How producer Brandi Carlile helped Lucius turn domestic heartbreak into dancefloor joy

Brandi Carlile already knew the ladies of L.A.’s Lucius have been particular when she introduced them alongside to Joni Mitchell’s place in Bel-Air one evening not way back.

“No matter that intangible factor is {that a} singer has that may seize you by the nostrils and make you concentrate — they’ve acquired it,” the Grammy-winning folk-rock star says of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, who’ve carried out with Carlile many instances over the previous couple of years, together with simply this month on the Recording Academy’s MusiCares Individual of the Yr gala honoring Mitchell in Las Vegas.

Nonetheless, it didn’t harm that night at Mitchell’s — the place Lucius was participating in one of many non-public all-star “Joni Jams” she’s held sometimes since recovering from a 2015 aneurysm — to have her emotions confirmed by one Paul McCartney.

“We’d heard Paul would possibly drop in, and he did,” Carlile remembers. “Simply in preparation the women had discovered a deep minimize: ‘Goodbye,’ a music Paul wrote for Mary Hopkin. And after having backed up everybody else vocally all evening, they step out and so they sing this music, which prompted Paul to enter a 15-minute speech about how good he feels about the place music is headed due to individuals like them.

“There’s simply moments that Lucius have facilitated that I’ll always remember,” she provides.

Now Carlile is hoping to unfold the phrase past Mitchell’s A-list circle with “Second Nature,” a blinding new Lucius album she produced alongside her common collaborator Dave Cobb. Launched final week, it’s the duo’s fourth studio LP and follows work they’ve executed as in-demand background singers with everybody from Roger Waters and Ozzy Osbourne to Harry Types and the Battle on Medicine.

But in contrast to their rootsy earlier stuff — together with 2018’s “Nudes,” with acoustic covers of “Goodnight, Irene” and Gerry Rafferty’s “Proper Down the Line” — “Second Nature” mines an ’80s-pop sound with lush synths and smooth disco grooves underneath the ladies’s laser-guided vocals. Lots of the album’s 10 songs tackle Wolfe’s latest divorce from Dan Molad, who performs drums within the Lucius dwell band; a few of them ponder the isolation of the pandemic. However the impact all through is a sort of plaintive uplift — “like dancing with a damaged coronary heart,” as they put it within the opening title observe.

“We wished to have the ability to flip one thing darkish into one thing joyful,” says Wolfe, 37, as she and Laessig, 36, hang around on the deck of Wolfe’s ethereal Silver Lake dwelling. “Give me one thing to maneuver to. Give me one thing that makes me really feel like we’re gonna be collectively once more.”

As tasty because the throwback preparations will be — many a cool bass line right here — it’s Lucius’ singing that offers the music its emotional wallop. Wolfe and Laessig, who met within the mid-aughts as college students at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, intertwine their voices with almost-telepathic precision; they will do advanced harmonies however they usually sing in a putting unison that, particularly when deployed in tandem with their matching stage outfits, lends the songs an otherworldly voice-from-above high quality.

“It’s astounding to me that they’ve by no means misplaced their capability to evangelise,” says Carlile. “Often you’re the preacher or the choir, and I’ve at all times been so conscientious of that. An excessive amount of background singing, an excessive amount of concord singing — I feel it generally takes away among the conviction in an artist.

“I maintain ready for that to occur with Lucius, nevertheless it hasn’t. Their conviction is absolutely intact.”

Lucius backs Roger Waters in live performance in 2018.

(Dave Simpson/WireImage)

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The collaboration with Carlile and Cobb grew out of a Lucius gig the 2 took in a few years in the past throughout Carlile’s Women Simply Wanna Weekend pageant in Mexico.

“We have been standing on a balcony watching them, and Dave was like, ‘That’s the most effective band that no one is aware of about,’” Carlile remembers. Cobb, a fellow Grammy winner for his work with Carlile and Chris Stapleton, informed Carlile that he thought they may assist the duo make a killer disco album, which intrigued Lucius when phrase later reached them.

“That didn’t sound like one thing they’d do,” Laessig says with fun. “Discuss exterior their consolation zone.”

She and Wolfe had began writing songs in Nashville, working for the primary time with professional co-writers comparable to Trent Dabbs and Lori McKenna. This was pre-COVID — barely. “The lockdown was introduced whereas we have been writing in Sheryl Crow’s barn,” Wolfe says. “I keep in mind somebody had their telephone and was like, ‘Oh s—.’”

Again in L.A. to quarantine — and off the street for the longest stretch in ages — Wolfe says she got here to face the reality she’d been avoiding about her and Molad’s damaged marriage. She reckons she and Laessig wrote 80 songs collectively and with others over Zoom. “And possibly 65 of these have been about my divorce,” she says. (Add “Second Nature” to the lengthy checklist of latest divorce-inspired LPs that additionally contains Adele’s “30,” Kacey Musgraves’ “Star-Crossed” and Carly Pearce’s “29: Written in Stone.”)

