You’re not imagined to know what’s happening. That’s the purpose. For the Dallas-born, Los Angeles-based multihyphenate Liv.e, life might be simply as hectic as her music. Liv.e transforms her voice right into a instrument that helps her navigate by way of a labyrinth of feelings, twisting and turning by way of genres with fluidity. Her lyrics comply with a stream of consciousness; her songs play out with an unpredictable narrative, with the identical tumultuousness as her each day life when she was recording.
Less than midway by way of “LessonsFromMyMistakes… but I Lost Your Number,” Liv.e fades out the groove of a double-time jazz combo. A couple of moments of silence go till she grabs maintain of the mic as soon as once more. She returns with extra ambition: somewhat clearer, somewhat louder, somewhat extra articulate. Liv.e whispers: “I know, I know you thought the song was over, but that’s incorrect because life keeps going,” leaving the jazz loop to choose up proper the place it left off, taking part in the identical actual tune because it did earlier than.
I point out this line to Liv.e as we’re sitting outdoors of Highly Likely, an open-air espresso store on West Adams in Los Angeles. It’s a favourite spot of Liv.e’s: fast, handy, and simply shut sufficient for her to stroll out in her pink fur boots, denim jacket, and cowgirl hat. Amidst low-vibrational suggestions from the cafe’s outside speaker taking part in ’80s synthpop, Liv.e explains that her music is “made to sound like inner thoughts.”
Where 2020’s Couldn’t Wait To Tell You… was frantic and dissociated, Liv.e’s new album Girl In The Half Pearl is a direct contemplation on the world round her. This time round, the recording classes had been extra cathartic, extra introspective, extra invasive. The rollout has been a whirlwind of choosing at previous wounds, testing to see which sounds will symbolize orchestrated chaos and which sounds will make her “feel this shit again.”
Although the album title is vaguely harking back to the portray Girl With A Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, Liv.e shuts down any and all similarity: “White art?” she retorts between laughs. “The fuck do I look like?” Liv.e tells me that the Girl In The Half Pearl is definitely impressed by a second of detachment, taking a look at a miniature model of herself standing in a snowglobe that has been shaken up. Even when she’s trapped inside the confines of a flooded half pearl, Liv.e is conscious that even when her microcosm of a world is shaken up, the snowflakes will inevitably settle again down at her toes, underneath her management.
“It’s like my own personal fourth wall just broke, and all of my delusions and all of my expectations and truths about everything like myself — the walls were coming down, fast,” Liv.e tells me. Heartbreak underlines the album; heartache defines the catharsis. At age 25, Olivia Williams has determined that she desires to take management of her life in new methods. As teased in her “Wild Animals” video, Liv.e reveals to me, “I’ve always wanted to be a dominatrix.” The BDSM pet play gear represents autonomy; whether or not it’s attaining sexual liberation by way of premeditated celibacy or understanding that “the chase” is what retains her .
Liv.e’s studying identical to the remainder of us. The similar artist that selected to document the unmixed RAW DAYBREAKS VOL. 1 in a single sleepless evening is now telling me, “I do like to take my time with things.” She’s not that very same artist anymore; she’s evolving. When Couldn’t Wait To Tell You… was launched, Liv.e might have been in comparison with any single member of the Soulequarians. She offered a collage of psychedelia infused with historically black genres, swinging within the groove of Dilla time, compiling the practices of artists like Q-Tip, Erykah Badu, and D’Angelo. She has the buttery vocals of a soul singer paired with lo-fi and offbeat jazz-samples, usually used to ramble concerning the trials and tribulations of affection within the digital age; love in a time the place you need to drive your self to go outdoors; love in a time the place asking somebody to bodily write their cellphone quantity down is an anomaly.
Rightfully so, Liv.e deems the Soulequarians comparability to be outdated. Although she’s been co-signed by Erykah Badu, internet hosting the discharge occasion of Couldn’t Wait To Tell You… on Badu World Market’s web site again in 2020, the 2 blur the strains of hip-hop, R&B, and soul music. Girl In The Half Pearl is genreless. Liv.e toys along with her personal feelings, mixing drum ‘n’ bass with thrash punk on songs like “Ghost,” utilizing the tender hum of electrical keyboards as a bridge away from the calamity. Synth-heavy, electro-industrial beats equivalent to that of “HowTheyLikeMe!” give Liv.e the area to really feel herself. She bubbles with pleasure, making songs that hype herself up and provide a renewed energy to the female.
Girl In The Half Pearl has an analog fuzziness that may revive reminiscence. The mission flashes from photos of a white Christmas matched with the tender crackle of embers within the hearth, to distorted echoes of Liv.e struggling in desolation, to helium-raised chipmunk soul on “Glass Shadows.” When put collectively along with her current curiosity in ’90s French minimal wave artist Philippe Laurent, Liv.e is creating her personal interpretation of hypnagogic pop, evoking psychedelic nostalgia throughout genres. The continuing sound is chilly, dejected, and aloof, however trancelike and heartfelt.
Spiraling by way of her feelings and slowly reconnecting along with her psyche, Liv.e delivers a musical rendition of her journey by way of womanhood. She confronts love with sly curiosity; she seethes with self-inflicted malice on strains like “I BREAK THE MIRROR 90 TIMES DON’T WANT TO SEE MYSELF”; she prays and doses psychedelics to search out peace. As Liv.e unravels and divulges her true self, she asks that her listeners depart the mission with a sense. She doesn’t need you to dissect incorrect Genius analyses, and he or she doesn’t need you to passively spin her new document within the background. Liv.e clarifies: “I just want them to listen and moreso ask me what they want to know.… And my name is pronounced Liv.”