“You are gonna see an all-girl two-piece band up there [laughs]. I usually have a guitarist with me, but for this I will be playing electric for the whole set… but you’ll experience all of the ups and downs of a normal set,” says pop artist Laur Elle of her upcoming August 21st date at The Lounge at World Café Live, the final date of her double-headlining run with singer/songwriter Lyncs, which kicks off August 13th in New York City. I’m chatting via phone with Laur Elle, who’s in LA, where she spends half of her time, when she’s not in her hometown in Canada.
This February Laur Elle released the deluxe edition (which seems to be a recent trend… perhaps most inspired by Olivia Rodrigo and Charli xcx) of her 2023 sophomore LP, Delayed Reaction, the follow-up to 2021’s The Art of Pretending (which also has a deluxe edition). “I just had more that I wanted to say… I’d had 11 songs already, I’d had a lot of songs, and I’m an indie artist, so I didn’t want to overload people from the very start, but with these two additional songs, they feel like they belong,” says the folk, rock, and pop-inspired singer/songwriter (She tells me she’s a huge fan of the new Gracie Abrams record and a hardcore fan of The 1975.) of the decision to release a deluxe version of her second full-length.
“It’s like a relationship road trip experience,” Laur Elle says of Delayed Reaction, which was written after a huge breakup, going on to explain that the album’s narrative has given fans who have been through similar things something to bond with the artist over (She tells me she loves hearing about their own journeys, so feel free to share your story with her at World Café Live.) Delayed Reaction also represents the journey of Laur Elle as a songwriter (She was previously an internationally competitive gymnast for the Canadian national team.): “The Art of Pretending was my first project ever as an artist, and I was dipping one toe in the water, like, ‘Can I do music? Can I write a song?’ There was no pressure… For Delayed Recation, I was working with the same producer, so it shows the growth between the two of us.”
Curious what have been some of the highlights of Laur Elle’s still burgeoning career, she tells me, “There’s been so many… Every time something happens, I hope for the best, but I don’t expect it,” confessing that she’s definitely had concerns about how her music will be received: “I remember releasing ‘July,’ and I really had no belief in myself at that point. I called my mom the night before it came out and told her I didn’t know if it was any good, and she was like, ‘Well, it’s coming out.’ And then I released it and it wound up on many playlists, and fans were like, ‘This is the best thing you’ve ever released so far!’” She tells me, if she had any advice for young musicians, it would be, “Don’t underestimate yourself… It’s going to find its people.”
In addition to her upcoming co-headlining tour with Lyncs, Laur Elle also has a month of dates throughout September and October supporting the quite different post-hardcore-turned-pop-rock band Emarosa, which she tells me she’s equally excited about: “They’re so different! I’m really, really excited about this. At the beginning of the year, I was talking about really wanting to tour, and then this fell into my lap, so I’m really, really excited.” However, she says that the difference in genre between the two artists likely won’t change her approach to playing her own sets too much: “I’m always going to be true to myself, but usually I try to throw a cover in, and I’m still trying to figure out what cover to do for the Emarosa dates, but probably a more rock-oriented song.”
When I ask how Laur Elle hopes to wrap up 2024, after these dates, she tells me that it will probably be similar to the process with which she approached Delayed Reaction, which had her and her producer locked up in a studio working for about a month straight, but that she’s also learned a thing or two about songwriting since putting together her most recent album: “I’ve been writing a lot. Like Delayed Reaction, we’ll probably close the doors, hole up, and write a record, but I’m also writing more songs on the go now.”
*Get your tickets here.
