Leslie Stevens Releases Eponymous Third Album

The Los Angeles singer continues to expand her style on new LP

February 23, 2024February 23, 2024 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2024, Father John Misty, Jon Hamm, Jonathan Wilson, Lana del Rey, Leslie and the Badgers, Leslie Stevens, My Morning Jacket, Shelby Lynne, Soundly Music

The grace of the Los Angeles music scene is embodied in the wonderful third solo album from Leslie Stevens.

The eponymous LP, released today on all DSPs, continues to find the St. Louis native having a good time figuring herself out sonically, as she fully embraces all the bombast and breathlessness of the L.A. sound – from the canyons to the strip – to craft her most distinctive work beyond her work in Leslie and the Badgers. This record exists somewhere between Shelby Lynne’ I Am Shelby Lynne and Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, sonically speaking.

“I got so much joy out of the creative process of making this record,” she told us about the creation of the album and its internal core. “The songs were influenced by a desire to understand so much of the pain that was going on in my life at the time. Like many artists, I process emotion by confronting it in a song. The poet Hafiz says ‘Crystal rain falls from black clouds,’ and I find my best songs come out of the greatest pain. I’d felt really trapped for a number of years and I just let myself enjoy the freedom and liberation and fun that was going into the studio to make this record with Kevin Ratterman. He is such a great producer (co-producer in this case) and that means being a sort of guide for your artist. He’s so free and it’s just great to be around him.”

Leslie Stevens Leslie Stevens, Soundly Music 2024

For Stevens, that freedom meant allowing her to workshop a variety of feelings in the material but with a sense of levity that made it easier for her to open up.

“I almost called this record Cosplay instead of Leslie Stevens, as I wanted to reference all of the different states of emotion that we wear like costumes,” she explains. “We had these colors, 90s punk, radio country, 70s shimmer, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, plus different folk traditions, and we sort of put them all together via the bottleneck of me. There’s this mysterious way in which art takes on its own life even on the first day of recording. It’s always frightened and fascinated me how easy it is to get in your own way amidst the 10,000 choices. I wanted to drop all of that and stay out of the way to let something wild and fun arise. I wanted to have an intentional lightness around the creative process. This came from me noticing that when I’ve sung on records for artists I admire (Father John Misty, Jonathan Wilson, Jim James of My Morning Jacket) and want to be like, I’d let go, because it wasn’t my work. I’d feel unattached to the outcome and I’d get really free results. So I took this with me to the studio, to see if I could not strangle the process because I cared so much. Isn’t that just like the lived experience of love? Letting go while being ok with loving something so much.”

As the album unfurls from track to track written or co-authored by Stevens, its feel is augmented by a select group of talented instrumentalists — among them Bo Koster from My Morning Jacket on keyboards and Nicole Row of Incubus on bass. Co-produced by Stevens and Kevin Ratterman (MMJ, Ray LaMontagne, Andrew Bird), Leslie Stevens is a classic L.A. pop album that’s worthy of your attention this New Music Friday.

Listen to the full LP below and stick around to watch the video for the single “Blue Roses,” which stars Jon Hamm of Mad Men fame.

For more information on Leslie, visit her website here.