DIVA caught up with the singer-songwriter to find out more about her new EP A Guilty Heart Can Never Rest
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGES PROVIDED
Singer-songwriter and musician Låpsley is back once again with her new EP A Guilty Heart Can Never Rest. With a special exhibition performance coming up tomorrow (22 May), Låpsley’s new era continues on the journey of her previous albums in exploring her queerness freely.
Låpsley began her music career when she was just a teenager, skyrocketing to the charts with tracks like Operator and Hurt Me. Having been an independent artist for a decade now, Låpsley’s music has always taken listeners to new realms with discussions about everything from politics to current climate issues.
Ahead of her exhibition show, DIVA caught up with Låpsley to find out more about this new era.
What inspired your new EP A Guilty Heart Can Never Rest? Could you tell us a bit about the process of making it?
I made it in 2023 and each song was written in a single afternoon. I always seem to write quickly when it’s for myself. I use the time in the studio to effectively “dump” everything I’m going through into my music. Låpsley as a creative project is very much a sounding board for my own qualms with myself, life and my relationships. I don’t really stick to a specific genre either.
You’ve been working as an independent artist for 10 years, how did you first get into music and what have you learnt about yourself as an artist over the last decade?
I always played a few instruments growing up and was completely obsessed with listening to the charts on the radio and playing my parent’s CDs on repeat in the car. It wasn’t till high school that I started to play around with composition, and then after I started sneaking off to raves the two worlds collided and I realised I could (attempt to) make electronic music myself. I think my initial sound came out of a love for electronic dance, ambient, pop and indie music and then I just experimented with different genres. All of my early work I produced myself in my bedroom which is wild thinking about that now with access to so much more equipment.
I’ve learned a lot about myself in the last decade, that you can use time as a tool, that collaboration doesn’t have to be at the expense of your own ideas but can improve them, that genres are fluid and fashion should be fun. I’ve learned to pick myself up after every setback and create a healthy team that I work with, they believe in my vision as well as challenge and uplift me.
How does queerness inspire the music you create?
Despite being aware of my queerness from an early age, I never felt able to express so openly within my identity and social media presence till recently. There was a lot of shame and internalised homophobia that led to a second secretive life in my teens where I would sneak off to get with girls, but, unlike them, and unlike my exploration with boys, I didn’t have the confidence to be out and proud about it until I had left my home town at 17.
Through the past decade, through my art, through my queer friends, queer relationships and my therapist, I’ve gone through a journey of self-acceptance, challenged my feminism and its inclusivity and ultimately become an activist and an openly bisexual individual. This journey has been semi-catalogued through my music, and my social media, and has definitely culminated in a queer identity that feels like home in a way I have never felt in my own body. There’s no one way to be queer, to be bisexual, to be a woman, to be a musician, and I’ve never been one for conformity.
What do you hope listeners take from A Guilty Heart Can Never Rest?
I hope they don’t feel lonely in the dark moments within and outside of a troubled relationship with another or with yourself. There are things we have all done that we all regret. That’s how we grow, we forgive, we repair relationships. I see this as a journey you go on both within yourself as well as one with others. This is a story of how guilt transitions into forgiveness, how jealousy is more of a reflection of your own deep insecurities and the formation of a respect for things you can’t change.
You began your career when you were still a teenager. What do you think your younger self would think about the music you’re creating now?
I mean I think she would be taken aback by how more developed it sounds production-wise! And the writing is more akin to a poetry book than a few lines on the back of my homework diary. I think she would be proud that I had overcome my own shame and I talked about things that I had silenced. I think she would be surprised that I cut off all that long hair but glad that I had moved on from wearing exclusively the same pair of Quicksilver surf shorts for three years.
What can audiences expect from your exhibition performance of A Guilty Heart Can Never Rest?
Something from the EP, and something from the future of Låpsley. A Guilty Heart Can Never Rest is the springboard for the next big jump in the world of Låpsley.
Your exhibition combines lots of different art forms together, why is this something that is important to you?
The digital outcome of all this background work is what you hear in your headphones, but the visuals are a huge part of my exploration into the subjects I sing about. The creation of these “worlds” is as much of an exploration of my own understanding of myself as they are to deepen the narrative for the audience. I’m a multidisciplinary artist and I think this is the first time I’ve been able to set the record straight and showcase that side of me which will now be at the front for the foreseeable future.
A Guilty Heart Can Never Rest is out now.
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