To file the album, Lucius returned to Nashville and arrange store for 3 weeks in Cobb’s beloved RCA Studio A, the place Dolly Parton famously minimize “Jolene,” as Wolfe factors out. Cobb talked about channeling ABBA, Donna Summer time and the Bee Gees; Carlile invoked the music of what she calls her “adolescent immersion into homosexual drama: Elton John and Erasure and Janet Jackson.” The thought was dance music performed by hand, with a powerful dose of nostalgia meant to “really feel like a hug for individuals after lockdown,” Laessig says.

Carlile notes that amid all the glint and flash, the ladies “wished to maintain some reverence on these vocals — to maintain being this twin Sinead O’Connor tidal-wave factor.” Within the studio she guided their performances towards most payoff.

“I feel one of many locations you may see my thumbprint is that mainly each ultimate refrain goes by the ceiling,” Carlile says. “These ladies can blow. No person can out-sing them. So it’s onerous to not use these instruments when you’ve gotten them.” Within the throbbing “Dance Round It,” about “all of the little white lies simply maintaining the nice instances,” Carlile and Crow step right into a Lucius-like function behind Wolfe and Laessig; the end result has some severe “VH1 Divas Stay” power.

Selecting to focus on their very own music didn’t come and not using a value for Lucius, who spent a lot of 2017 and 2018 incomes regular pay as background singers on Waters’ huge Us + Them world tour.

“We have been dwelling very comfortably,” Wolfe says of the top-flight facilities of a street present that rang up greater than $220 million in ticket gross sales, based on Pollstar. “Something you would ever need from catering, together with like 20 totally different sorts of dessert each evening.” Sitting out the Pink Floyd co-founder’s upcoming tour, “we’re gonna have some FOMO for positive,” Wolfe admits. “Nevertheless it’s time to show the web page and concentrate on getting ourselves on the market once more.”

Wolfe and Laessig say Waters helps their resolution, although they snicker as they recall explaining “Second Nature‘s” idea to him. “He was like, ‘Disco?’” Wolfe says. “So we mentioned, ‘Effectively, , a few of your songs make us wish to dance — “One other Brick within the Wall” or “Cash.” Is there any music that makes you suppose you wish to dance?’ He was like, ‘I suppose “Tennessee Waltz” by that redhead girl that performs guitar.’

“Bonnie Raitt?” Wolfe remembers clarifying in amazement. “It’s not even a dance-y ballad! However OK.”

Requested whether or not any of their dozens of background gigs have been unhappier than their expertise with Waters, the ladies share a fast look earlier than saying they suppose they have been unfairly denied a function credit score on Types’ music “Deal with Folks with Kindness,” from the English heartthrob’s smash 2019 album “High-quality Line.”

Says Brandi Carlile of Lucius, “No matter that intangible factor is {that a} singer has that may seize you by the nostrils and make you concentrate — they’ve acquired it.”

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Instances)

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In keeping with Lucius, they’d been within the studio with Types engaged on a special music they didn’t find yourself finishing when he requested them to sing on what would turn into “Deal with Folks with Kindness.” “We have been like, ‘Yeah, in fact,’” Wolfe says. “If it’s simply ‘oohs’ and ‘aaahs,’ it’s not an enormous deal. And it’s an excellent alternative for us. However we began singing and we have been singing the entire refrain.”

“We thought he was gonna add on high after and that we’d be within the background,” Laessig provides.

“Two weeks later, they despatched us the observe,” Wolfe continues. “And it was actually us. We begin the music, we sing each refrain, simply us. We commerce off the bridge. It’s us and Harry Types. Harry Types and us.” But Types — who has by no means formally featured any artist on an album — declined to checklist Lucius as a featured act and even to tag the duo on Spotify in order that Types’ thousands and thousands of followers would possibly simply discover the remainder of their music.

“It simply harm,” Wolfe says. “Right here was a possibility to unfold the love a bit bit, which he purports to do on a regular basis. And it may’ve actually helped us. I’ve been to Harry exhibits and he’s at all times been very charming and sort. We’ve sung dwell with him,” together with at Types’ “High-quality Line” album-release live performance on the Discussion board in 2019. “The enjoyable half for me is that I don’t sing on the refrain,” he mentioned that evening whereas introducing “Deal with Folks with Kindness.”

Would they carry out with Types once more, for instance if he requested them to open for him on tour? “Yeah, we might,” Wolfe says. “However I don’t know if that’s gonna occur.” (A consultant for Types declined to remark.)

What is occurring is Lucius’ personal tour, which is about to kick off on the finish of April, in addition to a handful of dates opening for Carlile, together with a June 24 present on the Greek Theatre in L.A. Alongside for the experience might be Wolfe’s ex-husband-slash-bandmate — “We’re in rehearsals now, and it feels extra comfy than I believed it will,” she says — and the 1-year-old son Laessig shares along with her husband. Of launching a brand new album whereas caring for an toddler, Laessig says: “It’s nice. I imply, it’s quite a bit. It’s a whole lot of greatness. And a whole lot of tiredness.”

But the songs on “Second Nature” may very well be simply what she wants.

“I can’t not dance to it, and I do not dance,” Carlile says of the album. “I’m like the awkward lesbian. However my pals and I, we put it on and we go apes—.”