For e.lissa faden, music isn’t simply a way to describe difficult experiences; it is a way to transform them. Throughout this conversation, faden opens up about the emotional world behind her debut EP, Daisy Chain, and particularly the song “Cement,” a track that turns years of contained anger into something hypnotic, seductive, and ultimately empowering. Her answers reveal an artist deeply interested in the space between beauty and discomfort, attraction and danger, rage and restraint, and the person others see versus the emotions that exist underneath the surface.
Rather than treating trauma as something that can be neatly summarized, faden explores how it can linger, repeat itself, and influence the way someone understands themselves. Across Daisy Chain, those experiences become different songs, characters, environments, and emotional states. At the center of it all is the idea of reclaiming control.
“Cement” feels like rage that has been contained for so long that it becomes almost hypnotic. What did you have to sit with emotionally before you could turn that quiet anger into a song?
“It’s the kind of emotion that festers and grows. For the longest time, I expressed it as white hot rage.”
That description immediately establishes the emotional foundation of “Cement.” This isn’t anger that appeared suddenly. It is something that accumulated over time, becoming larger and more difficult to contain. Faden explains that she even turned to kickboxing as a physical outlet for those emotions.
“I even got into kickboxing as a way to push it all out of my system.”
There is something revealing about that choice. Instead of allowing the anger to remain entirely internal, she found a physical way to release some of the energy attached to it. But eventually, that anger found another outlet. One night, during what she describes as a creative flurry, she wrote down the lyrics. What changed this time was the perspective.
“This time the story was less ‘woe is me,’ and more ‘woe is you.’”
That shift becomes crucial to understanding “Cement.” Rather than remaining focused entirely on what had been done to her, faden began imagining what it would feel like to reverse the direction of that emotional energy to push everything that had caused her rage back toward the person responsible.
“The question was: What would it feel like to push everything that caused this rage back to the perpetrator?”
Her answer is simple:
“It felt powerful.”
That sense of power becomes one of the defining characteristics of “Cement.” The song isn’t simply documenting pain. It is taking pain that had been sitting inside her and transforming it into something active.
The title “Cement” immediately suggests something heavy, permanent, and difficult to escape. What does cement represent to you within the story of the song?
For faden, “Cement” represents the immobilizing nature of trauma.
“When something traumatic happens, it can make you feel stuck.”
She compares that feeling to having your feet trapped in quicksand, unable to fully move forward.
“You might pivot a little, but the pain keeps you right where you are.”
That metaphor gives the song’s title a much deeper meaning. Cement isn’t simply something heavy; it represents the sensation of being physically and emotionally unable to escape something that happened in the past. And for faden, that feeling lasted for years.
“This is how I felt for years, but this song helped me push out of the wet cement and onto dry land.”
That final image is particularly powerful because it changes the meaning of the song.
“Cement” begins as a representation of being trapped, but ultimately becomes a representation of escape. The song doesn’t erase what happened. Instead, creating it helped faden change her relationship with what happened. The act of writing became part of the process of moving forward.
There’s a seductive quality to the track despite its darker subject matter. Did you intentionally want the song to make listeners feel attracted to something that might also be dangerous or destructive?
“Yes! I love playing with contrasts and duality.”
That idea of contradiction appears repeatedly throughout faden’s creative approach. “Cement” deals with anger and trauma, yet the song doesn’t necessarily present those emotions in an abrasive or immediately confrontational way. Instead, there is something seductive about it. Faden describes the track as:
“a destructive siren song, luring someone to the fate they deserve.”
The imagery of a siren is fitting because it combines beauty with danger. A siren doesn’t need to force someone toward destruction. The attraction itself becomes the mechanism. That same tension runs through “Cement.” The listener can be drawn toward the song’s atmosphere while simultaneously confronting the darker emotions underneath it. For faden, that contradiction isn’t accidental. It is part of the artistic experience.
The song can be beautiful and threatening. Seductive and angry. Dreamlike and deeply uncomfortable. Those opposing qualities give “Cement” much of its identity.
If “Cement” were a physical place rather than a song, what would that place look and feel like?
“I’m really attracted to liminal spaces.”
That fascination with liminal spaces provides an especially interesting window into how faden sees her music. She describes these spaces as:
“Open-ended, scary, but somehow comforting.”
Rather than imagining “Cement” as an obvious dark or frightening environment, she envisions something much more familiar, but subtly wrong.
“To me, this song feels like you’re wandering through a familiar mall or office building where everything feels slightly off.”
That imagery captures the emotional quality of the song beautifully. A mall or office building should be ordinary. Familiar. Safe. But in the world of “Cement,” something about that familiarity has shifted. Everything looks recognizable, yet something feels wrong.
Faden describes the experience as a “surreal, dream-like fantasy.” And perhaps most intriguingly, she says that when you wake up from that dream, you still want to return.
“And when you wake up, you can’t help but want to go back and explore a little more.”
That desire to return to an unsettling place reflects the seductive quality of the song itself. The discomfort isn’t enough to make you leave. Instead, it makes you more curious.
The song moves with a slow-burning intensity rather than exploding immediately. Was restraint important to you when portraying rage?
