Elizabeth Elkins is a singer-songwriter you call when you need to rock-and note, if you will, that there are two parts of this sentence that seem to contradict one another-”singer/songwriter” and “rock”.

That’s merely one of many fascinating facets of the Atlanta-based Elkins, who, in addition to being front-woman for Resonator favorites ;The Swear (whose criminally underrated album Hotel Rooms And Heart Attacks is a mastery of pop-melody and hard-rock muscle), is launching a new solo project,Ghost of Summer Suns

Whereas the music of The Swear tends to traverse graveyards at midnight and blacktop at dusk,  the sound of Ghost of Summer Suns is confessional, winter-kissed soundscapes that still, well, still rock.

In typical RES fashion, the following Q&A with Elizabeth encompasses everything in our long, strange and ultimately awesome history with her and her various musical projects, culminating this coming Saturday when Ghost of Summer Suns plays our RESrawk party in NYC. Take a read and get familiar now, so that you’re not left behind Saturday night (or…ever). Cheer as she takes no prisoners, calls out rock crictics and indie kids alike, and cue this up for an audio taster:

Ghost Of Summer Suns: Gifted

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 RES: I know that in your holy chapel of musicians, Moz is number one and…I think…Tori Amos is number two. If you were to pick five records that have had a massive impact on you, musically, song-writing wise, and otherwise, that WERE NOT by either of them, what would they be?

Elizabeth Elkins: Five most influencial records (minus Moz/Smiths and Tori):
PS - this is tough because when I think of most influential, I generally think of literature (T.S. Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Gustav Flaubert, Edward Albee, Eugene O’Neill, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Erich Marie Remarque…) influencing me as a writer just as much as music….but here goes:

1.Concrete Blonde “Bloodletting” - the bloody roses on the cover and the fact that the first song is about New Orleans vampires makes it easy to chalk it up as a goth record, but really it’s an incredible pop record that has these violent punk moments and then these beautiful almost Curve/Jesus & Mary Chain/Mazzy Star sweeping moments of sad noise. I don’t listen to it much anymore but it always reminds me of cold nights in mid-November where almost all the leaves are off the trees and you want to walk around outside and just feel very alive. Johnette’s vocals are so aching and angry throughout the whole thing.
2.Depeche Mode “Black Celebration” - It was hard for me to pick one Depeche Mode album, because they are a huge favorite of mine. Martin Gore’s songs are so weird and so simple, so melodic and so hooky…and this record has one of my favorite songs of theirs: “But Not Tonight.” That song is such a kiss-off - everything is perfect, Dave Gahan sings, but yeah, I don’t want you. I love that. This record was before they got huge, which makes it feel special somehow. The programming is also brilliant - the beginning of “Fly on the Windscreen” makes me crank it up every time. I think they expanded on that vibe later in “Songs of Faith and Devotion”, but this is a record I pull out year after year and it just never seems dated to me.
3.Billy Joel “Greatest Hits Vol. II & III” - Because my favorite Billy Joel songs are spread out over a dozen albums, I cheated and picked Greatest Hits Vol II & III. Fair enough, because this was my introduction to Joel, and I still love the sequencing of this double disc. And, yes, it’s missing my favorite Joel song (”Miami 2012″), but it h as “Allentown” - which for some bizarre reason I go back to as a songwriting touchstone over and over again. Don’t ask me why.
4.The The “Dusk” - Matt Johnson’s voice is up there with Dave Gahan’s as one of the sexiest in rock. This record is dizzyingly beautiful and angry. Clearly, I like the juxtaposition of beauty and anger. I guess it all goes back to the moment my freshman year of college that I discovered Percy Shelley and William Wordsworth. Shelley’s concepts of the search for perfection that leads to madness (when you discover perfection doesn’t exist) and Wordsworth’s idea of emotion recollected in tranquilty - well, those are the two main tenants for me as a lyricist. “Dusk” encapsulates both concepts perfectly.
5. John Denver “Poems, Prayers and Promises” - you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. It was a toss up here for the last slot between this, Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” (the first cassette I ever bought with my own money, and the soundtrack to most of my youth) and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (because my goal in life is to write something as massively perfect as “The Only Living Boy in New York” or “The Boxer”)….but I went with John Denver because it was this album alongside a Buddy Holly Greatest Hits tape that my parents played on every road trip we ever took when I was young. These melodies are ingrained in me. And you listen to “I Guess He’d Rather Be in Colorado” and not be moved. And althou gh it’s not on this record, I also suggest listening to “Rocky Mountain High” on 10 with headphones. Listen to the countermelodies Denver plays on the 12-string guitar. That’s genius. The Beatles be damned (yeah, I fast-forward the Beatles cover Denver did on here, ha).

