LAUREL

PALPITATIONS, the lucent second album by South Coast-born, Los Angeles-based pop artist LAUREL, is a reinvention of epic proportions – a full-throated reintroduction to a musician who has, to this point, been known for windswept pop and grunge-inflected folk. Bright, passionate reckless in its pursuit of emotional truth, it’s the work of a mature songwriter with a restless spirit: LAUREL in her final form. Contained in these 11 songs are all of life’s highs and lows, coated i gleaming 80s lacquer and shot through with tension and ecstasy. All you need to know about this new iteration of LAUREL is contained right in the album title: “This album is adrenaline-filled everything is felt hard,” she says. “Palpitations, in the body, aren’t usually a sign of anything really bad – they’re usually emotionally driven. I loved the idea that something can feel so strong that it will make your heart skip a beat.” That idea has always been LAUREL’s modus operandi, but it’s never been felt so clearly as on PALPITATIONS. A musician from a young age, LAUREL has always been inspired by musicians who wear their heart on their sleeve. That was eminently clear on 2018’s self-produced DOGVIOLET, which trawled the depths of the human psyche in search of answers about love and grief, as well as its follow up EPs PETROL BLOOM and LIMBO CHERRY, which attacked the same ideas with a glossier sound. Those records won LAUREL plenty of fans and outsized critical acclaim from outlets like The Observer, i-D and VOGUE. But it’s PALPITATIONS, which traverses euphoric highs and catatonic lows with vivid, evocative detail, which best captures her willingness to cut to the bone in service of her art. “I feel like a totally different person than the person who made DOGVIOLET,” she says. “I’ve moved countries, moved cities, so much in my life has changed so drastically that I don’t recognise the old LAUREL.” PALPITATIONS was made with LAUREL’s longtime collaborator Jeremy Malvin, aka Chrome Sparks, with additional contributions from Mallrat and Troye Sivan collaborator Styalz Fuego and Kyle Shearer (Caroline Polachek, Rina Sawayama). From opening track “45 Degrees”, you can hear LAUREL’s new commitment to sharper, more direct, take-no-prisoners songwriting; across the record, she channels yearning desire into sterling, unimpeachable hooks. “Jeremy is incredibly detailed when it comes to production, and that’s why we’re good teammates – he just pushed and expanded my writing,” LAUREL says. You can hear the push-pull of their skill sets on the soaring “Burning Up,” a classic-sounding 80s ballad that turns the feeling of burning out and “getting lost in yourself” into something totally dazzling. “It’s about trying to find what makes you happy, tryin to find a place where you feel good, and you’re looking in all the wrong places,” she says. Styalz contributed production to “Wild Things”, a pulsating highlight written during a period of drinking, partying and travelling the world in search of emotional fulfilment. Turning th melancholy feeling of “craving the real thing” into a richly emotive anthem, it’s the rare artist/ producer link-up that feels totally symbiotic. “No one could really get ‘Wild Things’ right,” says LAUREL. we got one pass back from Styalz, and it was just perfect, everything I had wanted it to be from the start.” The grand, sweeping PALPITATIONS arrives at a time in which LAUREL has more eyes on her than ever before, thanks to a collaboration with Flume on his acclaimed third album Palaces, an appearance with him on Coachella’s main stage, and a subsequent tour together. Working with the beloved Australian producer has given LAUREL an idea of just where she might want her music to go in the near future. “Coachella was my first gig after lockdown, and the scale was just enormou in comparison to what I had done before,” she recalls. “It was definitely inspirational – I’ve alway wanted to make something that would resonate with that many people.” PALPITATIONS, then, with its skyscraping choruses and pinpoint-specific songwriting, may be jus that record. “My whole takeaway from Coachella was: I want to do that as LAUREL. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me want to take this album into new territory and make it as great as I could,” she says. It’s an idea that speaks to the feelings at the heart of PALPITATIONS: a constant need to change, to grow, to seek dogged, clarified truth. “I can’t sit still – it’s probably m downfall,” she says. “But it’s also what drives me forward.”