Words By Zach Collier
Photos By Adam Brown
The new Little Monarch album, Plenty of Time, blends lush extended harmonic textures with intricate, driving, groovy beats. It almost acts as a sonic metaphor for her entire ethos.
When I sit down to chat with Casey Kalmenson – the producer and artist known as Little Monarch – she’s just getting back from the farmer’s market in Los Angeles. Earlier this week she’d returned from working in Austin, Texas, so today was a day for her to decompress and catch up on the business side of her music career.
Which meant emails. Lots of emails. And then an afternoon nap.
Casey sits on a couch in her home studio as we speak, exuding an air of both a good hang and an intelligent and driven woman. Her new song “Sheesh” labels this Main Character Energy, and it’s accurate.
You may be unfamiliar with her project Little Monarch, but millions have experienced her craft all over the world. As a working musician, she’s played many roles in the industry over the years: producer, music educator, songwriter. Perhaps most visibly, she backs Gracie Abrams as her keys and auxiliary player. She opened more than 30 shows with Abrams for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, playing stadiums all over the world. Her experiences with Abrams over nearly three years have been varied and fun.
“I'm so lucky to be a part of Gracie's band and to be her friend and confidant in a way that's changed my whole life for the better,” she tells me. It’s been a lot of work, and working for others takes time away from her solo pursuits, but she’s not concerned. It’s been a blessing, not a burden. “It’s given me this giant amount of perspective and a challenge musically and sonically to really level up. Sometimes you don't level up for yourself like you do for other people,” she says.
“But to see the scale of things reminds me that those things don’t just happen because the music is great, but because the people at the top are great and they treat everyone really well.”
Casey wants to mirror that in her own “small universe that is Little Monarch.” She wants to make sure everyone is paid well and treated well and feels included. She confesses that she hasn’t always succeeded in doing this. Early in her career, she put a lot of pressure on herself and those closest to her to succeed. You see, Little Monarch used to be a more traditional, five-piece indie band. Little Monarch had this configuration when their song, “No Matter What,” went viral after landing on Spotify’s New Music Friday.
“There we were, a five piece,” Casey says. “I mean, it was definitely my brainchild and it still is, but a friend and I got together and wrote a few songs and then brought another friend in. We were like, let's make a little EP. And it was just one of those things that all came together. And that was the single off the EP.”
None of them fully understood what landing on New Music Friday really meant at the time. “Obviously, now it's like you have to give your firstborn to be on New Music Friday,” she jokes. “But at the time, I was really close to not doing music stuff anymore. I had been working restaurant gigs and teaching music. And I've always kind of had other jobs to subsidize being a full time musician. When that happened, it was great.”
Every fork in the road for Casey has been a choice between veering off into something unrelated to music for survival, or trusting her gut and sticking it out in order to keep doing what she loves. That breakthrough with New Music Friday helped her stay the course. “A little bit of a distribution deal, a little bit of money in the pocket, and also just more confidence,” she says as she reflects on what that breakthrough brought them. Soon, Little Monarch began touring as a five-piece.
And then? “You know how bands go…” she laughs. The band hit a long stretch where schedules and life goals and careers stopped aligning. That one big break – as cool as it was – couldn’t see them through to the next level.
“I still wanted this so badly,” she says. “And I didn't want to just totally start from scratch. I put a lot of money and sweat equity into this and I wasn’t ready to let it go. So I had to figure out a way to either totally dissolve it and do something different, or reclaim the project as my own.”
Luckily she had the foresight to try to do it with grace. It was a difficult time and a sensitive artistic period for everyone involved. She says she wasn’t perfect, but it’s a good sign that her old bandmates are still close friends – and frequent collaborators today. “They have cuts on this new album. But now Little Monarch is something I can maintain and sustain and control in a healthy way.”
To any musicians going through a similar transition, Casey has this advice: “As an artist, you always think people care a lot more than they actually do – or that they're looking with this watchful eye over every move you're making. And that's just not true across the board.” She says artists shouldn’t put external pressures above internal relationships. “Create spaces where you're just calling on your friends to play a gig or do a session or refer them a job. If I were to have made it a big deal to the world like, ‘Oh, the band's no longer the band, it's all mine now,’ it would have just had a weird vibe. I wouldn’t still be best friends with these people. It's definitely been an interesting journey to navigate.”
