DIVA catches up with the star to talk about their new release The Slow Fire Of Sleep
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY CAL MCINTYRE
Having grown up near Hebden Bridge, aka the lesbian capital of the UK, Lizzie Mayland was no stranger to queer people roaming freely in the art scene. However, it was likely that those queer people were stitching or painting. Not quite rocking out on stage. Lizzie knew deep down that they wanted to make music. They just didn’t know how to get there.
Fast forward to now, Lizzie joins our Zoom call just a month before their debut EP is about to drop. As the iconic guitarist for the hit band The Last Dinner Party, Lizzie has already achieved a pretty impressive career. Brit awards, Glastonbury sets, and tracks like Sinner – which they wrote about being a genderqueer person – have dominated charts. Away from the dizzying heights of stardom, Lizzie has been working behind the scenes to create their debut EP The Slow Fire Of Sleep.
While their cool persona has gained them quite the cult following online, Lizzie is bubbly and warm as we get chatting about this new project. Born from the quiet moments in between tours with The Last Dinner Party, Lizzie admits that a lot of their new music has come from the feeling of loneliness. “I was just writing songs that I felt like needed to come out of me. There was a lot of downtime between tours where I felt pretty exhausted and burnt out,” they admit. “I’d come home and end up feeling quite lonely. The EP came from a lot of lonely moments and quiet reflection.”
Although Lizzie tells me that they did miss the “bandness” while making an album alone for the first time, it was “empowering” to have complete creative control. The tracks explore themes of queerness, loneliness, and gender norms – something Lizzie says made them feel vulnerable. While Lizzie had written the hit song Sinner with The Last Dinner Party, this felt a whole lot more personal. “When I was with the band there was this safety blanket, like no one had to know it was about me,” Lizzie explains. “But doing that gave me the confidence to be very personal.”
Despite their proximity to queer hubs like Hebden Bridge, Lizzie admits that they weren’t from an open-minded part of the world. In fact, the first time they heard the word “gay” being used was as an insult. It therefore feels revolutionary to see Lizzie embrace their queerness in this latest EP. One track in particular that will resonate with LGBTQIA listeners is the song Mother Mother, which Lizzie describes as being about “the specific experience of being genderqueer, and not aligning with the femininity that I was shown growing up which was based on motherhood”.
Having grown up in a rural Northern area where the idea of being a professional musician seemed off the cards, I ask what Lizzie’s younger self would think if they could see this EP now. “Oh, that makes me emotional. I can’t believe I’m going to be able to hold a vinyl of my own music. I think it would mean so much to see me be so vulnerable, and just living how I want to live regardless of gender boundaries and binaries, and whatever rubbish!”
What does Lizzie hope other LGBTQIA people can take away from this new EP? “I hope that the songs have captured the sort of fire of sleep, the kind of hopelessness that I feel about the world and the climate, and politics.”
The Slow Fire Of Sleep is out on 9 May.
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