Palpitations: The Return Of Laurel

Laurel feels things – emotions, events in her life – on a molecular level. She’s inherently in-tune with her surroundings, and this flows through in her creative projects. Building a singular catalogue, the songwriter’s 2018 debut album ‘DOGVIOLET’ was a work of bold, vivacious originality, epitomising her approach to making music.

Since then, she’s undergone some life changes. Assessing where she stands, Laurel has channelled these experiences into something new. Hitting London’s Oslo venue tonight – February 29th – for a long since sold out show, she’s ready to unveil her next move.

Long-awaited new album ‘Palpitations’ lands on June 14th – pre-order it online – with scorching lead single ‘Wild Things’ online now.

Writing for Clash, Laurel probes her creativity, looking at its roots, and where she’s heading.

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My heart was so heady it skipped a beat. It usually does, every day, I’m a worrier. I just love to worry. It’s been one of my favourite things to do since I was a child. My favourite book was called Worried Arthur. It was about a little penguin who was always totally anxious. I had the whole series. It was essentially Arthur worried in numerous different places, about all kinds of different things, and so it began…. my career in palpitating. 

I guess that you could say my heart’s been racing for a long time now, and these things which get me all torn up, tizz tizz, aren’t about much at all, tiny bits and pieces. What to eat for dinner, if my stomach looks bulging, if there are chemicals in the water, if my lover loves me when he says that he does, if everybody hates me at the party, if everybody likes me at the party but for the wrong reasons? If I’m actually mad, or if I’m actually sane and driving myself into actual madness with the simple idea that I might be. Alas, there’s never a minute to rest.

One day when I was 13 I saw a video of Laura Marling on my friend’s Bebo page. She was playing her song ‘New Romantic’. She wasn’t too much older than me, and very very blonde, just like I was, and it hit my heart harder than anything else I’d ever felt before. Perhaps it was love, my first positive palpitation. Love for music! But not the type of Britney Spears pop I was already enamoured by; something else, poetic, and deep, the words cut through my soul even though I was only 13. That single moment changed my life forever.

I asked for a Spanish guitar that Christmas and within three weeks I had found an outlet for my palpitations. My guitar was cheap, it didn’t play well, but I loved it, oh I just loved it, and from that moment on I didn’t even really need friends. I would sit in the corner of my bedroom and write for hours and hours about these intense intense feelings. And where did they come from? I was only a baby, but I had something very large to say, all these unkempt feelings and that’s always what music has been for me. I think there are other people that like music more than me, I hardly listen to music in fact I rather like silence. A lot of silence, my head moves fast I need to get space wherever I can. So I don’t really write music because I like to, or because I like music, I write music because I have to. And I know that sounds cliché, don’t all us musicians say it? Well maybe we say it because it’s true! 

So, I was looking for a name my second album, I listened to it over, so heart torn, frustrated, racing, going between back and forth and over again, it was really very Classic Laurel of me, I always write the same thing! I suppose I haven’t quite figured that thing out yet so I have to keep writing it, that’s how it goes. And in all honesty I couldn’t find a name! Not for the life of me.

So I asked God. It’s something I’ve been doing, now let’s be clear I am not really into god or religion in general but I was in the middle of reading The Artist’s Way and she encourages you to be open to a God concept. Of course, me being a good student, I had been trying it out. Turns out it really works, you just ask for things, and then they come? I know it’s too simple to be true but I’m not sure what else to tell you. So, I said hey god, gimme an album name, go on, I’m stuck, you know I’m stuck and I know that you know what the album is called, because of course in the future it already has a name so just tell me what it is. Please. Love Laurel.

And that night I found a stack of old notebooks, I was drawn to one, it had a flower on the front and the word DIGITALIS written. As soon as I saw the word I knew it was going to lead me to the name of my album. I slept soundly knowing that god, this oh so mysterious guy, had me covered, again. When I woke, I googled the word and on the screen appeared PALPITATIONS. And there it was my next era, a word I was about to explain many times! A word I had felt deep in my soul since I was reading Worried Arthur. 

PALPITATIONS – an unusually or abnormally rapid or violent beating of the heart

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‘Palpitations’ will be released on June 14th.

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