Track By Track: la loye - 'to live underwater'
Dutch musician la loye has just released her captivating debut EP ‘to live underwater’. With vivid inspiration extracted from the writings and musings of acts such as Elliott Smith, Mount Eerie, Radiohead and Big Thief, la loye’s layered soundscapes continue to impress through a combination of raw emotion, intricate guitar work and simmering vocals
She took a moment to talk to us about the EP - track by track.
to live underwater
I wrote this song when I was feeling particularly under the weather but couldn’t really figure out why. There was a certain heaviness in my daily life, which I lyrically tried to capture in ‘to live underwater’ The outro was originally a draft for another song. I just kept mumbling the words ‘What a way to feel ignored’ over and over on top of this chord progression. In my urge to record this idea before it would have lost me I recorded it in the project of another song, too impatient to open a new file. This project was the first half of ‘to live underwater’. I listened back to it the next morning and somehow the two pieces fit together perfectly, so I decided to keep it that way.
i’m still asleep
In my young adulthood or mid-teens I came across a lot of moments in which I felt both excited and scared at the same time. Which I think makes sense when you think about how you’re exposed to a lot of new experiences during that time in ones life. ‘i’m still asleep’ is about this duality. I especially like the line ‘I wasn’t built to break’, which perfectly captures the song’s essence. To me it’s a very nostalgic tune because it immediately takes me back to being fifteen/sixteen and that same sense of nostalgia resonates in both the piano and horn part. I’m a very nostalgic person myself so this is my favorite song of the EP.
i only hear you in my song
This is the only song on the EP that is very clearly a song about love. More so about losing love. In my writing I most often wander to subjects that are much more abstract, feelings that I might not even understand yet myself and become clear through writing about it. With this song it was almost inevitable because the feeling of heartbreak was way too big to comprehend. I normally take a long time with writing lyrics but this song came shooting out within an hour.
about imagining things
We all blurt things out when we’ve had a couple drinks.. I once called a friend mad drunk and started rambling on about everything that was on my mind that night: love, girls, insecurities, that sort of thing. On ‘about imagining things’ I reflect on that evening and how a few drinks can sometimes help you figure out stuff you’d be too scared to admit in a sober state of mind.
white summer
I think this is one of the first songs I wrote that I felt I could use for ‘la loye’, which wouldn’t exist for another 2 years after this song came alive. I wrote it in the summer after my first year of college. I was starting this new life, surrounded by so many new people, in a new city, in my first ever student home. While that was a very exciting time for me, it was also very confusing: you start to think about who you are and where you find a sense of belonging. I was so caught up with finding that out inside myself, that the outside world almost became this abstract environment, as if everything around me was covered in a layer of white mist. I tried to capture this feeling in the song; not only in words, but in its arrangement as well. The shimmers of the organ, the reversed tones of the piano. They all resonate that feeling of disconnection to me.
