Recent Release:
Lauren O’Connell
“Details”
Lauren O’Connell has recorded songs in sparse rooms across the American coasts – it’s all she has ever known. Capturing musings from her frigid Upstate NY hometown to a quiet, rural home of musicians in the grassy outskirts of Sonoma, to a bustling corner San Francisco apartment with the Golden Gate tenuously discernible in the hazy distance. After 4 years kept hush, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Lauren O’Connell returns with 'Details' to be self-released February 9th, 2018 – an album as ambitious as it is strident in its solitary ruminations on love lost and circadian bloom. Details marks a striking shift from O’Connell’s humble beginnings of home-recorded bowed banjo and percussive clangs of books and pans, to expansively twangy rock atmospheres and heart-shaking words sung with blistering stoicism – “It was the year of the hole in my chest, writing appeals with everything I had left”. Within the album’s tender honesty you can hear the unravelings of gritty guitars and jeopardous confessions: “Guilt is gonna eat you alive, guilt is gonna shred you with wild abandon if you stay awake”.
O'Connell had this to say about the album:
“Today I’m releasing a pretty sad album. I usually avoid saying too much about the content of my songs, for fear of ruining their mystique, spoiling what they mean to someone else, or compromising my own confusing commitment to personal privacy in spite of the fact that I overshare for a living. However with this album and this particular moment in my life, I feel compelled to step outside of that for a minute.
If you’ve ever listened closely to any of my albums, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that I’ve struggled with debilitating mental health issues for the past 15 years. It’s always been a part of my music, because it’s always been a part of my life, but this record feels like the first time I’ve written about it instead of writing through it. It’s not the subject of every song and I promise the album isn’t a total bummer all the way through (unless that’s what you want, in which case I invite you to hear a soft, comforting ooze of desperate irony in every affectionate or hopeful line), but it’s very much there.”
Details is as calculated as it is catastrophic, as if for fear of falling apart. It leaves just enough room for a triumph of latent clarity, of welcoming home the hope of allowing your heart to rest easy.
Genre: Indie Rock / Folk
Sounds Like: Big Thief, The War On Drugs, Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, Phoebe Bridgers
Hometown: Based in San Francisco | Originally from Rochester, NY
Band Members:
Lauren O’Connell – Songwriter, lead vocals, guitar, multi-instrumentalist
Olivia Lee – Guitar, effects, backup vocals live
Lauren Grubb – Drums
Upcoming Live:
Record release show at Cafe Du Nord (SF) with Mt. Joy 4/3/18
