I first caught Poppy Jean Crawford at Meows Moewzs, a revival counterculture and music shop in Pasadena, opening up for Chameleons’ frontman Mark Burgess this past summer during his intimate record store tour. Amid vintage clothing, assorted leather boots, and crates of vinyl, a petite, innocent looking young woman took a stage strewn with candles and quietly strapped her guitar across her shoulder and conjured up a mood I revere—vulnerable sensuality with just the right amount of melancholy.
In the acoustic setting, I was picking up the ethereal planes of Sharon Van Etten, although later at home, digging deeper into her catalogue, traces of PJ Harvey and psych rock rolled down like clouds visiting a mountainside, morphing my room into a dream world. I was sold.
On the cusp of turning twenty-four, I sense that Crawford is precocious beyond her years as we dive into a breakfast together at the iconic 1960s throwback Clark Street Diner in Hollywood. We cross topics on everything from our love of the movie Blonde as a feminist manifesto, Buddhist chanting, and Charles Mansion phoning her landline as a child—just the normal LA chatter.
An unconventional upbringing where creativity resides in her DNA has led Crawford to this preternatural place. It’s her mother, Casey Niccoli (director of Jane’s Addiction’s “Been Caught Stealing” and one time girlfriend of Perry Farrell), and her father, surrealist painter/musician, Shannon Crawford who’d ask her to sing background vocals on his tracks and introduced her to PJ Harvey, who have given rise to her ability to think in terms of art first.
