Ever since she first learned the instrument as a child and started playing around with it as if it were a toy with endless possibilities, Eliana Glass and the piano have been inseparable. After years spent studying jazz standards and then pivoting to a free-minded style of her own, the Australia-born, New York-based singer operates between household figures of the genre like Nina Simone and Annette Peacock and a contemporary sense of nuanced songwriting. Last year’s debut album, E, makes the most of that timelessness with an understated, magnetic stillness, beautifully punctuated by her crackly, low-register voice with a magic of its own. That same quality runs through E at Home, a follow-up EP that strips away its centerpieces to its homely origins, as Glass first imagined them on her mother’s piano, using the same tape machine once used by Sibylle Baier to reveal every radiant and intentional imperfection.
We spoke with Glass about finding an escape in Brazilian music, her approach to improvisation, and how her brother, Costa, informs her songwriting.
What are your earliest memories of the piano, and what drew you to the instrument in the first place?
I remember taking piano lessons from a young age and seeing it as a really creative object, like a giant toy. I liked making my own creations with it at the time, but I don't know if I would call them songs. It was more about the joy of experimenting with the piano, playing sounds that I liked and repeating them. I remember playing one song in particular over and over again; my mom liked hearing it in the other room. I don't remember how the song itself sounded, but I do remember repeating this one motif endlessly. It was very fun for me when I was younger, even if it's a memory I can't fully access.
How would you compare your childhood in Australia, your connection to New Zealand through your dad, and your time in Seattle and New York? How did each place shape your path as a musician?
I think each of those places has amazing access to nature, so I was always at home in those kinds of environments. To me, they kind of go hand-in-hand with making music too, because those were the settings that I grew up in. I like being in a place where I can look out the window and feel very calm, knowing the outdoors are nearby. I don't know if it necessarily infiltrates the music itself, but it's conducive to a good creative environment - just because it's what I’m used to and grew up around, and not necessarily because it is.
I’m also interested in what drew you to Brazilian music and to singing in Portuguese, because you do have a similar vocal tone to many Brazilian singers that I appreciate. How has it influenced your compositional style?
I'm happy to be asked that question because I love Portuguese as a language and Brazil. It’s my first time in Portugal too, so it's really interesting in that regard. I've never been anywhere where everyone speaks Portuguese after learning how to speak it and singing it, and I wish that I could speak in Portuguese while I’m here. I actually studied Portuguese in college, but I totally forgot everything [laughs]. I think I was drawn to that music because of its plainness. There’s not very much vibrato usage, and it always felt like the language was doing the work for me. I didn't know what any of the words meant, so it was great to have the ability to play with sounds while singing them. I've always related to music in more of a sound sense than a lyrical sense. I feel like lyrics are really important, of course, but the fun of playing around with sound is higher up for me. And I think I also gravitated towards Brazilian music, because when I was younger and singing in college choirs and jazz bands, there were a lot of favorites, other kids who were favored (a lot of men too), and I didn't really know how to penetrate the scene during middle school and high school. I thought maybe I'd have to compete in my own way, by doing something totally different, and Brazilian music was the answer to it. That way, I didn't have to compete against anyone else (at least in my own radius), and I could pursue this music that was totally different from what the people around me were doing. But even so, it had so much beauty to me, and I basically ended up falling in love with it. I'm very grateful to have learned some amazing Brazilian folk songs and to have found my own lane, without worrying about competition or hierarchies around me, by simply falling in love with something and sounding everything out through that.
How did you go from going in that direction to finding your own lane and developing it beyond early reference points you might’ve had?
After some time spent singing Vinicius de Moraes, Tom Jobim or Elis Regina songs, I thought it'd naturally be nice to have my own songs to sing. I started composing when I was in school, and I did one Portuguese song when I was in college called “Boiuna” (in reference to a folk snake). I learned from that experience, because it was difficult to write in Portuguese without speaking the language very well. I drifted towards writing my own music in English, but I honestly miss singing in Portuguese - so much more than jazz music, which was also part of my background. I could relate to it a lot more, because it was a little bit more honest - it wasn’t as trite to me as the American songbook. It's very timeless.
Is that why you embraced a more open approach to improvisation on this record, especially when revisiting tracks by Annette Peacock and Carla Brey or drawing from the magic of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou?
I’ve always enjoyed improvisation, even when I was younger and creating something that wasn’t necessarily a song. Maybe I, among many other people, don't always call it that. There’s just a sense of freedom, and that exists in my music, in interludes or sections of songs. I have these moments where I don't necessarily play the same thing twice, and it's not really on purpose. Since I can’t really play exactly the same thing twice, I get to enjoy performing it differently each time in both settings [in the studio and in a live setting].
