Interview with Jess Wolfe from Lucius

Since their second album, Wildewoman, hit the charts in 2013, Los Angeles indie pop act Lucius have become a must-see live band for all sorts of music fans. The stunning stage presence courtesy of co-vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, along with the musical skills of Dan Molad, Peter Lalish and Andrew Burri, make this band from Brooklyn a truly unique treasure. They blend pop, folk and dance beats to make infectious music that takes over the mind and body. On July 22 this act will be part of another installment of the 2016 Summer Concert Series happening at Waterplace Park in downtown Providence. Ahead of the upcoming show I had a chat with Wolfe about Lucius’ New England beginnings, the similarities she shares with Laessig on stage, creating an immediate buzz, releasing their third album, Good Grief, last March and what the band has planned for the rest of 2016.

Rob Duguay: Lucius has some New England roots with you and Holly meeting at the Berklee School Of Music in Boston back in 2005. What was the experience like attending Berklee and how much of a difference do you find between living in Boston versus living in Brooklyn where the band started out?

Jess Wolfe: Boston is just big enough, you don’t feel like you’re living in a big city. It’s quaint enough where you feel like you can sort of manage it and know the ins and outs of the city really well. Boston has so much history and it’s so beautiful with so many new things happening at the same time. It’s a very vibrant town, but at the same time it feels quaint and small, like your typical small town compared to New York. When you go to New York, it can be a hell of a ride if you’re not careful enough. It’s incredible, fast-paced and there’s so much energy, but it’s also a place where everything is happening all the time and you have to be prepared for that.

RD: You’re on the west coast now in LA. How do you like it over there?

JW: I’m originally from Los Angeles so for me it’s like going home because it’s so nice all the time and it’s so nice outside. Coming home from touring and being able to be out in the sunshine with trees and space and mountains to climb is really something that’s been good for us with having a change of pace. I think the cool thing about Los Angeles is that it’s culturally stimulating and there’s so much going on in the arts world at all times, but you can also have your retreat. That was something I was missing when I was living in New York, but I would never trade those years being there because it was so inspiring and motivating. There’s this constant push there that drives you and moves you and there’s no other place like that.

RD: One thing that has become a trademark of Lucius’ live performance is the symmetry that you and Holly share on stage. Vocally and fashionably the both of you act like mirror images of each other. What inspired that route when the both of you started the band?

JW: We’ve always been inspired by artists who have a strong visual representation of their music. We think it’s important for us to feel like we can get whisked away for a couple of hours and feel like we’re in our own little world that we’re creating. We’re creating this other voice so it felt fitting to create this visual representation to complement it.

RD: I remember the first time I saw Lucius was at a music festival. You and Holly were wearing black dresses with black sunglasses on and blonde hair. You had your keyboards at a 45 degree angle from each other and it was such a unique stage presence. This was before Wildewoman came out. Lucius had a buzz before that breakthrough album was released in 2013. When you were recording Wildewoman, did you feel a lot of pressure going into the studio knowing that the band was already getting recognition? Did you feel that you had to live up to any expectations?

JW: Yeah, I think it’s impossible not to feel some pressure because when you put something out there, people are then waiting for something and they’re expecting something. When our first record came out nobody was waiting for it, nobody had any idea who we were and we hadn’t made a commitment to a sound on record yet. Then once we had that commitment, we toured and people had heard us and were following us then there was a pressure that built up to not necessarily one-up it, but to evolve and excite people the same way the first record did.

RD: Wildewoman is an excellent album and so is Good Grief that came out this past March. Musically it’s a great evolution of the band’s sound, but what I also found to really intriguing was the album cover. It shows either you or Holly kissing an invisible person, what’s the message the image on the cover is trying to convey?

JW: It’s really for the audience to make what they want of it. There are many meanings that can come from it, one is embracing somebody who’s not there. Another one is embracing grief, darkness, emptiness and knowing that you have to embrace a form of heaviness or sadness in order to really appreciate joy. Sometimes being in that experience can be very difficult, but when you come out on the other end you realize that it helps you to fully grasp what it means to feel. Those are the two that are the strongest for me at least.

RD: After the show at Waterplace Park in Providence on July 22 , what does Lucius have for the rest of the year? Will the band just do a bunch of touring in support of the new album?

JW: We’re going to start writing again, but for now we got a bunch more touring to do. We’ll be back on the east coast in the fall in Boston and New York. We’re going to be singing with Roger Waters for the huge epic concert in Coachella Valley for the Desert Trip Festival in October with Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Who and Neil Young, so Holly and I are going to be singing with Roger. So there’s a lot going on for the rest of the year and it’s going to be really exciting.

Check out the event page for Lucius and Math The Band at Waterplace Park in Providence on July 22: facebook.com/events/1222471734430712; Lucius’ website: ilovelucius.com