“Growing up in a Carribean household, there was always music playing,” British-Jamaican musician Lava La Rue responds when asked about their formative musical experiences. “I was just talking to my grandmother; she was talking about members of the family who were part of the rock steady or reggae scene. It’s such a small island that music has become so influential.”
Their London upbringing was a peak into the future. “Growing up around that made me love music,” they tell PAPER. “The culture of it is that you play it really big and loud. It wasn’t a household where you’d turn the music down.” Those early interactions eventually grew into a desire to make their own music. “In West London, there were always bands playing in pubs. You’d go to dinner with your family and there’d be a band doing Oasis covers. It always looked like fun. The idea of being in a band and bringing people joy and the idea of playing a little pub or a bar, that was cool in itself.”
Now those dreams of playing in bars have definitely evolved. In 2023, La Rue played their first ever US show at Coachella. Now, they're heading out of their first US tour, with a headline date at Music Hall of Williamsburg on October 2, to share their first album STARFACE, live. La Rue’s previous EPs, 2021’s Butter-Fly and 2022’s High-Fidelity, both hinted at what was to come — a debut album built like a cinematic universe, with sonics that reflected the singer's global sound and singular vision.
“Since I started this project at 16, I knew I didn’t want to release an album that couldn’t come out sounding like I wanted it to sound. Whether it was because I didn’t have access to the right studio or I didn’t know the right producers yet,” they say. “Also, genre-wise I wanted to work on finding my right lane and a sound that feels authentic to me.” Part of finding that lane was leaning into their own voice. “A lot of the women in my family, they sing-sing because we were raised in the Gospel church,” they say. “I was more in the lane of Lily Allen, where I sing in my accent and it feels right for my voice. I needed to find music that felt good with what I could do. The same with my fluency in other instruments and what I liked to play and enjoyed playing. It just took growing.”
STARFACE is not just an album, but an immersive story, one that follows an alien’s arrival on Earth as they take on the human condition with an objective lens. La Rue says they were inspired by the idea of creating a “lesbian Ziggy Stardust.” They sketched out the album like a graphic novel, making each song a chapter in a spiraling sci-fi novel, with sounds that are delightfully fresh while still feeling classic. Tracks like “Push N Shuv” sound timeless, trudging out slowly with shimmery guitar parts, bouncy bass lines and ‘70s backing vocals. La Rue had originally made the track in 2019 but gave it a second life for STARFACE.
“When I first showed it to people, it fell on deaf ears,” they say. “So, I decided to wait and just put it on the album. I remember showing it to people and they were like ‘Wow! This song’s a lead single!’ and I was like, ‘Guys I literally showed you this years ago and nobody said anything!’” they laugh. The song became an anchor for the rest of the album. Another album moment where La Rue could sense the pieces falling into place was “STARFACE’s Descent,” a vibrating, symphonic, other-worldly track that builds walls of sound before a glitchy beat kicks in. It features fellow British artist tendai. “It encapsulated the album sound I wanted to create,” La Rue says of the track. “It felt like a combination of all the things I can do as a musician.”
Since its release in July, La Rue has been “thinking less about [STARFACE] being out in the world,” and “more thinking about how I can put on a really good show for people who haven’t heard it and for people who are going to hear it live on US soil for the first time. I’m playing my first New York City and LA headline shows. I’ve had no brain capacity to think about anything else other than that.”Photography: Claryn Chong
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