Lydia Loveless’ latest album is a mature approach to heartache, longing and romance
In 2011, Lydia Loveless became an alt-country sensation with the release of her album Indestructible Machine. Riding the wave of attention she received, Loveless hit the road and toured for two years. While on the road, she didn’t write much, knowing she would find time to be creative when she returned from tour. But once she started writing again a funny thing happened: she hated it all.
“I was waiting for a break to write all this new material,” Loveless says. “But once I got home I was like, ‘Well, this is all crap.’”
Once she ditched that first batch of songs—an entire album’s worth—Loveless went back to the drawing board and produced something she deemed worthy of sharing. The new material became last year’s album Somewhere Else.
So what changed? Loveless says she needed to “get all the crap out” before she could uncover the better material. She also needed to be braver, she says. “I think I was a little afraid to make a rock ’n’ roll album.”
With Indestructible Machine, Loveless established herself as an edgy fringe-dweller of the Americana and alt-country scene. The album sees her loudly and proudly proclaiming her independence, and a lack of concern about whether anyone agrees with her opinions—some good old punk-rock sentiment. On Somewhere Else, however, Loveless let go of the expectations, both internal and external, that Indestructible Machine brought. Breaking free proved to be challenging but liberating.
“Once I sort of jumped off the proverbial cliff, I felt a little more free to write what I needed to write at the time,” she says.
Somewhere Else delves into the internal world of a talented, observant, and maturing artist. Where Loveless previously came off as hard and loud, her new material sees her being open, thoughtful, and even vulnerable. Songs including “Really Wanna See You,” “Hurts So Bad,” and “To Love Somebody” explore the challenges and heartache of longing and being in love with a newly revealed maturity.
“I never wanted to make the same album twice,” she says. “I didn’t want to make some drastic change that was kind of like a whole new person, but I knew I needed to do something different.”
While Loveless draws inspiration for her songs from everything around her, a common thread she sees running through them is human drama. Somewhere Else includes songs inspired by Liz Taylor, old boyfriends, and 19th-century French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.
“It’s mostly melodrama,” she says. “‘Jane Eyre’ is my favorite book, and I see a common thread in the crappy Lifetime movies I watch, and really melodramatic love stories. That’s probably my biggest inspiration.”
A native of Ohio, Loveless grew up in Coshocton, in the eastern part of the state—an area she describes as looking a lot like an egg carton drawing. Ohio tends to elicit images of rubber factories and junkyards, but Loveless has a great appreciation for the natural beauty of the state. Though she says she loves Los Angeles, and California in general, she’s happy in Columbus.
“The nature is part of what keeps me here,” she says. “Not so much Columbus, but drive a couple of hours in any direction and there’s a lot of beautiful scenery.”
Loveless’s father owned a country music bar, and as a child, it wasn’t unusual for Loveless to wake up to musicians sprawled around the living room. Seeing the less-than-glamorous life of a touring musician didn’t put her off, though. In fact, the musicians “made it look cool, with the bandanas tied around their head,” she says.
Loveless says she’s always had a longing to be somewhere else, then laughs at the inadvertent connection between the sentiment and the title of her album.
“I have a bit of a nomad thing going on,” she says. “I’ve always been a really restless person. Even when I was a little kid, my parents would get mad at me for being depressed at six years old.”
She speculates that at the root of her restlessness is a desire to express herself.
“It was always really important to me to create something, even if it was going to leave me starving in a garret,” she says. “I just always wanted to do that.”
Lydia Loveless performs at 9 p.m. on Sunday, April 26 at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $12/adv, $15/door. 479-1854.
