like her role in the gripping survival thriller series Yellowjackets, Sophie Thatcher’s music is an emotional excavation. “Every character I play is to some extent an extension of myself, but music is closer to who I am. It’s insane to have control and feel like you’re a conductor in this crazy experiment,” she tells us. On her debut EP, Pivot & Scrape, Thatcher surrenders to improvisation, unveiling deep, raw emotions and translating them into haunting melodies. Growing up in Chicago surrounded by music, voice lessons and choir practice taught her structure, while her brother’s love of punk and new wave carved out a space for something more untamed. But it was as a teenager learning Elliott Smith’s aching songwriting that she began to find her true voice – one that dances between fragility and defiance.

Recorded over a single week in Asheville at producer Adam McDaniel’s (Angel Olsen, Avey Tare) Drop of Sun studio, Pivot & Scrape sees Thatcher’s tender meditations unfurl across a lo-fi, psychedelic sound that is as much about the spaces between the notes as the sound itself. Haunted organs linger like spectres, and dissonance becomes a kind of poetry. Balancing fear and beauty, chaos and clarity, the rich softness of the EP belies a darker core that Thatcher has learnt to not only embrace but encourage, “There’s a lot of seeing gruesome images and then turning it into these beautiful melodies – I like how that plays out against each other.”

J.L. Sirisuk: What was your creative upbringing like in Chicago?
Sophie Thatcher: I grew up doing a lot of theatre. I was obsessed with world-building and storytelling, and was always writing. I grew up singing and was classically trained for most of my youth. My mom is a pianist and would play in the church choir, so music was always a big thing growing up. Both my parents were very music-obsessed, I grew up with a twin [Ellie], and I feel like there’s something innate within that that makes you naturally competitive but also naturally creative, because we were working off each other’s ideas. We would make little movies and I was always drawing – I had all these really dark drawings growing up. Acting became easy for me because I felt more comfortable creating characters. With music, it’s different to that, and I think that’s why music is exciting to me right now.

JLS: What’s the first album you listened to that transformed the way you experienced music?
ST: I had a lot of stuff on my iPod that were hand-me-downs from my brother – a lot of my music taste was informed by his as he’s a lot older than me. The first album I was obsessed with was OK Computer and I stole my brother’s poster after he left for college. I was just obsessed with Radiohead. This is the corniest thing… When I first got Instagram – I think I was twelve – my bio was like: “singing, acting, dancing, Radiohead.” I was fully dedicated. That was the first record where I was like, “Oh, my god.” Also, growing up I listened to Elliott Smith, he was the first artist I established a really personal connection with. It felt like he was right by my side, and I’d never had that with an artist. To feel that so early on was a crazy, vivid experience.

JLS: He was amazing. 
ST: I know. He’s definitely my number one and helped me the most throughout my life. I have an “E.S.” tattoo that stands for ‘Ellie, Sophie’, but I also say it stands for Elliott Smith.

“There was this reoccurring nightmare of me throwing glass and hurting myself…”

JLS: Between your multiple projects like Yellowjackets and upcoming films, when did you know it was time to focus on music?
ST: I was putting out music on Bandcamp and it was super DIY. It started at the end of high school when I was in my mom’s basement, isolating myself. It started with an Omnichord and I got a MIDI synth. I started to learn more about plugins and Ableton, and my boyfriend’s a musician so we would improvise together. I had all these demos and I sent them around because I’m not precious about my demos. I think they’re so informative and sometimes I feel like I have demoitis – I prefer the demo and get obsessed with how it was in that first take because I love the mistakes and I don’t like it when it’s too clean. I was sending those out and met my friend Maral [DJ and producer], who’s been the most supportive person. She makes insane music. I met her at an Avey Tare show. We started talking, and hanging out. We were working on a Sparklehorse cover, Sad and Beautiful World, with this producer, Adam McDaniel, who works at Drop of Sun and does a lot of Avey Tare’s stuff, so we connected through that. I sent Adam my demos and he was like, “We should make this work.”

JLS: How was it working with Adam?
ST: He’s the most adventurous musician and so down to try anything. I found us looking at each other at the right moments when something sounded good. It was this instant connection, there’s that trust. It was kind of a match made in heaven.

JLS: You’ve created a gorgeous world, with intertwined chaos. 
ST: I love it noisy.

JLS: There’s a real rawness to each track. What was going on in your life when writing the EP?
ST: I was going through a lot of personal troubles and insecurities. I was having vivid nightmares and a lot of it starts from that and those anxieties, and then just writing it down. A lot of it plays as a movie in my head. There was this reoccurring nightmare of me throwing glass and hurting myself, but then Pivot & Scrape is like dancing forward through it. It was a lot of creating imagery in my head and then trying to build a song around it. For some of the songs, it would just be improvising and then finding what comes out naturally. I find myself in a very meditative state when I’m making music, and it feels almost like I can’t be too aware of what I’m saying. That’s when the most interesting stuff comes out. That’s where Pivot & Scrape came out. The imagery for Black and Blue was also based on nightmares, but I don’t mean that in a dark, unsettling way. That was my way of coping with all of my anxieties at the time. I had a lot of tooth trauma – this tooth is fake because I got in an accident. There’s a lot of seeing gruesome images and then turning them into this beautiful melody – I like how that plays out against each other. So, yeah, there was just a lot going on in my life at that time. I mean, there always is [laughs] and that’s why it’s easy to write music.

JLS: I love how you talk about allowing yourself to enter a meditative state, it’s untethering from everything and allowing a sense of freedom.
ST: When I was younger, I was focused on being intellectual and vivid in a way that I was really spelling everything out. Whereas when I was able to go into more of a meditative state, I was surprised by how creative I was and how these images came to me in a much easier way. It’s interesting because I don’t meditate or anything, but I guess music is where I’m just like… It’s embarrassing, my boyfriend would always catch me when I was making music, just kind of nodding off. I would look like I was in a trance because I’d start with the humming and then ideas would come. You’re kind of a person away from yourself because if you get too heady then you lose it. When I was younger, I was trying too hard. I also had the inspiration of really smart singer-songwriters, so I was trying to be something that I wasn’t. Now my lyrics are a lot more open to interpretation, and I like that right now.

“Growing up listening to Elliott Smith, he was the first artist that I established a really personal connection with.”

JLS: With acting, you’re bringing characters to life that someone else has created. With music, how does it feel to create your own space?
ST: It feels right. It feels more natural to me, but I also have to push myself further and be more honest. It’s interesting with acting, I’ve been doing it for so long that I found these tricks to get into character. We’re working these crazy days and having to go to such emotional places, so I found these cheats to get there. Whereas with music, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t have enough experience. It feels more raw, and comes from a place that is definitely deeper, which is why it’s scarier. The songs that I have, I’m really fucking happy with, and it took me a while to be happy with them. It’s far more of a satisfying process and feels more like an extension of myself, which is why it’s more vulnerable. Every character I play is to some extent an extension of myself, but music is closer to who I am. It’s insane to have control and feel like you’re a conductor in this crazy experiment.

JLS: How does it feel to finish this project and listen back to the EP?
ST: With music, you have to be a fan of yourself, that’s what Maral keeps telling me. I’ve learned to be a fan of myself and like the music. I genuinely like it – I wasn’t expecting that, so that’s a really encouraging feeling.

Pivot & Scrape is out now.
Follow Sophie on Instagram.