Lauren O'Brien

The words come through your speakers. Tense words. Sharp words. Hypnotic words. Words couched in grinding guitars and thudding drums, words thick with emotional desperation that also reveal the strangely paradoxical beauty in suffering; the diamonds in the cave, waiting to be mined. The words are those of Lauren O’Brien, one of the most exciting young poet-performers on the scene today.

“I love rock ’n’ roll, the passion and rebelliousness of it,” says Lauren. “But I want to be part of it in my own way—I want to take poetry and rock it out.”

Which is exactly what Lauren does—and then some—on Inconsequential Dream, her astonishing debut album. Take “color code,” a menacing, tension-rich rumination on love’s blurred lines of communication or the hard-hitting title track, which was inspired by the numerous mystic predictions about the year 2012 and the letting go of old ideas in order to live more fully in the new age. And then there’s “To Let Someone,” an acoustic guitar-laced allegory likening newfound spiritual energy to the acceptance of a former lover’s new mate. Much like Lauren’s riveting live performances, Inconsequential Dream is a cathartic, emotionally cleansing experience that keeps the listener on the edge of their seat throughout—only to find them back in line when the last track stops, eager to sign up for another wild ride.


How do you describe your music to people, Lauren?
I say it's rock poetry. Possibly the love child of Henry Rollins, King Missile and Ani Difranco. My friend and promoter David Tanner recently came up to me after a show with a huge smile on his face and called me an "emotional terrorist".  I kinda like that too. 

Tell me about how you originally got into your craft.
Ya know, I've been pretty consistent in this life.  I started composing stories and poems before I could even write! I'd get struck with some kind of inspiration and beg my mother to write everything down for me.  I think she still has some of those early works of genius. 

What is your favorite thing to do in the whole wide world?
I love creating.  I also love practicing Buddhism. (Ok, that's two things...) I think my Buddhist practice is what allows me to be fully creative in this world.  Nam-myoho-renge-kyo!

What is your biggest challenge when it comes to running your business?
Probably switching between my artist mind and my business mind.   

When you were a kid, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an actress.  I studied acting in school and worked in that field for a while.  But, I started feeling really constrained by it.  I felt like I always had to fit myself into someone else's mold.  I had (and continue to have) a deep desire to create something that is an authentic expression of the truth who I am.  It is my wish to free other people to access their own truth through my artistic expressions.

In what way has your community impacted your development as a musician?
My Buddhist practice has had a particularly profound effect on my development as an artist.  I have the incredible fortune to be a part of a community that is constantly encouraging me to make my greatest dreams come true. 

I have a great teacher, Daisaku Ikeda, who is always showing me how to expand my life in ways I never thought possible.  In his essay "My Vow for the 80th Anniversary" he wrote, "... You have as yet tapped only a fraction of the boundless power of Buddhahood you possess and revealed only a tiny portion of your limitless Buddha wisdom...."

Now that's encouraging!  I love feeling that possibilities are limitless.

What other artists out there do you love?
I recently saw Sirsy perform at the Bitter End and they totally rocked.  I also developed a minor obsession with the band Lourds.  And I deeply admire the songwriting of Rachael Sage.

And of course, I love Gary Pickard.  We write together, and we have really different perspectives.  In my opinion, he is a musical genius.  He teaches me to hear the world in ways I never did before.

What does your future hold?
Total world domination!

Honestly, I'd love to tour and perform my rock/poetry show all over the world.  I think that the songs on Inconsequential Dream tap into some universal human truths.  I would love to bring them to a global audience. 

August 27th 2010 6:00pm
acoustic set: Lauren O'Brien & Gary Pickard
Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia St, NYC

*** September 4th 2010 at 7:30pm  ***
FULL BAND SHOW
@ Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, NYC

Click here to buy the music featured on Such Cool Stuff!

