Ashton Nicole Casey created the alter ego ‘Ashnikko’ as a teenager in need of a badass big sister and had no choice but to assume the role herself. On her latest musical venture, Smoochies, the singer-songwriter and her fearless lyrical persona come one step closer to becoming the big sister she never had. BUST recently caught up with her to chat about her new album.
Smoochies, the follow up to Ashnikko’s full-length debut Weedkiller (2023), melds a variety of styles, from electronic, to pop rap, and even tinges of country, yielding an energetic project that flickers and waxes electric with cheek and sexual sovereignty. “Wet Like” (featuring COBRAH) and “Full Frontal”, in particular. Meanwhile, the insistent march of “Skin Cleared” suggests a main character on a redemption arc, heading down to the club to try on a newly single, more confident persona, or “inner turmoil and pettiness,” as the singer describes it. “Chinchinya” is a chirpy anthem, fit for an anime soundtrack. The sharp characterization and narrative thread of the album make us wonder if Ashnikko thought in cinematic terms while writing. “I feel like when I write all of my music I have like a pretty clear color palette and visual world that it lives in. Before I write I usually write a couple paragraphs on like where we are, what I’m wearing, how I’m feeling, what I’m drinking, what I’m eating, who I’m talking to.” It’s no surprise this level of detail was infused into Smoochies, as the project definitely harkens to a world unto itself—an impossibly colorful, kinetic realm.
Imbued with sass and whimsy, Smoochies is undergirded by emotive introspection. Don’t let the hyper energy of tracks like “Microplastics” and “I Want My Boyfriends To Kiss” fool you, Ashnikko takes the creative process, and her place in the age-old, community-based ritual of music making, to heart. “I’ve been in many different writing rooms, I’ve songwritten for other people. There can be quite a sterile approach to it. I feel like sometimes it can leech a little bit of the magic of music out of it. I was really trying to hold onto, like, the joy of music making and the community building of music making because at the end of the day music is one of our most ancient human practices. It’s how we would gather, since like the dawn of humanity.”
Creating space for alchemy to enter while making the record was also important. “I’ve been working with Tom Slinger since I was 18 years old. He’s amazing. We have this like, almost telepathic musical chemistry, which is super rare, and I’m super grateful for that. I worked with loads of other people like Oscar Scheller, Tove Burman, Skyler Stonestreet. Just like people that I have a lot of fun with.”
Originally hailing from Oak Ridge, North Carolina, and now splitting her time between London and the US, Smoochies mirrors Ashnikko’s wayfaring, with songs that evoke a journey and showcase layered world building. Having harnessed the grit to rise through the ranks in a tough business, we wonder what role, if any, intuition plays in her process. “I think I’m kind of an anxious person. So, it’s really hard to differentiate the anxious voice and the intuitive voice. I think that is maybe my lifelong journey, trying to learn the difference between the two voices.” She pauses, positing rhetorically. “What have I learned about listening to my intuition? I think, yeah, I’ve put out a lot of music that I felt like my label would like or I felt like maybe would be more commercially viable. Which is always the wrong way to go about putting out music, so yeah, with this music, it was very much like I’m gonna make music for like my 15, 16 year old self. When I really love making music or when I’m having a good time, I feel it in a very specific part of my chest. Listening to your intuition is almost like a muscle you have to use.”
With its driving electro pop beats, empowering, lambent anthems, and the singer’s own trademark blue hair, Smoochies signals to the aesthetics of manga and ‘create your own nightclub’ themed video games over and again. Yet, it’s also infused with an infectious spirit and reflective lyrics that these same synthetic creations, or that other Frankenstein, AI, could never summon.
In Japanese culture, the Sakura flower is emblematic of the transience of beauty—really of life itself. A flower that might also symbolize the fleeting stint a young femme has to be “hot,” to capture that cultural currency and be sexually sought after. On its face, the song “Itty Bitty” is about a tiny mini skirt. But it’s more than that, examining how an item of clothing might be protective and sexually empowering, particularly after a breakup. “Itty bitty, teeny tiny, little slutty skirt/I like to put it on every time my heart hurt.” “Trinkets” is a little ditty where the lead holds the upper hand: “Treat him like a trinket/Hang him off my keychain/I collect the kisses/You could be my keepsake.”
We all have visibility and the power to attract, no matter the size of our respective stage. We ask Ash about the superficial power of clothing before delving deeper to examine the person behind the fit. “I feel like I’ve really found my personal style in the past two years. An outfit can be a storytelling tool. One of my favorite parts of starting a new album campaign is going through and making styling mood boards with my stylist, Suz Walsh. Creating an identity and a character, and like, arming the character with amulets and little like weapons, and by that I mean like a really sick pair of heels, little trinkets and like slogan tees. A little F me outfit can be really powerful.”
Like those gorgeous Cherry Blossoms, pop performers, especially those who are femme presenting (Ashnikko describes herself as “gender fluid”), own an even more fleeting season with fleshly perfection. They’re more scrutinized and routinely critiqued for failure to alchemize the inevitable onslaught of time and natural fluctuations of the body. This theme is cast in the spotlight on the quietly introspective “It Girl”, set against a strummed acoustic guitar, possibly hearkening to the singer’s Carolina roots. “You could buy the whole world with a face like that/I cried looking into my mom’s makeup bag.” Emitting a kittenish yawn due to the late hours of the previous night, Ashnikko turns over the theme. “The world can be very unkind. All the wasted time, money and energy spent on trying to cling to something ephemeral. I would much rather be rooted in community, in my joy and sensuality. Being in the public eye can be a really dangerous thing. I look at women that I love. My mom, my friends, and want us all to be viewed as dirty, grotesque and beautiful light whole human beings; separate from this ephemeral beauty currency we’ve been forced to trade in.”
A possibly little known fact of Ashnikko lore are the years she spent as a teenager in Latvia, the only English speaker in her high school. Suffice to say that being tasked with trying to learn in a language she didn’t understand ignited a blaze of inner determination—possibly the germination of a blossom that would flare with lucent ferocity later on. “Ultimately, I went to school in a language I didn’t speak for all of high school, so it gave me a lot of time to go inward and think about the things I wanted to do after. When I turned eighteen I was chomping at the bit to move to an English speaking country. So yeah, I was like, ‘I’m moving to London immediately!’ Part of wanting to become an artist is a level of delusion that one has to have to do it because it’s a fucking crazy kind of choice. So yeah, I think growing up in that environment, there was no plan B for me. I was like, ‘I’m doing this.’”
Energetically, “Smoochie Girl” conjures a Sporty-Spice-like character revamped for the 21st century as a phone app, but the sensitivity of many lyrics belie a sense of contemplation that elevates the entire album beyond any ACG technology. “Oh, no how scary, I haven’t felt this exposed/I’m barely out of the woods/From the last time I was broken/Just a sliver cuts me open.”
“I look back at my albums…they mark different chapters of my life.” Ashnikko offers, finally. “I just want to be a little grotesque creature, loved very fully and wholly for the whole spectrum of my humanity, my sensuality, my grotesqueness, my silliness and beauty and ugliness. It’s like writing this album was a practice in accepting myself fully.”
All images courtesy of Vasso Vu
