Storey Littleton: From Folk Roots to M0NOGAMY’s Haunting Debut

Discovering Storey Littleton

I first heard the name Storey Littleton at Brooklyn’s Girl Noise indie festival, proving that it truly is a small world – nearly everyone in the room claimed at some point that they’d grown up with her. While I question the level of synonymy “I grew up with Storey Littleton” and “I live upstate” may have had in this environment, I quickly understood why anyone may want a sliver of connection to this artist. From the moment she stepped onstage, Storey Littleton held the room: her vocals could convince you of nearly anything. Maybe there is a diner on the moon. Maybe she did know everyone at the festival. Maybe Storey Littleton owns New York. Either way, by the end of her fifteen minute set, I knew I wanted to see more. 

What I didn’t know was that I, too, had grown up with Littleton in a sense – she’d been on my radar for about 80% of my life, to be exact. In 2008, my father brought home a CD collection from Smithsonian’s Folkways children’s record label (which, admittedly, I still cycle back to frequently), including "You Are My Little Bird," which was, for a record marketed towards children, rather special. Among folk songs, it featured covers of Bob Marley and The Velvet Underground, sung by Elizabeth Mitchell (of Liz and Lisa and Ida fame), accompanied by her family: husband Dan Littleton and their then-young daughter. Storey Littleton spent her youth touring and performing with her parents, both as individuals and in Ida, an influence that undoubtedly shines through her work. As of late, however, Littleton seems to have stepped back from her parents’ zeitgeist to focus on a supergroup of her own. 

Source: Folkways

M0NOGAMY’s Gray Area — A Debut EP That Packs a Punch

Comprised of Littleton and two other Brooklynites – fellow vocalist Livia Reiner and guitarist Matthew Danger – M0NOGAMY released their first EP a little over a year ago, teasing it with single (Never) Let It End, which stands as the band’s most streamed track on Spotify and serves as both a perfect preamble and the EP’s full-circle closing track. Gray Area is a shorter debut – four songs, sixteen minutes. Still, it shows M0NOGAMY to be impressive: the band accomplishes much in the record’s simplicity (speaking both in terms of length and the music itself). Lyrically, they level with such songwriters as Adrianne Lenker and Florence Welch, inspirations that seem to teem on the tips of their tongues but never once reach copycat territory. M0NOGAMY bursts with poetic and technical intelligence. In the opening track, Makeup on Your Eyes, Reiner introduces the record crooning, “There’s time to ask, time to learn / What’s pain, what's pleasure, what's concern/ We talk about the rest in fits and starts/ Sit a little to the left just like a heart.” 

One may expect a certain lack of production from a self-made debut EP from a small indie group but Gray Area’s polish pairs well with the smoothness of M0NOGAMY’s sound. This may be where Littleton’s nepotism comes in – backup performers feature a host of familiar faces in the music industry, even getting Adam Minkoff on drums. But in a musical world where Gracie Abrams can perform her Glastonbury equivalent of a hate crime, Littleton’s connections seem to be used sparingly. M0NOGAMY knows they can stand on their own, and they do so quite well.

At A Diner and What’s Next

What a Decision, the second track on Gray Area, leans most similarly to Littleton’s solo work (or that which I’ve seen, at least). Littleton takes the lead on the track’s vocals, and there’s a cleverness to the repeated synthesizer riff that results in a comfortable unease, a haunting – the song is finished, but the event that once prompted it must not be. This I mark as what may be Littleton’s trademark. The song is smart and technical without pretension, but beyond that, it’s interesting. It’s the sort of song you listen to twice – once to hear and once to really listen to. 

With only one solo single out as of right now: At A Diner, Littleton’s album by the same name is forthcoming with Dongiovanni Records this year. Even upon my first listen to her single, though, it was hard not to really feel this music. “I remember us in a city/ That was far enough away from home,” sings Littleton with enough quiet confidence to bring chills. And indeed, as she stood alone on a dim stage, the full room I was standing in went completely silent. Now, I find myself recalling these lyrics frequently, along with sweet nostalgia. Her music is special, whether you grew up with her or not, whether you knew it or not, and this feeling is certainly nonexclusive to my own experience. As she sings in M0NOGAMY’s Big Rockstar, “In a room with every row filled/ Even the balcony/ Shouts break out but I still feel/ You’re talking to me.”