Artwork By Vicki Death

Vicki Death is an independant artist based in Liverpool, UK. With a love for all things horror, sci-fi and tattoo-related, she combines these passions to create some pretty unique, original, and horrific pieces of art. From paintings, to ceramics, to fiendish jewellery boxes, this store has plenty of ghoulish delights to offer! Think Frankenstein's Monster meets a Tattoo studio, and you'll be pretty close.

Tell me about how you originally got into your craft, Vicki.
From as far back as I care to remember, I've always been creative. I loved getting messy with paint, and creating images from my imagination, things that could never exist in the real world. I stuck to it throughout, even when in high school the art teacher told me I had no talent. I was more than ready to prove her wrong. And from the positive comments I've been given in recent years, I like to feel I've achieved that.

What is your favorite thing to do in the whole wide world?
Travel, I love to travel when I can. I enjoy exploring new places, and learning new things. I can be a bit of a culture vulture too! I also have a passion for music, horror, and tea!

What is your biggest challenge when it comes to running your business?
Not knowing when your next pay cheque is! Some weeks business can be great, and you know you'll be eating that night. Other weeks can be dire, and they're the worst. Also finding inspiration. If you have artist's block, it's terrible, and sometimes it can take a while to find your inspiration once more.

When you were a kid, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I went through many occupations of what I wanted to be when I grew up. From a vet, to a rockstar, to a hair dresser, to a journalist, to a tattoo artist. There were so many jobs I wanted to do when I was a kid.

What item in your shop would you most like to receive as a gift if someone were shopping for you?
I love my naked pin-up lady. I find her truly charming and sexy, with a rock 'n' roll edge, as well as representing woman in a positive, totally bad-ass manner.

What other artists out there do you love?
There are a variety of artists whose work I love.
But at present, I'm totally adoring work from Ghoulish Gary 
Nik Scarlett
and Allan Graves
Those guys rock!

What does your future hold?
Apart from the hope to continue doing what I'm doing, I also plan to have some prints made, as well as an art book (hopefully) sometime over the next year. There are many creations in store, so keep those eyeballs peeled!

Janita

On the heels of her most commercially successful release to date, Janita returns with her highly anticipated new album, Haunted. The latest in an already acclaimed discography, Haunted is helmed by an artist with the courage and determination to evolve--not only out of artistic desire, but personal necessity.

"What do we learn?" Janita (YA-nee-tuh) asks in the album's opening song, serving as a wry set-up for the answer she provides again and again with each charged moment of Haunted. Undeniably, she's learned a lot. With its expanded emotional canvas for her melodic songwriting--framed by lush, electrified arrangements and her trademark vocals--Haunted is proof that this is an artist who has truly come into her own.

"The great artists aren't afraid to grow while retaining what was unique about them in the first place," says Janita from her Brooklyn home. "Those are the artists I've always admired. So with this album, I felt I had to raise the stakes for myself, regardless of the risks." Risks that, in the end, proved to be as much personal as musical.

Before moving to Brooklyn as a seventeen-year old, Janita had already been a superstar outside of the United States. In her native Finland she was a national icon, the premiere recording artist on radio and television, awash with awards, constant touring and commercial success: a historic and pioneering career, all while still a teenager. She was quickly signed by Sony after moving to New York, capitalizing on her international celebrity. Her eponymous debut was followed by 2001's I'll Be Fine and 2006's Seasons Of Life, the latter scoring her two Top-40 hits on the US Charts. But throughout, Janita saw her own musical vision often being pushed aside for what she was told would be "safer" and in everyone's best interest.

It was another artist, it turns out, who became the catalyst for the changes ahead. "I remember Meshell Ndegeocello came over. She exposed me to music I hadn't explored before. I loved it. Totally devoured it. I moved into Keane, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, and PJ Harvey. A natural progression. Until soon I couldn't find enough depth solely in the music I'd been inhabiting. Until I couldn't express myself solely with the tools I'd been using anymore." Bucking the conventional "wisdom" of her advisors and extricating herself from her label, she began inventing a different, defiant future for herself and her music.