She cites favorite projects like Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra as examples of projects led by strong personalities that look like a band but reject the traditional, highly rigid definition of a band. Rather, they function as an extended group of friends and collaborators.
“It's like, okay, you got a cool name,” she laughs. “But it's kind of like whatever happens underneath that umbrella, and whoever's involved, is fine. I feel like that kind of dynamic helps people know expectations so that it’s not everybody's only outlet. That's naturally gonna cause some hard feelings, you know? Bands break up, things happen. Even with solo projects, people get discouraged and leave it behind or whatever. But I wanted to have a body of work over a long period of time, whether it hits a critical mass or not.” She then jokes that her project getting famous would be great, but that’s not the point.
“Little Monarch is this time capsule, this reflection of where I'm at as a producer, writer – a friend even. It’s who's writing stuff with me on the albums. I didn’t want there to be an expiration date.”
This focus on longevity is central to Little Monarch’s core identity. Lyrics throughout Casey’s discography – and on her latest record – frequently discuss perseverance. “With my own ethos, I've always written about not giving up,” she tells me. “No Matter What” was the first song that was ever released for the project, and that's thematically what she still writes about.
“No matter what, pick yourself up and keep going,” Casey says. “I don't know how concrete that is as advice, but that's surely something that has guided me through rejection and the sheer amount of curves that you get thrown. It’s this commitment to showing up no matter what.”
The new Little Monarch album, Plenty of Time, blends lush extended harmonic textures with intricate, driving, groovy beats. Released on August 16, 2024, it almost acts as a sonic metaphor for her entire ethos. The harmony and airy vocal lines give off dreamy, stress free, vibes – as if Casey isn’t in a hurry to conquer the world. It’s like she’s more concerned about the journey than the destination. However, it’s juxtaposed with busy percussion and clever twists and turns that are almost representative of the curves her own life has thrown at her. You can hear all of these elements present on the danceable “We Got That Feeling.”
Lyrical themes of “showing up no matter what” creep in again on “Do It For You,” one of the most-streamed tracks on the record so far. Lyrics like, “All the things I did, all the things you do, all the things I do, I do it for you” illustrate persistent, concerted effort in the past, present, and future.
If there’s one thing Casey is great at, it’s constructing complex, interlocking polyrhythms. “I'm really interested in how things layer on top of each other and how things can play with each other,” she says. “And then also leaving space and striking a balance.”
She says that she has to decide during the production process whether a song is led by the groove or led by the vocals. In the past two examples from Plenty of Time, the songs are definitely led by the groove. But the Little Monarch song “It’s Like Music” is a perfect example of a song on the album where Casey’s heart is on her sleeve, and she leads the piece as a songwriter and vocalist with something important to say.
It doesn’t matter if it’s led by the lyrics or by the groove, Little Monarch is a chance for you to peer into the life of Casey Kalmenson and her collaborators. It’s a busy life full of ups and downs, a healthy mix of good times and bad times, and a whole lot of diligence. She’s a hard worker, but she’s found a healthy process that allows her to create for herself while staying meaningfully connected to those around her. Whether she’s supporting others on major tours or inviting them to be a part of Little Monarch, Casey’s learned not to force things and to show up positively and consistently no matter what.
There was a time when she came close to giving up and choosing another path. “Now honestly, all my work is music,” she says gratefully. “So, I feel super lucky.”
Little Monarch may become a household name tomorrow. The project could become a household name ten years from now. Regardless, there’s no rush. Little Monarch has plenty of time.
“I'm hitting the mark,” she says. “I think it's starting to get closer to something that feels sustainable for me in terms of being able to continue to make music for a long time.”
Make sure to follow Little Monarch on Instagram. You can check out “Same Old” – my favorite track from Little Monarch’s new record – below.
Little Monarch Press Photo