Photo Credit: Carlos Cabrera-Mayol
On Alien Witch, Liz Nistico isn’t simply introducing the debut album from her solo project Revenge Wife. She’s attempting to find out what remains when everyone else’s expectations are stripped away.
“I so badly wanted to know what’s in my brain, uninfluenced by anyone,” Nistico has said of the record. That impulse runs through all 12 tracks, an eccentric collision of pop, rock, spirituality, astrology, science fiction and the accumulated debris of a career spent thinking deeply about how culture shapes identity.
For Nistico, limitations paradoxically became a way toward that freedom. Each song on Alien Witch corresponds to a zodiac sign, though she approaches astrology less as fortune-telling than as a system of archetypes: recognizable containers through which human contradictions can be examined.
“We live in a society that is stripped of spirituality and symbolism, and we yearn for it,” she says. “We use the archetypes to understand ourselves better.”
If the conceptual architecture gave Nistico somewhere to begin, the making of Alien Witch offered another, more personal transformation. She produced almost the entire album herself—something that radically altered not her confidence as a songwriter, but her perception of what she was capable of as a woman after years of working in a male-dominated industry.
“So many men in the music industry have made me feel like I needed them,” she says. “But now I am confident that I can see through a song from a little melody to the full production, and that has empowered me.”
That sense of self-reliance feels particularly significant given Nistico’s history. As one half of HOLYCHILD, she was interrogating fame, beauty, money, youth and self-image long before those conversations became everyday social-media discourse. Years later, songs such as “Bathroom Bitch” have found new audiences online. At the same time, Nistico has experienced virality from a far less comfortable angle: a clip of her dancing during a performance exploded across social media, exposing her to the casual cruelty of millions of strangers.
Rather than making her chase that attention, the experience pushed her in the opposite direction.
“I don’t know if I want to go viral,” she says. “It kind of freed me in a way to pursue myself instead of trying to do what everyone says I should want. I saw it, I saw the truth, and I don’t want it! I want my little bubble of love.”
That pursuit of self informs Alien Witch’s spiritual dimension. Tarot, meditation, witchcraft, ayahuasca ceremonies and dreams of distant galaxies coexist alongside The Cardigans, The Voidz, Dave Matthews and memories of thrashing around at a Used concert in 2003. Nistico doesn’t attempt to resolve those contradictions. She trusts them.
The album’s opening single, “What If It Is Me?!”, turns that philosophy into a deceptively simple proposition. Instead of asking what happens if everything goes wrong, Nistico wonders what might happen if she trusts that she is exactly where she is supposed to be.
We spoke with Revenge Wife about zodiac archetypes, producing herself for the first time, the spiritual potential of pop music, the strange consequences of virality and what she discovered when she finally stopped filtering her ideas through everybody else.
Alien Witch assigns each of its 12 tracks to a zodiac sign, but you’ve described the signs more as Jungian archetypes than straightforward astrology. What did the zodiac allow you to explore about human personality and contradiction that a more conventional album structure wouldn’t have?
We live in a society that is stripped of spirituality and symbolism, and we yearn for it. This is why people use the zodiac to understand our situations; we use the archetypes to understand ourselves better.
Our language limits us to comparisons, rooting us in oppositions. Something is beautiful because it is NOT ugly. Our thought is limited to our language, so how should I think I’m so special that I could create a body of work that is not within a container?
My first album, The Shape of Brat Pop To Come, was a concept album and this is a concept album, because I need to work off of limitations in order to define. Isn’t that human nature?
You produced almost the entire record yourself, marking your first major step into production. How did taking control of the sonic side of the project change the way you understood yourself as a songwriter?
Taking control of the production of the album changed how I viewed myself as a woman!
Me as a songwriter? I am confident there and that confidence did not waver, but me as a producer? I did that.
So many men in the music industry have made me feel like I needed them, needed them to produce my music, without them I was just an idea of a song, but now I am confident that I can see through a song from a little melody to the full production and that has empowered me.
“What If It Is Me?!” flips self-doubt into this almost radically optimistic question: what if everything actually works out? Why did that feel like the right doorway into the world of Alien Witch?
“What If It Is Me?!” is playful and spiritual and the production is inspired by Dave Matthews, and the corresponding zodiac sign is Leo, so of course Leo would be the leader of the album, the first song to start the story, the first song to lay down the ideas.
You’ve described the album as a search for the balance between escapism and actually allowing yourself to feel things. Where do you think Revenge Wife sits between those two impulses?
True art lets you escape into it so that you can see reality in a new way.
The album pulls from everything from The Cardigans and The Voidz to ayahuasca ceremonies, tarot, meditation, witchcraft and the feeling of seeing The Used in 2003. How do you bring such wildly different references together without filtering out the contradictions between them?
I bring all of my influences and inspirations together easily by not filtering myself when I’m creating, by being totally open, by spending a lot of time alone and pondering, by feeling a connection with myself and, most importantly, by trusting myself and trusting my taste.
You’ve said that making art is a spiritual act and that you were interested in the idea that a song could somehow carry “healing energy” to the listener. Did that belief change the way you approached writing or producing these songs?
The idea that I could actually heal listeners only developed and strengthened while I was making this album, because I realized how powerful joy is, how joy can heal.
I also began to understand I don’t need to heal everyone, and that the process of healing is symbiotic—we’re all doing it together!
Revenge Wife has also become a visual universe, with your videos functioning as installments in an ongoing episodic story. With “What If It Is Me?!” becoming part 18, how much of that larger narrative did you understand when you started, and how much have you discovered along the way?
I let myself follow the thread of inspiration when I am directing the music videos! I love to direct, I love the challenge of tying it to the next music video.
I end every video on a cliffhanger, then I am forced to figure it out when I’m working on the next one!
HOLYCHILD was interrogating fame, beauty, youth, money and cultural obsession years before many of those conversations became ubiquitous online. Watching songs like “Bathroom Bitch” find a new audience through TikTok years later, do you feel vindicated, amused, frustrated—or some combination of all three?
HOLYCHILD was so ahead of its time and I wonder when people will realize!
You’ve also experienced the darker side of virality firsthand after a performance clip reached an enormous audience. How did suddenly being observed and judged by millions of strangers affect your decision to disconnect from your phone and figure out who you were without the constant influence of culture?
Going viral on such a huge scale, from a little clip of me dancing during my show, made me realize I don’t know if I want to go viral.
It made me see people in a new way. I don’t think people are becoming more compassionate, at least not the ones who are commenting rapid-fire on videos of women dancing on stage during a concert, so it kind of freed me in a way to pursue myself instead of trying to do what everyone says I should want.
I saw it, I saw the truth, and I don’t want it! I want my little bubble of love.
You’ve described Alien Witch as an attempt to “wring out” every possible creative idea until nothing remained unexpressed. Now that the album is finished, what did you discover was actually inside you once you removed everyone else’s expectations and listened only to yourself?
I feel so proud of this album! I wrote it! I produced every song except one. I followed the path that my dreams laid out for me.
I’m proud because I accomplished what I wanted, I was disciplined and I love my discipline. I love taking action, I love learning about my ideas, I love seeing when they come out!
I am learning to love myself more with this album and I hope other people feel the same way.
