Ekko Astral wants to make the world a better place

Ekko Astral closes out its debut full-length pink balloons with “i90,” a deeply bruised slow burner that has its roots in a stretch when vocalist Jael Holzman felt disenchanted with her work as a journalist. “At the time, I was reporting for Politico and I was trying to write more ambitious work on the war over trans healthcare and the anti-trans movement,” said Holzman, who will join her bandmates in concert at Ace of Cups on Tuesday, Aug. 13. “And what I found was a lot of pushback to telling, I think, the true story.”

At the height of this disillusionment, the singer took a trip from the band’s home in Washington D.C. to Chicago for the Pitchfork Music Festival, embarking on a nearly 11-hour drive through Ohio and Indiana – both states in which a spike in anti-trans legislation has made life increasingly dangerous for members of the trans community. While traveling on I-90 through these places, Holzman reflected on the myriad interviews she had conducted with trans folks living in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and other similarly situated Midwestern locales while reporting for Politico, and how they had shared with her the reality that this legislation had increased their fears, leading many to at least consider the idea of fleeing the region.

“And what happened was that I was unable, really, to tell the big story that I needed to tell in journalism,” Holzman said. “And coming back to music, I decided to write a song about how it felt to drive through these places and to be afraid for the future.”

“If you walk through a cemetery/You’ll find people buried under gravestones of strangers,” Holzman sings on “i90,” a chilling nod to the countless trans folks buried under deadnames, their chosen existences obliterated in their passing. “I have friends still hiding/While you throw a parade.”

So, even as Ekko Astral has toured up and down the East Coast and into the South in the months since pink balloons surfaced in April, Holzman said that she knew at some point the band would need to visit the Midwest. And when it did, the musicians would have to do so keeping that song and those ideas in front of mind. “It would need to be about ‘i90,’” Holzman said, “and it would need to be about the work that brought us here in the first place.”

In that spirit, Astral Ekko has partnered with nonprofit organizations for every date on its current MIdwest swing, collecting donations for microgrants accessible to trans people impacted by care restrictions. In Columbus, the band has teamed with TransOhio, a nonprofit whose work has become increasingly essential amid the rise in anti-trans bills passed by Republican legislators. This includes House Bill 68, which restricts youth access to gender-affirming health care, and the passage of which was upheld last week by a Franklin County judge. “For me, the court ruling was really a solemn reminder of why we’re doing this,” Holzman said. “If there were even one or two people that cried this week, and now they have a concert to go to, that is why we do this. The show is for everybody, but also, it’s really important for them.”

Both within Ekko Astral in her work as a climate reporter, Holzman consistently gives voice to the oppressed, centering the experiences and perspectives of those who too often are not given a platform. “We’ve got solidarity with all the missing murdered people,” Holzman howls amid the melodic buzzsaw of “Devorah,” her words conjuring images of everyone from murdered Indigenous activists and Black trans women to the countless Palestinian men, women and children who have been killed and maimed since October by the U.S. made and funded arms being wielded by Israel. 

“I would say the act of journalism and the act of songwriting are two wholly distinct verbs, but at the same time, I do try to paint the world as is in my songs,” Holzman said. “I think there’s a need to recognize that modes of communication can accomplish different things, but it all comes from a sincere desire to make the world a better place.”

Holzman has long embraced language as a tool for communicating complex ideas (she and lead guitarist Liam Hughes first met in English class at the University of Vermont), tracing this fondness for words back through a childhood fascination with music. “When I was a kid, I wasn’t the most popular. I was bullied a lot, and I was definitely one of the oddballs. And when you’re in those situations, you lean on the mediums you have. And for me, that was music,” she said. “My household growing up had a rule: If you were playing music, you could be as loud as you wanted. No one could ever tell you to quiet down. And I think my love of writing really came from music.”

This rule was established, in part, by Holzman’s punk-loving, songwriter father, who taught her how to play guitar and whose respect and appreciation for music left a deep, lasting imprint. In school, Holzman said, she would often find herself sketching out song lyrics in the margins of her notebooks. And when possible, she would slip away from class and hole up alone with a guitar, describing this isolated creative space as the one in which she always found the most comfort. 

In Ekko Astral, Holzman has been able to bridge the early emotional release she discovered within the form and a newfound sense of consideration she traced in part to her chosen career. “I come into music and art with a heavy amount of intentionality, and I think it’s because I’ve been trying for a long time to use journalism to make a difference,” she said. “And I still think journalism can make that difference, but I think music might even be more powerful. … For me, with every song we write, I like to think, ‘What’s the net effect? What’s the point of this song? Are we trying to change anything?’ And then we go from there.”