Premiere: La Louma Opens the Floodgates on Her Emotional Debut

Lauren Ross' debut solo album as La Louma is equally a release and a realization of self--something the queer Los Angeles musician worked on for 3 long years, moving across the country, enduring physical therapy and wrestling with lifelong depression. Her endurance is ambitious and the feelings familiar, ultimately distilling 200 recorded songs into a powerfully relatable 10-track breakout.

"It was a slow, magical, deeply solitary process," Ross says of her new LP, titled Let The World Be Flooded Out. "Locking myself in my studio for hours and hours nearly every night, I patiently taught myself how to record, produce, engineer, and mix."

With hours of isolation, the project naturally dives deep into Ross' life experience and complex psyche. Through metaphor-laden lyrics, she finally addresses her crippling sadness, loss of identity by working in the music industry for too long, and unhealthy relationship dynamics with past girlfriends.

But all Ross' heavy introspection doesn't weigh down her debut, which fuses her classical training with a DIY queer punk edge. As St. Vincent's ex-collaborator, the two musicians innately share similar sounds, giving rich organic instrumentation an upbeat gloss. On Let The World Be Flooded Out, Ross used it all: a piccolo, flute, clarinet, cornet and tambourine, among others, all recorded inside her garage.

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Album opener, "The Decline of Nations," grinds with electric guitars, as Ross encourages her lover to "stay until you try to make things right." With "Candy," Ross' clarinet intros a fuzzy punk track that's rooted in mythology and promises to protect a narcissist from drowning in their reflection. "Tin Roof Now," which Ross says sonically anchors the LP, employs nearly every instrument in her studio and sees her begging for rainfall to drown out her senses.

Let The World Be Flooded Out is out on Friday, November 3rd via Bitchwave Records, a queer, female-focused record collective. Listen to the OUT premiere, below.