Texan songwriter and musician Ariel Hartley regularly tours with her all-female band Pearl Earl, and they are currently working on a new album, but over recent years, Hartley has crafted some songs that seemed to develop in directions that had a different tone to them. Filing them away for potential development, Hartley eventually jumped into the process of completing her first solo effort, the EP Dream Crusher under the moniker Earl Hartley & The Thrift Stars. The EP has been recently released digitally, but also in a collectible cassette format by Dreamy Life.
The EP is wide-ranging for a shorter offering, charming and engaging with plenty of textures drawn from various musical genres but gently spinning into the psychedelic. As with much of Hartley’s lyric writing, these songs bear further investigation for nuances and potential meanings, but they blend seamlessly with Hartley’s music-first approach making for a very carefully balanced whole. I spoke with Ariel Hartley about her history as a songwriter, her composition techniques, why a solo effort was a particularly hard road this time around, the origins of the title track “Dream Crusher”, and the making of its rather mystical video.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I heard that the songs on the new EP, in some ways, come from the beforetimes. Were they mostly written in 2019?
Ariel Hartley: They were even written before them. I started recording that project in 2017. Then they were songs that I had kept in my arsenal song-bank from years before that, so they are old.
HMS: To me that says that you’ve been writing songs for a long time. In terms of songwriting, did you write songs before it was for any particular band or song?
AH: Yes, I would say that I officially started writing songs, knowingly, in 2011. Before that, I wrote poems my whole life, but I didn’t know I was actually writing songs. I didn’t play an instrument until 2011, so then it all came together. Then I realized, “Oh, I guess that I’m a songwriter and that’s what I’ve been doing with these poems.”
HMS: Do you find there’s any difference in how you write now that you know?
AH: Ever since I picked up an instrument, I’ve never written a poem again. Once I realized it was a song, I realized that each line had a melody with it that I would memorize. The melody or riff of the song would make me memorize the line. I just stopped writing poems, but now they are lyrics after the song has been written. Even back when I was in high school, some of the poems I would write would have a kind of melody to them, but I didn’t know how to write down any notes, so I would just forget how the chant aspect would go. I didn’t have the melody or structure behind it.
HMS: I guess those were the days before voice memo.
AH: Yes, I didn’t even have a smart phone until I was 24.
HMS: What form were these songs in when you came back to them to record them for the new EP?
AH: I write a lot of music, compositionally, on garage band, so I’ll flesh out demos that I plan on bringing out. I have another project called Pearl Earl, which is my main baby, and I give my best songs to Pearl Earl. But those songs that didn’t seem to fit became this project. I fleshed them out on garage band with guitar, bass, and keys. One of them had a drum track to it and an omnichord on there. I actually wrote it on an omnichord.
HMS: So you did all the instruments and full demos by yourself? That’s really impressive. I knew you were a guitarist, but I didn’t know you played so many instruments. When did you think, “Okay, I’m going to finish all these songs and make them an EP”?
AH: We recorded our first full-length album in Pearl Earl in 2016, even though it didn’t come out until 2017. Then we were so busy all the time, and still are, but I didn’t want to throw these songs away even though they didn’t fit the alter ego of Pearl Earl. I thought that I could see myself getting into the studio for some alone time with the same people who worked on the Pearl Earl record, especially because I can play all the instruments. But I didn’t play drums and for some of the songs I didn’t have a bassline and I needed someone to breathe a new vibe into it. Some of the songs are more collaborative and some are less collaborative.
HMS: Is playing all the instruments more tiring or more time consuming?
AH: Yes and no. It did take longer, and it made me a little more insecure about it. But even with Pearl Earl, I write most of the parts for everyone as compositions. There is collaboration on certain things that juices up the songs. The EP did take a long time because I drew out sessions for too long. Then there were in between periods where I started to hate it. [Laughs] I would say the process was hard whether I was doing all the instruments or not. I allowed too much time to have a rollercoaster of ups and downs with it. When other people are invested, it helps keep you going, so it was hard.
HMS: Since this was your first experience doing a solo EP, do you think you’d do it again now that you know how it goes? Or will you run away screaming?
AH: Yes, I do plan on doing it again. I have a lot of songs. Things take so much time on Pearl Earl, and I get bored as a creator if I’m not working on a project, so I’m definitely doing something like this again. Maybe it will be full-length, maybe it will be an EP. I don’t know. I think it will be easier since I now know what I’m getting into.
HMS: That’s great to hear. It must be a relief as a writer since if you find yourself writing a song that’s really out there, it will have somewhere to live.
AH: That’s exactly it. I’ve even written rap songs in the past but it wouldn’t make sense to do those with Pearl Earl. I am interested in using this vessel as a way to collaborate with more musicians that I love also.
HMS: How should I interpret the name, “Earl Hartley & Thrift Star”?