“So often, rage is depicted as a punchy, in-your-face confrontation.”
She points to familiar images of anger: flipping someone off after being cut off in traffic, physical confrontation, or knocking out an opponent in a ring. But faden argues that those images don’t necessarily represent the way rage exists in real life.
“But that’s not really how it shows up in real life.”
For her, particularly as a femme person, anger can be much quieter.
“So often, women are taught to be palatable and polite.”
That expectation creates another layer to the emotion. Instead of being openly expressed, rage can become hidden behind social expectations.
“So that means the rage is masked and clouded behind a tight-jawed smile.”
That image of the tight-jawed smile is one of the most striking descriptions in the interview. It captures the difference between visible anger and suppressed anger. Rather than screaming, the person smiles. Rather than exploding, they contain it.
Rather than confronting the source of their anger immediately, they carry it.
Faden believes that quiet, burning, sublimated rage can be a much more accurate representation of how many femme people experience anger. That explains why “Cement” doesn’t need to explode from the beginning. Its restraint becomes part of its emotional realism. The rage is there. It’s simply underneath the surface.
From “Cement” to Daisy Chain
While “Cement” provides one of the most intense explorations of trauma and reclamation on the EP, faden’s larger project is built around the idea that these experiences don’t exist in isolation. That brings the conversation to Daisy Chain itself.
A daisy chain suggests individual pieces being connected into something larger. Why did Daisy Chain feel like the right title for your debut EP?
“My song Daisy Chain plays with the contrast between perception and reality.”
That contrast becomes one of the central ideas behind the EP. From the outside, a daisy chain might look innocent and beautiful. Faden describes the outward perception as someone simply adding flowers to their crown.
But underneath that image is something much more complicated.
“Inside, I’m looping the same flowers over and over like Sisyphus pushing a rock up the hill.”
The comparison to Sisyphus transforms the innocent image into something repetitive and exhausting. The flowers aren’t simply decoration. They represent a cycle.
A repetition. A pattern that continues.
Faden describes it as:
“a never-ending cycle of bright eyes and fake cheer.”
That phrase captures the tension between how someone can appear externally and what might actually be happening internally. The EP title therefore becomes a kind of disguise. It sounds delicate. Beautiful. Almost playful.
But underneath it is anger, exhaustion, trauma, and emotional repetition.
Faden chose Daisy Chain because it establishes the emotional landscape of the entire project.
“The anger, seduction, ghost stories, grief, and acceptance.”
Those elements might seem contradictory when listed together, but that contradiction is precisely what makes the project feel cohesive.
Does each song on Daisy Chain represent a different emotional “link,” or is there one larger story connecting the entire project?
“Each song on Daisy Chain taps into different facets of recovering from trauma.”
Rather than every song telling the exact same story, the EP explores different emotional stages and perspectives surrounding recovery. The title track focuses on the contrast between external perception and internal reality.
“The title song examines how people perceive me from the outside and what it would feel like to snap those little flowers off my head and unleash how I really feel.”
That image of removing the flowers becomes another act of reclamation. The flowers represent the persona that others see. Removing them means allowing the emotions underneath to finally become visible.
“Reverberating”
Faden describes “Reverberating” as an exploration of generational trauma.
“It explores generational trauma and how the ghosts of the past influence the future.”
The song therefore expands the EP’s focus beyond individual experience. Trauma isn’t always isolated to one person or one moment. It can echo through families and generations, influencing what comes afterward.
“Unscathed”
Then comes “Unscathed,” which faden describes as a grungy, aggressive, and spiteful track. That description suggests a different emotional register from the quieter restraint of “Cement.” Where “Cement” explores contained rage, “Unscathed” allows a more aggressive side of that anger to emerge.
“Cement”
Finally, Daisy Chain closes with “Cement.” But rather than ending with the narrator remaining trapped, the song represents a transformation.
Faden explains that “Cement” is about:
“Reclaiming what happened and changing the narrative.”
That idea ties the entire EP together. The songs may explore different emotions, but they all contribute to a larger story about moving through trauma and eventually reclaiming personal power.
A New Chapter for e.lissa faden
Perhaps the most important statement in the entire conversation comes at the end, when faden reflects on what creating Daisy Chain has meant for her.
“Creating this EP has been healing and rewarding, and it’s opened doors for new artistic expression.”
That makes Daisy Chain more than simply a debut release. It represents a process. A confrontation with difficult emotions. An exploration of identity. And ultimately, a movement forward.
Faden describes her next chapter as “e.lissa faden round two,” an artist who has come through the experiences explored on this record with a stronger understanding of herself.
“She’s not trapped there anymore.”
That final idea brings the entire interview full circle. At the beginning, “Cement” is about feeling stuck feet buried in quicksand, unable to move forward. By the end, faden describes herself as someone who can still visit those liminal spaces, but is no longer trapped inside them. She can return to them artistically.
She can explore them. She can turn them into music. But she doesn’t have to live there. That is ultimately what makes Daisy Chain so compelling: it doesn’t pretend that trauma disappears. Instead, e.lissa faden transforms the anger, grief, repetition, seduction, and uncertainty surrounding it into art and in doing so, changes who gets to control the story.
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