Review Fix chats with singer/songwriter Leo Lauren, who discusses his origin in music and new single, “Lovesick.â€
Review Fix: How did you get involved in music?
Leo Lauren: I started writing when I was 20, right after a breakup with a folk singer/songwriter. I had been making visual art all my life and wanted a different kind of artistic experience, and suddenly I had all the time and permission I needed to begin my music practice.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Lauren: It’s different every time. Sometimes it starts with a drawing, sometimes with a lyric. Oftentimes with chords or a riff which radiates fertile ground for lyrical discovery. Some songs take days, some weeks or months… others take years.
Review Fix: What inspires you?
Lauren: People I love, art I love, things I hear on the radio or read in the news, movies I see, books that capture me, the weather of a certain day, pain, precariousness, uncertainty…
Review Fix: What does music mean to you?
Lauren: Sound, poetry, and performance unbound by the parameters of space; a time conscious artwork which accumulates meaning each rotation; it means being honest and brazen and sensitive and humorous – potentially carrying the whole array of a cinematic experience in a self-contained 4 minutes.
Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?
Lauren: Rock/pop music, with gothic flavors. In the art rock lineage… Lou Reed, Smashing Pumpkins, some dance music/post punk…
Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?
Lauren: They’re mostly improvisational happenings where I get to perform the material with whatever resources are available. I don’t always have access to the full range of sounds and instruments that are in the recordings, so I must be creative delivering the songs and telling a story, even if it’s just me and an acoustic guitar. It’s always interesting… and fun!
Review Fix: What inspired your latest single?
Lauren: I began writing it when I was falling heavily in love with someone on the other side of the world as me. I was in Majorca, Spain with my family, sweating through clothes in palm tree-spotted paradise… yet rapt with yearning, my thoughts often thousands of miles away… The song deals with that almost giddy dissociation, wrought with desire.
Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2020?
Lauren: My goals are to push this EP and begin production on a full length album. Who knows when touring will be a possibility with these circumstances.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Lauren: I’m building a sci-fi set for a Supernormal music video in my garage. And collaborating on the costume with a friend… I’ve been planning out shot lists with my co-director and making scene study drawings. We’re shooting it probably mid June, in my house. One of the themes of the video is domestic space as purgatory… (circumstantially topical I know)
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Lauren: Keep consuming art and making art! Share the art you love and be kind to those around you :)
Leave a Reply