AH: Earl Hartley is my nickname which I got about ten years. If you slur my name Ariel down in the South, it’s Earl. I used that. That’s how the Pearl Earl name came about. I didn’t know what to call this project, so I just called it Earl Hartley. For “Thrift Star”, I just liked the way that it sounded, but I totally might have played on that southern accent with “thrift store” and “thrift star”. I was googling about the word “thrift” and there’s a flower name, and it also means to thrive and flourish, and this little cosmic star thing stuck.
HMS: Oh, yes, totally! I can hear it now. It sounds really cool and has a mysterious quality. Can I ask you about one Pearl Earl song? I was really impressed by “Meet Your Maker”. It makes a big statement in many ways. Were you at all worried about talking about religious stuff in Texas?
AH: No, I wasn’t worried, I was super-excited to be that direct and have a really strong song about it. That’s definitely the most political song, but there are definitely similar themes in all the songs, especially the new ones that are on their way. It’s calling out the hard times and the fucked up things in society. The one thing I will say about “Meet Your Maker” that I’m proud of is that it’s taken on even more meaning as the years have gone by. I finalized the lyrics in 2016. Trump was still a huge problem and he’s still a huge problem now. I’d still ask the same question: How could you even vote for a man like that? Another lyric that I’m not sure if anyone paid attention to was “Why do they keep shooting to kill?” There have been so many deaths among black people caused by police officers, but that was about something specific that happened in the summer of 2016, too. It just keeps going and keeps happening.
HMS: It’s terrible to say, but dust this song off for 2024. We need it. Or get the next album out quickly. I’m from North Carolina and Tennessee and I grew up in religious communities, and I really liked the way you handled the lyrics in this song. It’s not just a song about rage or anger, but it’s a very questioning song.
AH: Out of all songs, those are the lyrics I’m most proud of, so thank you.
HMS: There’s a lot of resonance between the songs on the new EP and older traditions of music from the 70s and early 80s. Obviously “Acid Love” is very trippy with a dreamscape feeling, and synths too. What’s the history on that song?
AH: I think I was actually pretty sad. Two of those songs are the result of a breakup but “Acid Love” was one that I worked on on tour. There was a night that I slept in the van and couldn’t sleep. I was hashing that one out. I’ve definitely fallen in love on acid and been broken up with on acid. I think it’s hilarious now, but that particular breakup on acid wasn’t even the one I was going through at that time. I really like psychedelia and I think that everyone should probably trip at least once in their life. I think it’s important for your ego and ego-death, so I created a song about that.
HMS: I like how the song includes both positive and also more cautious views of love. It felt like it reflected on different experiences.
AH: A breakup can kind of be an ego-death, and falling in love can be too, because you can get really scared or really thrown off from yourself. You can reach a point where you’re tripping on your ego, too. The tables turn when you realize, “Oh shit. This is not my soulmate.” Then you can have a dark night of the soul when you realize that.
HMS: “Dream Crusher” is our title track, and also one that has a really interesting video out. When did you make the video?
AH: I made the video in January when I was in Malibu and a studio in LA. We did it all in about five hours. My friend Sara Mosier, who has done work on a past music video, lives out there and wanted to do it. There’s a funny story about it. We went to an old, historic building that rents out studio space in downtown LA, and I was supposed to be back in another studio recording that afternoon. I thought I could pull it off, and I could have, but when we used the smoke machine for the breakdown part of the video, with all the fog, we set off the alarm trying to waft all the fog into the hallway. There was no ventilation and we set off the alarm in this huge building. We were freaking out and so stressed. Everyone was like, “What the hell is going on??” We got charged a big fine, but it’s all good because it made a good video.
HMS: Was this when you were recording your dance parts that go inside the studio space?
AH: Yes. That’s all Sara Mosier. I didn’t know what the video looked like at all, really, until a month before we released it. She told me, “Okay, pretend like you’re holding up some big crystal balls in your hands.” I didn’t know she was going to turn me into a tarot card. She’s so talented. Everything she does is really aesthetically pleasing but I had no idea she was thinking of all these things.
HMS: The retro fisheye fade in and out really works. The video really brings out specific aspects of the song. There is a lot of mystical imagery in the song that comes out in the video. Does this song have a long history for you?
AH: This was the hardest song, lyrically, for me to write. It took about two years. It took so long to record in the studio because I kept putting off going to the studio because I didn’t have lyrics for it yet. I just couldn’t figure them out. I’m still letting it evolve. But basically, I had a friend who taught me to play the guitar in 2011 and she wanted to start a band with me and call it Black Obsidian Dream Crusher. So I remembered that and I used the song to kind of honor her but also translate our hangouts and some of the vibes from that time into a mystical character. There’s a lot of meaning but there’s also a lot of random piecing together that works somehow.
HMS: It does have a bit of a storytelling feeling, which is interesting. It’s like a little journey through different impressions.
AH: I wanted the lyrics to be open to interpretation as far as tarot, fortune-telling, and astrology too. But I had written most of the instrumentation first.
Photo credit: Ellie Alonzo
