When a tornado tore through her East Nashville home on March 3, multi-instrumentalist Lydia Luce was sure that nothing more could go wrong this year.
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A nearly fatal invasion from mother nature left the artist shattered. Her show scheduled for that week transformed into a benefit concert and supply drive for those affected in the area. While practicing at a friend’s home, still displaced from her own, Luce began to play one of the new tracks she recorded in January for the delayed album, “Occasionally.”
Strumming through the opening verses, she realized the song had become more about her newfound anxiety than of lost love, as it was originally written. Her lyrics illustrated a harrowing vignette of the trauma she experienced, escaping death as her home crumbled.
“I can’t quite get rid of it,” she explains. “The panic attacks come on so unexpectedly. I’d be driving, or the wind would suddenly pick up, and I would totally shut down. So the song took on a new meaning after that.”
Given the proceeding fallout with the pandemic and political turmoil, the album opener still feels current to the artist. Luce delivers “Occasionally” as her second single ahead of Dark River, due February 26, 2021. Its dynamic construction is exemplary to the explorative genre-crossover the album hosts.
The eleven-track album follows Luce’s folk-leaning debut, Azalea, in 2018. Dark River is a bold re-entrance for the artist. Luce desperately sought inspiration in the wake of a tumultuous relationship, traveling to the Pacific Northwest and overseas, summiting mountain peaks, and clearing headspace. Still, 2019 was not proving fruitful.
After an extended spell of writer’s block, she finally began to peel back the layers of her personal life with poised vulnerability. Dark River was one of the last albums ever recorded at Southern Ground Studios in January. She set this new year deadline with her producer, Jordan Lehning, knowing she would work best under fire.
“Tangled Love” was one of the first songs that brought her out of writer’s block. It considers the complications of a destructive relationship with percussive polyrhythms.
“I wrote it alone,” she recalls. “I’m particularly proud of the ones I finish myself during a block. It really kick started my writing for this record. At the moment, I was not totally processing what was going on in my personal life. Here I was getting to a sad, dark place so I could feel everything.”
Classically training on the violin and viola, even her rock-leaning tracks have orchestral undertones. She incorporates strings to broaden her soundscape, exploring the instruments’ dynamic nature and how they shape the song. Their ethereal elevation resounds like something familiar and timeless, despite Luce’s avant garde arrangements.
The artist’s early start in the strings molded her approach to songwriting. The violin was her entrance into music, and she followed its lead into melody and eventually crafting lyrics.
“Vocal cords and violin strings are very similar instruments,” Luce explains. “There are not many instruments you can vibrate on. If you see the way vocal cords move in melody, it’s strikingly similar to a plucked violin string moving back and forth.”
When the pandemic hit, Luce pushed the album release plans back and re-entered the studio this summer for one final song, which she believes brings this set up to speed. With the help of her partner, Ryan Usher on the drums at Lehning’s home studio, the artist cuts through the palpable strife brought to so many this year on “All The Time.”
“This song is a conversation with myself,” Luce says. “It’s about accepting the invitation to start trusting myself and my intuition.”
Luce grappled with the timing and delivery of a new album, asking for attention in an entirely consumed time. Yet, her music lays bare an essential introspective journey she feels many could benefit from. Beyond the messaging, Luce firmly believes the world needs and deserves new music but understands the stakes.
“Pandemic aside, this is one of the biggest elections of my lifetime,” Luce notes. “With everything going on in the world, we need to use our songs and stages to affect change and send hope.”
Luce believes it is her responsibility, like other artists, with a platform to utilize the vulnerability they deliver through their art to stand up and say something.
“We have to go there,” she says. “I’m thankful for the vulnerable conversations this year. People are forced to sit with themselves and the world and their positions on things. The times are opening some stuff up in people that may have needed to be shaken up a bit.”
Listen to “Occasionally” from Lydia Luce below, and pre-save Dark River, here.
