COME PLAY WITH ME, the excellent grassroots label, magazine, festival organiser and all-round good eggs doing the right work in keeping the Yorkshire music scene vibrant, runs a singles club, CPWM.
Its first release of the year is a split 7″ featuring Sunflower Thieves, whose side of the vinyl “Don’t Mind The Weather” we looked at here a week or two back, delighting in its melodic subtlety and noting that, influenced ” … by female artists such as Phoebe Bridgers and Fenne Lily, the two bring their own ethereal shadows to their tunesmithery.
“And for me, there’s also just a smidgen of the folktronica wave of the turn of the century: of Tunng and the like, in that subtle electronic garlanding.”
At the time we talked about how the other side of the 7″ would be given over to LENU, and revealed no more; today it’s her time to step forward into the light.
LENU is the work of Lizzy Joyce, her musical alter-ego being named after a character from the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, her favourite books. She brings the vivacious, dreamy synthpop of “Vulnerable” to the vinyl party, stirring synths and tumbling, dramatic melodies. It concerns Lizzy’s recent loss of a loved one and all the raw emotion of that, bundled up in sweet pop.
Recorded at The Nave studios in Leeds last August, the track features LENU’s full live lineup; joining vocalist and synth player Lizzy are drummer Joe Collinson, bassist Alex Bates and guitarist Tim Hall.
Lizzy says: “When writing songs my main focus point is that the lyrics are open and honest and the instrumentation somehow reflects an emotion that is important to the song.
“‘Vulnerable’ is no different; it’s definitely the angriest song I have written so I tried to show that with the energy throughout, but also showing some level of acceptance with the change at the end.
“A big part of the lyrics was a response to people asking me how I am and struggling to find the words, which is where the repeated lines ‘I don’t want to be vulnerable but I’m not made of stone’ come from.”
The 7” is due for release on April 9th, but you can pre-order it now from Come Play With Me, here.
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