PIXEY: “WHEN I DIE, I’LL AT LEAST FEEL LIKE I’VE DONE SOMETHING NOTEWORTHY”

Ahead of the VOCAL GIRLS Summer Party at Brixton’s iconic Windmill, we talk to our headliner Pixey about Scousers, stage fright, and the illness that changed her life.

Few U.K. cities have a musical and cultural heritage as pervasive and far-reaching as Liverpool’s. Aside from the obvious - being the hometown of John, Paul, George and Ringo - the city’s musical exports include artists as diverse as Gerry & The Pacemakers, Echo and the Bunnymen, Atomic Kitten, and The Coral. 

Part of the current crop of emerging artists to continue Liverpool’s legacy as a pop powerhouse is twenty-six year old Pixey (aka Lizzie Hillesdon), whose sunshine-drenched indie-pop has quickly gained traction far beyond the banks of the Mersey. “You can’t escape The Beatles when you’re in school”, Lizzie grins, speaking over Zoom from a train carriage somewhere between St Pancras and Liverpool Central Station. “I think that’s why ‘Yellow Submarine’ is one of my least favourite songs, because we were just forced to sing it every year. Because you’re surrounded by it all the time, you don’t really appreciate how amazing [Liverpool’s musical history] is”. 

All photography by Megan Graye

Around this point our chat is curtailed by the perennial issues of Zoom and unreliable train wifi, but we’re able to pick up the conversational thread a little later, once Lizzie’s returned home to stereotypically grey skies (and thankfully stronger phone signal). “London’s amazing and it always feels like there’s something going on there, but what I like about being from a smaller city is that you really get to know everybody in the circle”, she explains, referencing Liverpool’s currently thriving scene. “It's so exciting to be a part of something like that - it's a proper community, and it also means you have more space to breathe and become your own person”. 

Nevertheless, city-hopping has become an increasingly frequent feature of Lizzie’s calendar since signing to the acclaimed Chess Club Records and releasing her sophomore EP, ‘Free To Live In Colour’, last year. In fact, she was down on the South coast just the other weekend headlining the label’s stage at The Great Escape, Brighton’s tastemaking industry extravaganza. “That was my second time playing The Great Escape, but my first time feeling really excited about what I’m making”, Lizzie smiles. “I was so nervous - it’s funny, you have this weird imposter syndrome where you think: ‘me? Are you sure you want me to do it?’. But I really enjoyed it, and the crowd was so lovely”. 

The post-pandemic return to live shows was an especially significant transition for Lizzie, given that her musical roots were decidedly more backstage. “My track got on BBC Introducing and it all happened so fast”, she says of her radio breakthrough. “I basically had to work backwards and then learn the guitar to play live”. Lizzie pauses, laughing: “My shows were so ropey at first. I just had no idea about the live spectrum of what it takes to have a full, tight, thought out-sounding set”. Epitomising the adage of ‘making the best of a bad situation’, Lizzie spent 2020’s covid-enforced gig hiatus “just writing constantly and getting my production as good as I could by teaching myself. So coming out of the pandemic, I was playing live as Pixey for the second time but with a lot more experience - that made so much more sense”. 

Although Lizzie’s satisfaction in nailing her live set is evident, she’s by no means packing up her laptop any time soon. “In my opinion, the production is most of what the song is - yeah, you have the melody and whatever instruments you want to put into it, but the way it's executed is so important”, she enthuses. “Obviously I’m so happy to be working with these fantastic producers, but if you can have a say in that, it helps keep your stamp on it and makes you feel respected in terms of your input”. So Pixey, as a project, very much straddles both sides of the studio glass? “Yeah! That’s something I was really, really hard on keeping. I think [having] even basic knowledge of production is so freeing for artists”.

While it’s relatively common for people to describe their connection to music as life-affirming or even life-changing, for Lizzie this link is somewhat more literal. Having suffered a near-fatal viral infection during which doctors told her parents to prepare for the worst, Lizzie experienced an epiphany of sorts when in hospital. “I basically used to suffer from horrendous stage fright”, she explains, “but when I got sick, that was transformative”. She pauses, smiling grimly: “I just remember coming to terms with dying. And in the days afterwards, I thought ‘actually, I need to do something really important’. So that the next time this happens - because eventually I will die - I’ll at least feel like I’ve done something noteworthy, something that I actually wanted to do”. 

Listening to Pixey’s discography, the common thread - aside from melodic backbeats and woozy guitars - is an undeniable sense of optimism; her tracks are gloriously 90s, reminiscent of Fatboy Slim circa ‘Brimful of Asha’ or De La Soul. So how did she channel an experience so bleak into such buoyancy? “It gives me such good perspective now - I’m just so grateful for every opportunity”, Lizzie says simply. “That's what helped me conquer my stage fright. To anybody else who has it - and I know it sounds so cliché - but you genuinely can do it, because I had it so crippingly bad”.

Talking to Lizzie is like playing conversational pinball, bouncing around from the pandemic (“Zoom hell”) to London accents (“really fucking funny”), via the upcoming festival season and industry androcentricism (“we need more female safe spaces for musicians”). And as anyone who’s witnessed Pixey live can testify, her gigs are similarly high octane. “It’s gonna be super fucking fun”, Lizzie grins, referring to her upcoming show headlining The Windmill at the VOCAL GIRLS Summer Party on 9th June. “Loads of dancing, loads of moving about; the more you enjoy it, the more the crowd feels it”.

With support from New York quintet Spud Cannon and the company of Brixton’s favourite roof dog, the gig may well be the last chance to catch Pixey play a smaller venue before a whirlwind summer on the stages of Y Not, Truck, and Tramlines. One thing’s for sure, though: one city in particular will always be home. As our interview proper winds down, Lizzie launches into an anecdote about a barney with a London bouncer which was overheard by the latter’s colleague. Their advice? “You need to calm down, mate. She’s from Liverpool”. 

Tickets for the VOCAL GIRLS Summer Party with Pixey and Spud Cannon are available here.