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- Nikita Lev Has the Yorgos Lanthimos Tea
Marcus Maddox
Fresh off the release of Suspend earlier this autumn, singer-songwriter Nikita Lev has been busy promoting her second EP, which takes a tough look at loss and heartbreak through introspective lyrics and wistful melodies. And just like how the record spans sad and sexy, funny and serious, she’s also drawn to art that contains multitudes.
Lev tells ShelfMAG over Zoom that she’s behind on movies — One Battle After Another is still on her list — and she’s comfort-watching Gilmore Girls. But ahead, she shares some crucial Yorgos Lanthimos intel and a timely novel she compares to a Yorkshire beefcake (complimentary).
“Sandra Bernhard is brilliant. I've seen her in some other things, and then I watched this movie — it's just showmanship. It's a bunch of scenes of her performing in fabulous outfits. And it's kind of Lynchian in its abstractness. I recognize that her audience isn't reacting much while she is doing these performances, and it makes no difference to her — which is so funny to me as a performer, because the audience reaction is hard. You can't just ignore it, and you feel obligated to respond to whatever they're reacting to or not reacting to. She's just there to do it for her own sake. She's so powerful in her weirdness.”
“It's so romantic and so beautiful. I recently started rereading it because I saw that they’re doing a movie. It's got such beautiful language and such beautiful characters. It's also rough and rugged and romantic. I don't know if there's anything new I can say, because I've only just started rereading it … but it's like a romantic, rugged man.”
“I have been obsessed with that album recently. I've loved Imogen Heap for a while. I've known about her for a couple of years, and then I watched Garden State, and there was the end scene where they play ‘Let Go.’ I think that album is so unique, so moody and delicate and silly and fun. She's such a character.”
“I love French New Wave and synth-y sounds. They've got horns in the title track, and they've got horse hooves. The way that the album flows is so cool, coherent, and evocative. It's nothing like I've ever heard before. A lot of the time when I'm listening to music, I'm just walking down the street, so it's just a great scene.”
“I resonated with Portishead so much because they're so soft but hard, and the arrangements are so interesting and so perfect. They pull it together, and it feels like that's the only way that it works. It's so emotive and nuanced. All these albums have a similar theme in my head: groovy, but sad and thoughtful.”
“I recently watched the new Yorgos Lanthimos, which was insane. I don't want to spoil it, but I think the arc is so perfectly done. If it hadn't ended the way it did, I would've been disappointed. My friend recently was in Greece, and I went to see it with her. She told me she was having her nails done, and the woman who was doing her nails was like, ‘Yorgos Lanthimos grew up in this town.’ And she was like, ‘No one here is like that. He's the only one that's like that.’”
What else is Nikita Lev is into? Get real-time updates at shelf.im/nikitalev.
