I could easily spend the next few days making home visits to everyone I know who knew about Lauren O’Connell and didn’t have the human decency to share her music with me. I sure as heck got enough recommendations to watch Breaking Bad.
In 2007, Lauren O’Connell recorded her first EP, Sitting In Chairs, in Rochester, New York at the ripe old age of 19. She began playing shows at coffeehouses with her friend Julia Nunes but not long into her college education, she decided to invest in a different kind of learning. She left the beaten path and moved to California, where she lived with friends John Conte and Nataly Dawn of Pomplamoose. She began to play with Nataly under the name My Terrible Friend, and recorded an EP as part of the duo.
Cover of The House of the Rising Sun by The Animals
Lauren’s jump to social media was what took her reach beyond her local fans and onto the national, and international, level. Her simple but beautiful covers and original videos on Youtube garnered a web-following that allowed her to tour within the states, and even be able to move outside of them. But it was through her special feature on the NoiseTrade newsletter that I was fortunate enough to discover this incredible talent and enjoy her most recent release, Quitters.
The album kicks off with a song called Every Space, which gives you a taste of the lyrical prowess the entire album contains.
“If you should ever feel bad, consider it a study/ In just how far it is, between a hand you touch and an arm you twist/It’s not about what was attached to it.”
In the video, you see what you will hear throughout the album: An artist creating sounds, innovating, and taking sonic risks that end up making the surrounding instrumentation as original and personal as the lyrics sung over it.
The original impression I had of Lauren, as a quiet soul with a song in her heart, was proven wrong in “I Will Burn You Down”. It would be easy on a lot of this album to candidly dismiss the angst and loneliness in her lyrics due to the pleasant flow of her voice, but you can’t miss it when she states so conclusively that “Holding on is just part of letting go…I’ll go myself, and I will burn that fucker down”.
Rare these days are songs whose lyrics would be nearly as engaging without the cacophony of synths, pulsing drums or whirlpool of effects and harmonies. In contrast, with this album I spent just as much time listening as reading, because the lyrical depth was far too great to be digested in real time.
If Found/Gravity is a stand out track that partway through sounds like it is tearing into pieces (in the best way), and by the end finishes its descent into chaos. And oh the lyrics…
But I have know some people, these glowing singularities/
One square foot of ground so solid, unburdened and unburdening.
Oh, to be the single soul of an empire, a willfully uncharted map/
To live and ask nothing of anyone, and be content to get just that.
She continues, with a strong mix of incredible metaphors and almost conversational story-telling, leading you into such simply gorgeous songs as The Same Things, where she willfully accepts her lack of answers, and basks in the simplicity of how she copes.
I’m aware that paper cuts cut clean/ But one wound closes, there’s another/ And my fingers bleed and drip recurring themes.
And everything was beautiful last night/ I lost my glasses, looked around/ at everything reduced to areas of light/ and you and I.
My personal (temporarily) favorite is In The Next Room. Heavy words and ideas are interspersed between sing-song, light heart transitions.
But even so I don’t know, how these shadows can grow/ When nothing ever casted them out. How I came to be at the feet / of some dark deity/ No one ever told me about.
Clear through to the closing track, Lauren O’Connell shows the kind of insight you don’t just stumble upon, but learn to detect while being quiet. It is the kind of introspective record that challenges the creative mind to dig deeper, but also causes them and every other kind of listener to be very grateful that minds and voices like hers exist.
More about Lauren O’Connell on her official website, YouTube channel, Facebook, Bandcamp and NoiseTrade.
