Since the beginning of Ume, a thread of unfiltered vulnerability has run through the band’s catalog.
As its leader, Lauren Larson has offered up her most trying moments, giving listeners a personal and political window into her life over the last decade. From her noise rock beginnings to motherhood, Larson has continued to deliver, not out of obligation but necessity, and the band’s newest album Other Nature is no exception “I went into the studio with 10 demos written by myself while my new baby slept. I didn’t write them as an Ume record, nor as a solo project. I wrote them because I had to,” Lauren says.
The record’s latest single “Crushed” is a guitar-driven plea from Larson to her daughter to never grow up. The accompanying analog visuals were shot on Super8 film by director Vanessa Pla, and depict an intimate portrait of a parent wanting what all parents want. Larson says,
“‘Crushed,’ for me, is about the catastrophic effects of love — its ability to both destroy your world and wildly, beautifully recreate it. It’s a love song to my daughter. It’s also a reminder to ourselves to keep chasing those feelings of our youth — that feeling awoken in me as a kid in the front row of the Fugazi concert, losing myself in the madness of the music while wondering, ‘Can I be in a band too? I want to play guitar like this. I want to make people feel like this.’”
It’s clear that Ume has achieved what Larson set out to do. Both sound and image are equally stirring, and signal the band’s evolution towards a place more nuanced than ever. Watch the video for “Crushed” below, and be on the look out for the release of Other Nature, out July 20th.
