In sharing the story of Ejecta, Macomber wants to subvert the all-too-common conflation of nudity and sexuality that results in so much appall from audiences. She intends to show that nudity doesn’t only represent sexuality; that it doesn’t need to at all. “I think it’s really unsexy a lot of times. If I wanted to look sexier, I’d probably cover up a bit. I’d probably get like a little bustier and, like…” She trails off, laughing. “To me it’s so funny when people are like, ‘Oh, isn’t this woman or this whatever so talented, why do they have to stoop [to nudity] to get attention?’ Maybe they’re telling a story. Did you ever think that maybe they’re saying something else, they want you to know more?”
For Macomber, nudity seems to mean the opportunity to be simultaneously vulnerable and powerful, and powerful in part because of that vulnerability. And it is indeed tremendously powerful. By substituting this aesthetic that’s so simple and clean for what might otherwise be a fashion statement—though Macomber says she admires artists who are able to have a distinct style—Young Ejecta isn’t beholden to any one genre. With this fluid aesthetic, Young Ejecta is “trying to cultivate some kind of a psychological space for the music to breathe in.” It does breathe. The music rides the wave from minimalist synthpop to bombastic, almost symphonic arrangements, often in the space of a single track.
The visual aesthetic of Ejecta, in the photos and videos—in a studio, stripped as bare as possible, rather than embodying a style that’s associated with any given genre or culture or type of person—allows for these huge shifts. It allows Ford and Macomber to play. “I think for a lot of reasons, it’s nice that Ejecta, the character, has a lot of vulnerability…she’s almost too stupid to be totally afraid. She doesn’t know any better, so she’s sort of emboldened by ignorance. Or her newness, let’s say—she’s really smart, she just doesn’t know the stuff that I know. But I’m intrigued by the idea of attempting to portray someone who’s totally new and can be simultaneously emboldened by their stupidity and be really vulnerable and be, sort of, also like a blank canvas for a multitude of songs and a multitude of moods.”
For Macomber, nudity seems to mean the opportunity to be simultaneously vulnerable and powerful, and powerful in part because of that vulnerability.
“I think I just really love a lush, kind of hyperreal snapshot, and then I also love these super-orchestrated studio pieces. I guess it’s really similar to in music, how I like these ridiculous, overstated, thousand-piece orchestra, and then I love super minimal, super real, hypperreal.” Macomber says that she and Ford come from very different places in music, with Ford’s interests lying more on the spectrum that includes eurodisco and Daft Punk and her own more in the realm of Motown and ABBA. “I love 80s new wave,” she says. “And I love singles and one-hit wonders and romantic songs, and I think that we’re united on that, like we both really love a beautiful, ridiculous ballad, but he’s definitely got both feet in the future, and I’ve got both feet way back somewhere else. And you wouldn’t think we’d make any sense together in a band, but…” This ability to mesh the dynamism of older influences with the freshness of slinky synthpop, and meanwhile to shift from minimalism to bravado and back again, makes Young Ejecta’s sound indelible. The texture of the music makes listening an immersive experience. In the opening track on The Planet, deep melodic percussion and synth strings give way to the call-and-response of Macomber’s echoic vocals, which are submerged in a growing thicket of big beats and static before they bob back to the surface in their isolated power.
“We really wanted to have a dynamism just because, I feel like, you hear that in Motown and you hear that in a lot of older music,” she adds. “It wasn’t just everything’s going nuts, you know what I mean? Bands definitely had, you could tell their hand and what palette they liked to use and things like that, but it was more dynamic.”
