Imagine this. You’re back in high school, however many years ago (it doesn’t matter if you’re 57 or 23, things haven’t changed that much). You walk into the cafeteria, perhaps a sack lunch in hand, or maybe a tray with an apple and whatever slop they’re serving that day, and you scan the crowd, searching for your friends — what table are they sitting at? Are they with the jocks, gym bags sat next to them, tossing around a ball? Or maybe they’re with the art kids, dyed hair and paint-splattered jeans. Or the theater kids, laughing loudly together and delivering lines atop lunchroom room tables. So, where do you sit?
Each member of Lu Lagoon has a different answer. The Denver-based band’s lead singer, Lauren Black, would be sitting with the theater kids along with drummer Justin Given. Guitarist Madison Madeira would be sitting with the band kids, and bassist Kyle Waggoner would be with the jocks. Lu Lagoon is the Breakfast Club grouping, without the weird tension and dancing, and additional edge and cool intimidation.
“Being in a band wasn’t really a main goal for me, when I was in high school I was like, I’m gonna be on Broadway, I’m gonna be an opera star,” said Black, the spearhead of the band.
Black met guitarist Madeira right before they both left the east coast for college at the University of Denver. Black had always listened to indie and alternative music despite her draw to opera, but never fully saw herself as a part of the genre until college. “I went to a lot of concerts and envisioned myself on stage performing my own music and was like, that could be fun but I don’t think that’s anything I’ll do,” she added.
But that’s exactly what she did. Feeling worn out by classical training, Black craved a new form of musical expression. “[Classical is] very rigid; there’s a lot of expectations, there’s a lot of boxes, and I felt like I didn’t fit into any of the boxes. My form of expression had always been music but I felt like I couldn’t properly express myself classically anymore. So that’s when I started picking up the guitar and writing songs,” Black said.
Recruiting Madeira, Waggoner and, a little while later, Given, Lu Lagoon became a fully formed band. Black started the project at the end of 2019, but it didn’t really kick into gear until after the pandemic in the summer of 2021. The band has been operating as a four-piece since that time, releasing their first album “Seven Corners” in 2020 and touring on those songs and a few singles that followed.
The band recently wrapped up their second album “When Birds Fly West” which is set to release on April 7. Compared to their first album, Black and Madeira noted that the upcoming release experiments with theoretical concepts like time signature, classical instrumentation, and jazz concepts while delivering a folk-sounding package, evident of Black’s influences during production.
“The first album you can definitely hear Snail Mail and like Slow Pulp and that kind of stuff and this next album is very different. It’s a lot more of what I listened to in the pandemic because that’s when I wrote all the music, like Radiohead and Joni Mitchell,” Black said.
Lyrically, Black noted that she drew a lot of inspiration from Mitchell as well. She explained how she was struck by the way that Mitchell flows lyrically without feeling the need to rhyme any words. “I tried to challenge that like I don’t need to rhyme here I just need to tell a story,” Black said.
Writing for the second album, Black explained how she was in a different head space overall from the first album, which opened up the lyrics for more topics and vulnerability. “My first album is very much [about] heartbreak,” Black explained. “The second album…I felt like I started noticing people around me more, I guess because I wasn’t sorry for myself anymore because in heartbreak you’re just sorry for yourself. So it explains a lot of nature aspects.”
There is some nervousness regarding expectations for a musician who changes their sound in between releases, Black expressed. Regardless of the expectations that fans might have, the release last week of the band’s first single from the album “Blood Moon” was proof (evident in the buzz on social media from the local music scene) that listeners are already eating up what Lu Lagoon is releasing, and ready for more.
The draw of Lu Lagoon is not only in their impressive musicality and powerful group dynamic, but their dedication to their art and the way they operate on the basis of leaving an imprint on anyone who takes the time to pay attention. Black may have never thought she’d be performing her own music on stage, but now that she is, she’s never looking back. “I feel like I’m making a bigger impact with my own personal music,” Black said. “And when I went into music in the first place it was about being able to impact and change people’s lives.”
Stream “Blood Moon” and Lu Lagoon’s other music and stay tuned for their album release on April 7 with a show at Hi-Dive the night before.
