The Friday Dispatch
Lambrini Girls, Luna Li and Ben Folds
The joyful defiance of Lambrini Girls
Brighton duo Lambrini Girls have always telegraphed their irreverent, give-a-fuck sense of fun and humour alongside sincere political commentary, never coming across as glib even as they confront such sensitive topics as misogyny, trans rights, class disparity, police brutality – you name it. Making this work in a live setting is one thing, when you’re all in the same room, vocalist Phoebe Lunny demanding to know if you’re a Queer legend, a collective raging against the machine – but pressing that juxtaposition to a record is an entirely different achievement. Debut album Who Let The Dogs Out? – released this month – is that achievement, something only the two of them – with the help of Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox behind the desk – could pull off.
A more experimental approach the band took with the record is partly the result of the album as a format – there’s more runway than they had on the You’re Welcome EP from 2023, for instance. As bassist Lilly Macieira explains, “If you write three or four songs like [classic Lambrini Girls], then you’re going to start looking for something else, which is what we did, and it worked.” Those “classic” Lambrini Girls songs include the frantic opener “Bad Apple”, lairy live staple “Big Dick Energy”, and “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby”, whose bass part sounds like it’s crawling out of the speakers into your room, oversaturated with mouth-watering distortion.
Lunny and Macieira recently gave up their day jobs – because they logistically had to, not because they could afford to – and don’t mince words when discussing how the music industry is more often than not pitted against the musicians, hence a song like “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby” and the anger aimed at “trust-fund-phonies” interloping on DIY spaces. “Everyone in the music industry apart from the musicians is making money,” Macieira laments. “And the musicians, they’re obviously the whole reason the music industry exists in the first place. People who don’t labour take the fruits of the labour of someone else,” she says, referencing a quote by American civil rights activist Kwame Ture that they used as an interlude on the album.
Luna Li is finding her wings
Luna Li is in a season of change. After growing up and launching her career in the Toronto music scene, she decided just over a year ago to pack up her life and move down to Los Angeles. Coming on the heels of a big breakup, the move was a much-needed reset. A chance to start over and make room to grow.
After finding fame on the Internet as a multi-talented instrumentalist and critical acclaim with her first LP, Duality, Li has levelled up with her sophomore record, When a Thought Grows Wings. With the proven success of her debut behind her, she allowed herself the time, space, and grace to not rush her follow-up but to make it on her terms. Through a series of trial studio sessions in L.A. – where she had already begun the process of moving – she got connected to Andrew Lappin and Scott Zhang, also known as Monsune.
“The process for this album was different from anything I’d done before,” she says. “The culture of sessions in L.A. is very collaborative, and that was new to me when I first started coming here. For Duality, I’d written all the songs and then demoed them myself.”
Creating the record in this new way, she explains, was like a challenge to herself. Sonically, deep, racing basslines and textured rhythms give the record more movement than perhaps some of her early work. “That’s Life,” for example, feels closer to the musical family of Clairo’s “Juna” than the 2019 bedroom-pop style came up in – though it doesn’t do away with that form completely. “Confusion Song,” perhaps the closest bridge to her last LP, still features those lush arrangements and dreamy vocal slides while still distinctively standing on its own through electronic-indie embellishments and markedly serious subject matter. If the world Li built for When a Thought is any indication, a new version of both herself and her art has arrived.
Ben Folds on Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars”
I love Elliott’s music, but this is the album I’ve listened to the most. His self-titled record was the album all the cool kids were listening to, but I discovered that a little later.
It's interesting contrasting this with Joni. Because Joni is really enunciating words in a way that you feel you must listen to what she's saying. Elliott - even though his words were really good - he's sort of a constant vowel sound. All I hear is vowels, and the feeling of it.
I don’t know if that was intentional or not. I think Elliott thought he was doing one thing, and it was hitting people in a different way. Which is totally fine… you can't control people's reactions to your work.
Anyway, that’s the feel I got from him, especially after touring together a little bit. He was such a student of music. I mean, he could play Rachmaninoff on the piano… I can’t do that.
Elliot and I toured together back in the day, yeah. In fact, one day I was backstage with him, and I wanted to ask him if he would play the song “Alameda”. And he said, “Well, the drummer and the bass player don't know that one”. Well, I figured it wasn’t going to happen. But about 10 minutes later, he was on the other side of the cloth divider that separated our halves of the dressing room, and he sang the whole song, just so I could hear it. It was a really nice thing.
He was super shy, you know. “Between the Bars” was a bit of a breakthrough for him, because it was in a big movie [Good Will Hunting]. I think he was up for some award on it, which was probably pretty surreal for him.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists across the last five days in music that we’ve got on repeat in the Best Fit office right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Ghais Guevara, Scout, Makeshift Art Bar and coverstar dexter in the newsagent.
“We are far too inclined to regard art as an ornament and to perceive taste as a fixed, narrow track which each one of us travels alone or in select, like-minded company.”
- A.O. Scott
Just got my Lambrini Girls tickets for The Empty Bottle here in Chicago - would’ve been off my radar if it weren’t for the dispatch! Thank you always for this end of week treat!