You’ve already described the piano as the instrument you feel the most insecure playing, which made you want to build your own style, and protective over, despite and because of its limitations. Can you elaborate on why that is?
I'm possessive over it because I like it so much [laughs], and I like trying to overcome my insecurities with it. It’s not my first instrument, and while voice is something I feel really accepting of for the most part, I still feel like I want to fix or improve on my piano playing. And that's a good thing too, because it keeps things on their toes a little bit and the music honest. If it were a breeze, maybe it would sound different. I don't even know if I'd like the way it would sound. Imperfections are okay, and because I'm constantly in battle with myself over it, there's a sense of always wanting to try new things, despite what comes out of it.
How do you usually approach songwriting? Is it easier for you to begin with just your voice and piano in mind, or are you more open to doing it with other people, like your brother?
My brother is a big part of my songwriting and an integral voice in my music. It's really helpful to have his contribution. He has a great sense of composition and lyrics, and doesn't have the same boxed-in thinking that I sometimes have for myself. When I'm writing either with him or on my own, it usually starts with some piano beginning. Sometimes that's paired with voice early on, and then the lyrics are added after that (or they might even come in the moment). My brother and I will bounce back about things that should go to different places, but he’s great at writing lyrics that don't need to rhyme, which is something I always have a hard time doing.
Speaking of your brother, you wrote many of the songs on your new EP (E at Home) with him, on your mother’s piano. What made it important to you to release these original demos of the songs from E in that familial setting?
When I first made E, I knew that I had to have demos in order to know what we were going to record, but I also wanted to take the opportunity to make my own demos in a fun way. They’re taken as an artistic project of their own, and they’re very familial. My brother and I recorded them together at our parents’ house. We would drive two hours to go to this amazing repair guy, John Ledbetter, who would routinely fix this old machine we used. We would do a lot of trial and error, but I enjoyed the experience, even if it was frustrating at times. I like hearing the environment of where something was made and feeling its surroundings. There's a part in one of the demos where you can hear my dad's voice in the background, saying “it's so beautiful” at the very end of the recording. You can also hear John’s voice somewhere else (“get ready for a miracle”). He was fixing our microphone one day and saying something random into the machine to test it out, but we ended up using it at the beginning of one of the songs, which was really sweet. It's a big textural blanket of my parents’ house: the window outside, you can hear the garden, the insects and the trees, my brother pressing start/stop and playing his guitar. Hearing all those things together basically recreates the memory.
The machine you used is the same tape recorder that Sibylle Baier recorded her music on, right? Where did the idea come about, is it true that you wrote to her son to learn more about that?
Yes! I just always loved Sibylle's voice and her recordings, because they were so plain and simple. I was trying to figure out what she recorded on, but I already knew she did them at home, which was also inspiring. It's so hard to record and have a setup at home, but if she could do it in the 60s while working, then it meant what she used was workable. I decided to just email her son, because he currently releases her music, and he actually wrote back and sent me the machine she used. She might’ve used a similar model from a couple of years earlier or later, but I bought it immediately. The one I got had all these business meetings on it, so we had to erase all of that [laughs]. It’s cool that she was using this utilitarian device for her own spectacular music, and I always loved the idea that you could use something so commonplace to make something amazing and meaningful.
The album feels very diaristic, even when the songs remain abstract or elusive from an outside perspective, with only you being able to transport to where you’re grabbing from. What do you find most compelling about writing that way?
I like thinking about the songs from a memoir standpoint, with certain images or references in mind that were a part of my life. Even if they weren't even that real (maybe they're just dreams or visual references of some kind), I like thinking about it as a diary in some ways. I also like that other people can enjoy them, insert themselves and induce their own meanings, so it's kind of giving it away for other people to enjoy. And I like that process too, because then I can move along too and make more things [laughs].
I like to end these interviews by asking what’s been on your radar lately, in terms of music, film, books or art in general. Are there any recent obsessions that have grabbed your attention?
I've been obsessively listening to Broadcast a lot - Tender Buttons and the demo recordings from that. They're really inspiring. Joseph Ghosn - an awesome Lebanese journalist who lives in Paris - was telling me recently that Tender Buttons was actually a demo album, so there are the demo recordings from that, but then the actual album was a demo. At the time, the label suggested just releasing it as is. Knowing that is super inspiring, to learn that something that might seem to you as undercooked or unfinished can actually be so great in the state it’s in.