New York, NY (Top40 Charts) This September, Elise Davis returns with her sophomore album Cactus, the follow up to her 2016 critically-acclaimed debut The Token. With Cactus, Elise moves between lush alt-country and stripped-down folk confessionals, gluing everything together with story-driven songs about independence, liberation, and resilience as an adult woman.
Today, Elise Davis shared "Married Young" (co-written with Erin Enderlin and Alex Cline), the second song to be released from the forthcoming album. In an interview with Billboard, Davis explains, "I was talking to [Erin] about this person I was seeing when I was 20 years old, living in a shitty little apartment. He exposed me to
Tom Waits and vinyl and stuff like that. So (the song is) a merging of the fact she got married when she was young; The chorus is about that, and the rest of the song is nostalgia from this relationship I had when I was young."
Recently, Davis shared "Don't Bring Me Flowers," the first single from Cactus that was co-written with
Maren Morris and Frank Romano. NPR Music's Brittney McKenna said, "'Don't Bring Me Flowers' is downright buoyant, flirting with pop melodies and allowing more room for Davis to go big with her formidable voice."
"On my new record Cactus there is a heavy theme of feeling like a lone wolf, independent, and sexually liberated," explains Davis. "'Don't Bring Me Flowers' ties into that theme being a song simply about the desire to be involved with someone but keep it light, casual, and sexy."
For Cactus, Davis tapped producer Jordan Lehning (Caitlin Rose, Andrew Combs, Birdcloud's
Jasmin Kaset) to helm her most personal work to date. The two worked together for six months straight, holed up in Lehning's home studio, looking to albums like Tom Petty's Wildflowers and Aimee Mann's Mental Illness for inspiration. Davis' melodies remain at the forefront of every mix, her voice honest and unflinching, stripped free of the reverb that had swirled its way throughout The Token.
"Cacti are independent plants that sustain themselves," explains Davis about the new album. "They can be beautiful with bright-colored flowers on them, but if you touch them, they will hurt you. I see a lot of parallels with the way I have felt most of my life. It felt like the perfect album title for these songs."
Tracklist:
1) Hold Me Like A Gun
2) The Burn
3) Cactus
4) Married Young
5) Lone Wolf
6) 33
7) Last Laugh
8) Man
9) Moody Marylin
10) Don't Bring Me Flowers.
