L'Rain: Abbey Road Amplify x Pitchfork London Sessions

♪ Your mother's buried under life's debris ♪

♪ Damn son, tell me what you wanna do ♪

It's amazing being at Abbey Road.

I feel like I came to the Beatles much later in life.

And I recorded some of my last record at Sunset Sound

and was thinking a lot about the Beach Boys

and all these classic studios.

And so it really is very special and really bleeds

into the recording process

when you know all of the history of the place

that you're recording in. It's incredible to be here.

I can't believe I'm here.

[laughs]

It's pretty surreal.

[jazz music]

My band is here because we're on tour.

So I usually record everything kind of by myself.

My collaborator, Ben Chapoteau-Katz is there

and Andrew Lapin, our usual, you know, producer

and engineer. But really I'm kind of bouncing around

between the instruments. But for the first time

I'm kind of letting the band into a recording process

which is a really special new moment for me.

[jazz music]

It's easy to write things, but they're not all good.

[laughs]

So I try not to judge anything and to just have

things happen when they happen. Which is why I usually

like to start the writing process by myself.

Because it's easier to make things that I think are silly

and stupid and just kind of keep them and just see how

I feel about them a week later or a month later

or even a day later.

But if other people around that,

then sometimes I get a little self-conscious

[jazz music]

Oh man, it's really hard to know when anything is done.

[laughs]

I can tweak forever.

Usually I have to get cut off

and someone tells me that it's over and I have to stop.

But also there's just a kind of feeling

of exhaustion that happens sometimes where you're like

I actually don't even know what else I would do.

And usually when I reach that point

I know it's actually over.

And then I give it a few days

and then I'm really proud of what I made.

I found that a lot of recording is a really

psychological process and finding ways to kind

of just reorient the way that you're thinking

about the way that you're playing

and performing can actually yield really amazing results.

[jazz music]

I wish someone had told me when I was younger

that it's okay to take a bit longer to find my community

and to really embrace my artistic voice. Because

I think the industry can sometimes make young people think

that they have to fit in, in a very specific kind of way.

One thing that I've really learned is that I should lean

into the things that make me, me that really make me stand

out and give me my voice as an artist.

[jazz music]