Q&A: Mary Eliza on Embracing Vulnerability in New Single “Porcelain”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY LARA ZOE SCHMIDT ☆
MARY ELIZA GREW UP LIVING AND BREATHING MUSIC — from busking with her family band to mastering several instruments, music has always been a lifeline for the Portland-based singer/songwriter.
Since the start of her solo music career in 2021, Mary Eliza has embraced a raw, DIY ethos inspired by artists like Adrianne Lenker, crafting intimate songs with minimal production. Her upcoming album, Spider (out January 17), marks her most expansive and ambitious project yet. The indie-folk record takes listeners on a delicate yet piercing and unfiltered journey through heartbreak, grief, and resilience, wrapped in diverse instrumentals and introspective lyrics. Yet, despite its heavy themes, there is a steady undercurrent of love, hope, and tenderness that weaves itself throughout her music.
“Porcelain,” Mary Eliza’s recently-released song, dances on the edge of indie-rock while staying grounded in the folk roots that thread through her music. Reflecting on the song’s creation, she shares, “it was a time that I actually embraced the darkness and grief within me and saw the necessary role that suffering plays in true joy and creativity.” True to her words, the track opens with a jarring yet cathartic cacophony that melts into a soft, yearning melody, paired with brutally honest lyrics about her experiences living with chronic illness.
Luna got the chance to chat with Mary Eliza, and ask her all about her upcoming album, the urge to create and the importance of community during hard times.
LUNA: Thank you for taking the time to talk to Luna! Before diving into the questions, our readers would love to get to know you a little more – how would you describe your music to someone who doesn’t know you yet?
MARY ELIZA: Hello! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me! I would say that my music spans folk, to indie-folk, to indie-rock. My upcoming record, Spider, sits more in the middle as an indie folk-rock collection of songs. As a person who finds expression to be a lifeline, I write and create because it heals me. Thus, my music is very personal, and I feel so honored to be able to share such raw parts of myself and connect with other humans because of that vulnerability.
LUNA: Congrats on the release of your single “Porcelain!” It’s such a lyrically beautiful and vulnerable song. Can you talk me through the process of creating it?
MARY ELIZA: Thanks so much! “Porcelain” was a product of a very dark time for me. Honestly it wasn’t a bad time, but rather, it was a time that I actually embraced the darkness and grief within me and saw the necessary role that suffering plays in true joy and creativity. This was also thanks to the book: No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Naht Hanh, which I highly recommend. I was processing medical diagnoses, the end of a relationship, a couple of friendships, and more. “Porcelain,” like almost every song that I write, happened in a flood of consciousness. I sat with it in that raw form for several months, and when I brought it into Trace Horse Studios in Nashville, the vision and emotion behind the lyrics just exploded. It was like I needed another set of ears (in this case it was Preston Cochran, an incredible producer) to help me expand on the foundation of the song. It seemed to fluidly come together then, and it was such a cathartic experience to hear it blasting through the speakers in the studio.
LUNA: The opening instrumental of “Porcelain” creates such an interesting contrast with the rest of the song. It kinda feels like a sonic representation of overthinking, which ties beautifully to the questions in the lyrics. What inspired that choice?
MARY ELIZA: I love your take on this! For me, I always heard something really loud and soul-scraping at the start of it, and that’s the best way that I can describe that feeling. It scratched an itch for me, I guess, and I really love when records hold surprises like that when you’re listening through a tracklist. An example of being surprised while listening through a record is Mitski’s track “Bug Like An Ange.l” This may have also inspired the cacophony.
LUNA: With your record Spider coming out in January, is there a track you’re especially excited for people to hear? Maybe one that feels extra special to you?
MARY ELIZA: Truthfully, I would say that my favorite track shifts every couple weeks. The whole record is so special to me, which is such a good feeling! Right now, I’d say that the track “Fire” is hitting home. I’m excited for you to hear it!
LUNA: Your last album, Moments Not Days, had a beautifully minimal acoustic sound, while Spider feels much bigger and more adventurous. What inspired you to take such a different approach with this new record?
