Tag: Lauren Lakis

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lauren Lakis Shares Yearning “Take My Hand”

Lauren Lakis is a Baltimore-born, Austin-based singer/songwriter and musician, who specializes in a brooding and churning take on shoegaze centered around authentic, honest lyricism. Lakis and her backing band have extensively toured across the West Coast, sharing bills with Ringo Award-nominated rocker Tracy Bonham. She has also played in front of sold-out crowds at Doug Fir Lounge and at Santa Cruz’s The Catalyst.

During the pandemic, Lakis performed several live-streamed shows, partnering with Bandsintown, Jam in the Van, B-Side TV, Rock to End Rape Culture, KXLU, ACLU and JuJu Live.

Recorded at Seahorse Sound, the Baltimore-born, Austin-based artist’s Billy Burke-produced Daughter Language was released by Green Witch Recordings in 2021 to critical acclaim from Flaunt, Wonderland, Earmilk, Ladygunn, Buzzbands LA, Grimy Goods, Atwood Magazine and more.

Daughter Language‘s highly-anticipated follow-up, the Carey McGraw-produced A Fiesta and a Hell was recorded in Austin and is slated for a Fall release through Green Witch Recordings. The album’s first single “Take My Hand” is a brooding and stormy bit of shoegaze built around an alternating quiet and loud sections featuring glistening guitar textures for the verses and swirling, stormy power chord-driven choruses paired with Lakis’ achingly yearning vocal. The single, as Lakis explains is about “forgetting what you thought you knew, letting go, bravely opening your mind to something radically different. She adds “What if you were wrong? Are you able to admit it? Can you shift with the ever-changing landscape of reality, or are you stuck in your ways? I found myself stepping into the unknown in many ways the past few years, forced to entertain the notion that maybe I didn’t know everything, and in that I found freedom.” 

Shot in Rapid City, South Dakota and Badlands National Park, the accompanying video follows the rising singer/songwriter hanging out with a large tortoise, going through a dinosaur park, dancing on a dinosaur statue and more. It’s a surreal yet highly symbolic romp through the wilderness — both natural and constructed.

Lakis will be playing at next week’s The New Colossus Festival. I’lm looking forward to catching her.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Los Angeles’ Lauren Lakis Releases a Brooding and Uneasy Examination of a Dysfunctional Childhood

Lauren Lakis is a Baltimore-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and musician, who specializes in a brooding and churning take on shoegaze paired with authentic and honest lyricism. So far her work has been praised by Earmilk, who said that her material are “a refreshing change from today’s polite rock . . .”

The Baltimore-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and musician and her backing band have toured the West Coast extensively, playing bills with Drowse, Coastland, Elizabeth Colour Wheel’s Emmet Palaima, Flor and Winnetka Bowling League. Lakis and her band have played in front of a sold-out Doug Fir Lounge and at Santa Cruz’s The Catalyst. Adding to a growing profile, Lakis has played two solo sets opening for Grammy Award-nominated rocker Tracy Bonham.

Much like countless other acts, Lakis and her backing band had plans for a momentum changing 2020: they were scheduled to play at this year’s cancelled SXSW and they had hopes of setting up further tour dates. However, they’ve remained busy, releasing new material, including their latest single “Sail Away.” Centered around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, dramatic drumming, a sinuous bass line, darkly Romantic vibes and Lakis’ plaintive yet ethereal vocals,” Sail Away” is a brooding track that reminds me — to my ears at least — of PJ Harvey, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Chelsea Wolfe.

Interestingly, the song is an uneasy and brooding examination of Lakis’ own dysfunctional and painful childhood and a desire to reconnect to a lost yet much-needed innocence. “Thematically, ‘Sail Away’ explores the idea of running away with my inner child, protecting and parenting her,” Lakis explains in press notes. “It’s me becoming my own mother, which was something I had to do at a young age.

“As the daughter of my mother, I had to learn how to take care of myself and grow up quickly. She struggled with addiction until I was almost 10 years old; I don’t have many memories of my childhood before that age. I’ve spent some years in Alanon, connecting to my inner child and learning how to ‘re-parent’ her as a way of healing those wounds,” Lakis continues. “The inner child is the part of us that is innocent, vulnerable, playful, full of wonder, freely trusting and loving. It hasn’t always been easy to connect with that side of myself.

“I didn’t feel like I had a voice as a kid, and I had no control over what was happening around me. In spite of, or perhaps because of this, I grew into an extremely strong, resilient, capable adult. This song explores my longing for having had an adult like me around, when I was a child…as well as the anger I’ve carried with me for having missed out. I’ve had to accept that no one can go back in time and fix that for me.”

The recently released video is a cinematic and equally brooding visual with a fever dream-like quality that finds Lakis is a lace full-body suit.