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Years ago, Elle Archer was walking around a nature reserve in her native California with some friends, equipped with a couple of 40s and time to kill. She made an offhand comment about how white women don’t know how to name their children anymore. One of her friends agreed, saying, “Oh, yeah, like ‘Shaylee’ and ‘Tarantula.’”
Archer later took the name “Shaylee” for her power pop act. The poetry of picking out the band’s name before deciding on her own (Archer came out to herself as a trans woman in 2018 and started hormone therapy the following January) isn’t lost on her.
“My dead name began with the letter ‘L,’ and my housemates started calling me that, and eventually they were like, ‘Why don’t you just spell your name E-L-L-E?’” she says. “I was already responding to it. I was named by my community. I was my own child in a way.”
Shaylee has been through ups and downs marked by lineup changes and personal struggles over the past six-plus years, with Archer breaking the project down only to resurrect it again. But last month, Archer announced the project’s return via an Instagram post, stating simply: “Shaylee is back.”
The band marks its official reintroduction with a performance in the seventh installment of Archer’s recurring showcase, Transfemme Takeover, on July 20 at Lollipop Shoppe.
To rewind a bit: the initial form of Shaylee offered a lot of promise. Early comparisons to (and an affection for) Elliott Smith had set Archer on an intentional path to Portland, and she moved here in July 2018.
“I listened to Either/Or and was like, ‘Goddamn it, someone’s already had all my ideas,’” she jokes. Eventually she landed a multi-album deal with Kill Rock Stars, the northwest label that famously released several of Smith’s works. Short-Sighted Security, a rumination on some of Archer’s struggles at the onset of the pandemic, became Shaylee’s second album and KRS debut in 2022, with Archer handling the majority of the tracking and production by herself.
Another iteration of Shaylee included Robin Cook, Archer’s then-girlfriend, on bass and Nate Anderson on drums. It was marked by both dynamic live performances and some uncomfortable truths.
“I admit even to this day I [can be] difficult to deal with,” Archer says. “I was the bandleader and also the chief songwriter, which led to a lot of onstage glares at my bandmates when they fucked up. It was very autocratic and didn’t allow a lot of room for breathing or for flexing creativity.”
Perhaps what was at the center of this tension was sussing out whether Shaylee was a collaborative project or one centered around a singular person. Eventually Archer decided to kill Shaylee, presumably for good. She and Cook started a more artistically collaborative chapter via Cook’s project Girl Fiend, which Archer left after their romantic relationship fizzled. But it turns out she wasn’t quite done with the project.
“After I left Girl Fiend, I realized I wasn’t playing guitar [anymore], and that’s my bread and butter—like, I’m a lead guitar player,” Archer says. “It felt like I was just kind of spinning my wheels, wasting my life, especially looking around at the state of the world.”
“I’m a very confident and self-assured trans artist,” she says. “This is the last time I should be backing down and not doing anything. And so I started formulating plans to reunite Shaylee.”
As she had done with her own name, Archer sourced Shaylee’s newest lineup through her community. She tapped Idis Rapozo (of Soda Jinx) for drums and followed her friend Heather Salisbury’s (Cage Mother) recommendation of Mason McKinney-Best (Garbagewitch) for bass. Cage Mother vocalist Cricket introduced Archer to Annie Wilder (Missine) for rhythm guitar.
As a four-piece, the band’s sound is fuller than in previous iterations, with Archer’s wailing guitar solos getting ample support from Wilder. “I feel more free to express myself,” Archer says.
Archer isn’t shying away from honesty about this third form of Shaylee. The first new single, “Reintroduction,” is an honest, direct address to the audience. Archer’s demo of the song (just her and her guitar) has a confessional quality. For whatever self-aware mythologizing the song starts with, Archer rewards listeners by subverting expectations at every turn, with a chorus any ’90s power pop band can only wish it had written: “The longer that you stay still, the more that someone else achieves your dreams.”
Will this be the final form of Shaylee? It seems that no one—not even Archer—can really know, but it’s exciting to see the rebirth of such a passionate project with this level of honesty.
SEE IT: Shaylee as part of Transfemme Takeover 7 at Lollipop Shoppe, 736 SE Grand Ave., 971-279-4409. lollipopshoppe.com. 9 pm Sunday, July 20. Free.