MARY ELIZA: All of the projects that I have released on streaming services prior to this upcoming record have been total DIY experiments, and were released with imperfection as the final landing point. Adrianne Lenker has been a huge influence for me in giving me the confidence to just record songs in their seedling form (with a handheld recorder in the forest no less) and release them into the ether. Moments Not Days was another one of those spur-of-the-moment projects that I took a couple hours to immortalize in between trips. Gaining confidence from these DIY releases, I had been dreaming up this new, full band record for years. It’s an approach that I’ve always been interested in, and I thoroughly enjoyed giving these ten songs a lot of time and attention in the studio and otherwise. It has felt really good to spend so much time caring for this batch of songs.
LUNA: How do you picture people listening to your music? What’s the environment and setting you think is best for listening to your upcoming record?
MARY ELIZA: This is a fun one. Personally, one of my favorite things to do is to find playfulness with romanticizing my life, and one of the ways that I do that is to have a soundtrack for almost everything I do. This soundtrack shifts each day, of course, but it makes me feel like I’m in a movie and helps me to see so much beauty and joy in the world when my outings are accompanied by music. With this in mind, I hope that some of the songs on Spider spark this same excitement in others, and that some of the tracks can become companions for listeners, in any environment. One specific one...I think that “Dogs” accompanies car rides very sweetly.
LUNA: It seems like music provides a safe space for you to explore personal and vulnerable topics like experiencing grief and living with chronic illnesses. What led you to open up about these experiences in your songwriting?
MARY ELIZA: I have almost lost myself in not sharing my experiences, so my vulnerability (with myself and others) feels both like a lifeline and the most natural thing in the world. I don’t know how to not be vulnerable and honest -people close to me can attest to this — and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I always write from a place of necessity. I get this itch in my belly, and when I was younger I would confuse the feeling with being hungry, or tired, but now I know the itch to mean, ‘okay, it’s time to write.’ The second gift that music gives me, after allowing me a space to process and feel my feelings in their largest forms, is to be able to connect with other humans through the music. I am so deeply grateful for music, and the connections that it has given me.
LUNA: I noticed that there is a lot of nature imagery in the lyrics from the tracks of Spider, and I’ve also read that you’re into birding. How does your love of nature influence your music?
MARY ELIZA: Nature is my safe place; nature is home. I feel that we all have this core being, a core part of ourselves, and for me, a forest, a rugged coastline, being surrounded by birds or just laying in the dirt is such an integral part of my being. I feel that big loves of my life, nature included, will always be woven into anything that I create.
LUNA: You already play the fiddle, ukulele, guitar and piano – are there any other instruments you’d love to pick up in the future?
MARY ELIZA: Yes! Saxophone, accordion, and pedal steel are top of the list right now.
LUNA: You grew up traveling and busking with your family band. What did you learn from that experience, and how does it shape the way you make music today?
MARY ELIZA: I would say that I learned a lot from the family band years. I learned how to be a member of a performing band, and how to listen and watch everyone else on stage to create a cohesive whole. We also were part of weekly bluegrass jam-circles during that time, and similarly there, I learned how to watch people’s hands and mimic what they were doing and how to take a lead. Busking at a young age became a bit of a full-time job for me as I aged into teenage and young adult years. I learned how to have thick skin, and I have also met some of the most kind and interesting folks. Traditional bluegrass music will always be one of the deep-seeded roots of my musical being, and my broad love for music across genres seeps into my writing pretty often I’d say.
LUNA: Recently, you started an Instagram account to bring people with chronic illnesses together, hosting hang-outs for anyone who wants to join. Why is building community so important to you?
MARY ELIZA: In recent months, I discovered the very end of my ability to process medical stress, diagnoses, and the alienation that comes with it all. I experienced what felt like a crack in my nervous system, and I realized that community, calmness, and a healthy nervous system is at the very root of healing, and what I was in dire need of. That’s when I created the new chronic illness-centric Instagram page, and it’s been so lovely connecting with people who completely understand what I am going through and being able to support each other there. Community, in a broader sense, is also something that I really value, and often aim to foster in any way that I can. We’ve gotta stick together. <3
LUNA: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Luna!
MARY ELIZA: Thank you!