Haunted's title track describes the ensuing transformation, akin to Dorothy stepping into color in The Wizard of Oz ("Coming from my hidden world / Through doors that I've closed / Across bridges I've burned, 'Haunted'"). In "House On Fragile Terrain," Janita declares "I can't be who you'd like me to be," with the understanding that no transformation comes without cost. Timeless string arrangements in "Hopelessly Hopeful" and "Believe Me I Know" meet cutting-edge electronic elements in "Martian" and "Last Chance To Run And Hide," each track teeming with Janita's soulful vocal wattage. "All along," smiles Janita, "it's been music that's kept me sane, from the very beginning of my life…and it continues to do so."

At its core, Haunted embodies the journey of an artist focused not on the ghosts of her past, but on the possibilities of her future. One of her own fashioning. One that for the first time now belongs to her. A future of hope and promise, and she invites her listeners to join her.

So, how do you describe your music to people, Janita?
I call my music Alternative Soul. It is a mixture of all my influences, and I listen to and love quite a variety of music genres. My instinct is to opt for anything with a lot of heart and gravitas; something I can sink my teeth into... And I strive to make such music myself.

 I grew up listening to a lot of soul, R&B and hip hop, and discovered alternative a little later in life. It is all melding in my singing, in my songwriting and my musicianship.

Tell me about how you originally got into your craft.
I learned how to sing before I learned how to talk, and got my own little Casio when I was 3. It was one of those crappy little 80's electric pianos with crappy drum tracks... But I loved it! I was just enthralled by music straight away. It seemed like it was in my blood and came very natural to me always.

I started writing my own songs on the piano at 5 years old. Throughout my childhood I sang, played, danced and performed, encouraged by my mom especially...  And then I got my first record deal at 13. The following year, I was already a big star in my native Finland, and by 17 I moved to New York to really pursue my dreams in music. As you can see, all of it began when I was very young.

What is your favorite thing to do in the whole wide world?
The answer to this tends to change depending on where I am in my life... Right now, my favorite thing is to hang out in parks reading, listening to music, watching the sunset and having deep conversations with people I admire and love.

Perhaps later on in the future I would site raucous sex and drinking scotch, ha. Damn, that sounds pretty good actually too.... Life keeps flowing and changing.

What is your biggest challenge when it comes to running your business?
Ambition means something different to me now, than what it used to. I have way more ambition towards having an enjoyable, balanced life now, than I have towards the business side of music. I am not an artist dead-set on making connections, conquering the world and promoting myself at every opportunity. In all honesty, I feel slightly awkward socially, and am way more interested in making good music than schmoozing. In that way, my biggest challenge in running my business is me. I'd rather just sing and do my thing, than try to be pleasing to people.

When you were a kid, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I thought I was going to be a pianist or a ballerina. I was never trained in singing... Instead I was studying both classical piano and ballet in esteemed national institutions, so it looked like one of those would become my craft. But singing naturally grew to be my forte...

In what way has your community impacted your development as a musician?
Finland is not known for it's passionate people—rather, we are known to be introverted, quiet and unassuming. That does not mean that passion isn't within us though. It's just that the culture does a very good job at suppressing it.

I certainly struggled with that and ended up becoming quite compulsive about expressing myself anyway, in a way that was accepted. The culture put me into a situation where the only outlet for my emotions was music and art, so I dove very deep into them. In the end, I think I'm better for it. I think it's given me a lot of depth.

What other artists out there do you love?
For the same reason as I love the Russian author Dostoyevsky, I love Radiohead. I feel like they both express my innermost workings painfully well. However, there are times in one's life when both Dostoyevsky and Radiohead are too heavy... So, I also love Death Cab for Cutie, Patty Griffin, Neil Young, Milton Nascimento, to name just a few.

What does your future hold?
Less inhibitions, less worry, more work, more play... and a lot of love. Connections with a few important people (and I mean this mostly in the non-business-sense), and a strengthened connection with the world. Yeah.

Click here to buy the music featured on Such Cool Stuff!