RES:With you as the main songwriter for The Swear, I’m curious as to how collaborative the actual process of writing/recording is.

EE:There are several ways songs are written with the band. The first is that I bring in a completed song and we all work together on drum, guitar and bass parts, and any arrangement changes. Examples of this on the new album are “Vampire”, “The City That Never” and “Deadfall.” Another way is that Jeremy will write a complete song and bring it in minus vocal melody and lyrics and then I’m on my own with that (a good example of this is “Letters Faded” from our first EP). The final way is that t he band works off of guitar riff ideas Jeremy has and, for lack of a better word, “jam” on them until a song takes shape. Once it’s sort of beaten in to place, I tape it on a cassette tape (yay! old school!) and take it home and write vocal melody and lyrics. Examples of this method include “Last Breath”, “Always Wasted” and “Shuttered Off Christine.” In many ways those are most representative of the noise we create together. We often say that “Last Breath” is the one song that best encapsulates who we are - it’s the sum of our far-ranging influences and creative personalities.

RES:Feeding off of that-how literally should one read your lyrics?

EE:As literally or as figuratively as one prefers. They are for you, not me.

RES: You’ve won a handful of songwriting awards…obviously words play a large role to you in your creative process. What authors do you read? What was the last really good book you read that you loved?

EE:See list in question one above. My favorites are early 20th century/Lost Generation books/poetry, some 19th century French and Russian stuff, and war history, especially World War I. The last book I read that I really loved was “Back to the Front” by Stephen O’Shea.

RES:Where’d the “Ghost of Summer Suns” name for your solo project come from?

EE:I’ve always watched the constellations and planets, and there is a star that every year around Halloween glides exactly into the spot that the Sun stood at that same time in June and July - that star’s nickname is the “Ghost of Summer Suns.” I love all the themes that conjures up - sadness, replacement, love lost, the failing Romance of summer, decay versus renewal…

RES:How do you approach these songs differently then, say, a Swear song?

EE:The Swear is a collaborative effort, with Jeremy and Kevin having a very strong influence on the feel. With Ghost, it’s all me and my weird ideas.

RES:As a strong female frontwoman, do you ever feel you’re not taken seriously by “real” rock critics?

EE:My bigger problem with the female frontwoman thing is just when people feel the need to compare me to only female artists, or to lump us into a booking situation, etc. where it’s “female-fronted bands.” Gender is so completely irrelevant to me that I feel like I’m being slapped back into the ‘real’ world whenever this happens. I know it also irritates the shit out of everybody in the band. We’re just a rock band. Me being a girl is absolutely irrelevant=2 0- it should not be used to my advantage or disadvantage, but I am sure it has been and will be. I write from masculine and feminine perspectives, and I conduct my life the same way. But the overarching tendency in society is to label things as one way or another, so it happens. I’m a woman who sings in a rock band - therefore I must sound like Courtney Love, or I must not really play guitar, or I must be gay, or I must have a boyfriend in the scene who is helping me accomplish things, or I must be sleeping with the right person, or I must be a bitch. Also, are there “real” rock critics anymore?

Be sure to catch Elizabeth Elkins, kicking ass and taking names as Ghost of Summer Suns, at RESrawk: