by Liv Luce
Writing music has been a constant in my life. I was the kind of kid who sang constantly to myself, my friends, my parents, stuffed animals, anyone, anything. For a while, I had a pen pal with whom I’d exchange song lyrics. I’m pretty sure there was one about a baby swallow I tried and failed to nurse back to health in my parents’ attic.
I began taking piano lessons around the age of nine. Being an introvert, I spent many a school break in the music rooms playing and composing songs. Then, aged 12, I plucked up the courage to approach other musicians about forming a band. It was then that Suzie (guitarist in my first band, Caliber) introduced me to Radiohead and Nirvana. I learned bass and have been in bands ever since.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
Despite years of playing and writing in a variety of all-girl rock bands (All You Miss, The Charm Assault, and Caliber), then later bassist in Smilex, Magpie (out on Quickfix Recordings) is the first of my solo material to be released. I am a huge fan of Philip Pullman, and if I were to have a daemon, it would be a squirrel – industrious but not always efficient. I’ve been squirreling away material for years; I’m so pumped they are coming into their own.
Magpie was originally composed as an acoustic track. As a bassist, I was frustrated by my instrument’s limitations when it came to songwriting. I effectively learned to play guitar while composing, and my arrangements reflect that process, with the electric going through a bass rig and using a mixture of guitar and bass pedals.
When Pat and I started to work the songs out as a two-piece, and I transitioned from acoustic to electric guitar, they got heavier and louder, reflecting our common grounding in the rich heritage of alternative rock from Soundgarden, A Perfect Circle to Fugazi, as well as turn of the century classical composers like Debussy and Ravel. The compositions, though melodic, reflect the syncretism of my musical influences, with unusual time signatures and modulating key progressions.
The song Magpie evokes the materialist dialectic, bringing into question societal frameworks of objective. It prompts us to reevaluate modern ideas of success and our satisfaction with our presumed life trajectory. A dialectic is a fancy term for addressing contradictions. The organization of contemporary life, where we are pushed to earn more to spend more because to live more, you are supposed to spend more, which means you need to earn more, leaving you little time and energy to live, is one of the central contradictions of our times. It affects every stratum of modern capitalist societies; it is also a question that has greatly affected my life choices.
In 2015, I swapped my old life in Oxford for one of self-sufficiency in the Dordogne (I was born in France and speak French fluently). Though it sounds idyllic, some would see our day-to-day as a struggle, but it offers the physical and creative space I craved in my former metropolitan life. This alternative lifestyle and the beliefs that underpin it definitely feed into the material. I would say my style is the product of social conditioning, and my writing is the product of our times.
I know I run the risk of alienating audiences by speaking of subjects that are considered political, but none of this is partisan politics; they are questions you can consider regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum. Lyrics and poetry are primarily about love and life, and politics is about the organization of life, so how can you totally decouple the two? Everyone has something to say, so say it meaningfully, but say it respectfully and humanely, and make good tunes while you’re doing it.
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