Last summer, the former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters performed at the Newport folk festival in Rhode Island. He didn’t employ his usual band. My Morning Jacket provided the instrumental back-up, while Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius were backing singers. “In the middle of the show,” Wolfe remembers, “he turned round to Holly and I and blew us kisses. Whenever I think about it, my heart swells, because I can’t believe that actually happened.”
“After it,” Laessig chips in, “he wrote this long email to everybody involved that was like, ‘Thank you guys so much. That was such a beautiful experience. Please, we’re family now, we’re all brothers and sisters now, don’t be a stranger. I want to see you all, keep in touch, Roger.’”
Wow. That’s pretty amazing. So they’re now best buds with the most irascible man in rock? “We wrote back,” Laessig says, “thanking him and asking him a question.” And what did he say? “No reply.” A pause. “But we’re all brothers and sisters now.” Laessig and Wolfe both hoot with laughter.
The laughter is a reflection of the charmed life the pair seem to be living at the moment. As well as serving as backing singers to the great and the good – they’ve also worked with Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy (both solo and with Wilco), David Byrne and a huge pop star they refuse to name – they’re on the up with Lucius, the quintet they front, and whose third album is imminent.
Good Grief is a wonderful record, rather different from its predecessor, Wildewoman. Where that was recognisably the work of an indie group, this one feels like a wonky take on 80s pop, familiar elements shaken up in one of those kids’ kaleidoscopes until a new pattern emerges – not that they think they were reaching for the 80s, certainly not deliberately.
It is still recognisably the work of the same group who made Wildewoman, though, thanks to the voices. Laessig and Wolfe always sing in unison – their voices, different individually, merge into one that sounds doubletracked, or like a new voice entirely. It’s not the only thing they do in unison. When on Lucius duty, they always present themselves identically. So after a photoshoot for the Guardian wearing matching mustard yellow ponchos-cum-capes, with matching haircuts, they change for the interview in a pub – into matching houndstooth capes. They look, it must be said, striking.
“It’s a commitment,” Wolfe says, with a certain amount of understatement. “And we get a giggle from walking down the street and seeing people’s reactions. ‘Are you twins? You must be!’ If you know any twins, unless they’re three years old, they just don’t dress the same. Even if it’s an interview, we are dressed for our part.” They pre-empt the obvious inquiry: “We’ve never had an argument about what to wear,” Wolfe says.
The pair met at Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2003, forming Lucius in 2005, though the band as it is now didn’t come together until they moved to New York four years ago. They rented a house that turned out to have been a music factory. “We went to see it and there was a Steinway grand piano in the living room and all these vintage organs,” Wolfe says. “In the basement, there were vintage recording studios, and more pianos from the late 1800s, and one room filled with 3,000 records. We looked at each other and said, ‘We can’t not live here – this is insane.’”
A couple of weeks before moving in, they went back to check it out again. The brothers who had bought the house had been preparing it for them. “And all the records were gone. Three thousand records. ‘Did you sell them?’ ‘No, I threw them out.’ Three thousand records. Literally a whole room. Filled. With. Records. And he threw them out. I just stood there with my mouth open. Heartbreaking.”
As Lucius came together, they did their backing singing shifts, and wrote advertising jingles, finding that being willing to work to order for others got them regarded with a certain scepticism from those who think real artists don’t do that sort of thing. Leaving aside the fact that it’s a better way for a musician to make a living than delivering pizzas, Laessig mounts a defence of jingles: “It exercises a different part of your brain. It’s mathematical in a way. When I was in high school, I used to have mix CDs of jingles because I love them so much. I have this recording of Meow Mix – do you have Meow Mix here?”
“Oh my God, Holly,” Wolfe says, then bursts into song. “I want chicken! I want liver! I want Meow Mix! Please deliver!”
“No, not that one,” Laessig replies, as if she’s talking about Bob Dylan B-sides rather than cat food ads. “There are different eras …”
Their first album, Songs From the Bromley House, came from their time in the house with the missing records. Then Wildewoman brought them wider attention, winning such fans as the economist Paul Krugman (who stands front row centre at all their New York shows) and launching them on a couple of years of solid touring. That took Laessig away from her husband and forced Wolfe into spending the whole time with her husband, Dan Molad, who’s also in the band.
The new album is filled with the tensions and difficulties they encountered over that time, though it never sounds depressing. And there are moments to leaven the mood, such as the single Born Again Teen, which captures – with the benefit of hindsight – moments of wild excitement from your teenage years.
It’s not meant to be nostalgic, though. Laessig and Wolfe are the classic outsiders who found their freedom only when they escaped their peers. “Being a teenager was terrible,” Laessig says. “I was from suburban Ohio and I remember my gym teacher going, ‘You guys better get yourselves together, because these days are the best years of your life!’ These are the best years of my life? Let’s end it now! My mom said, ‘These are not the best years of your life, trust me. For some people maybe, but not for you.’ They were the best years for the bullies and the cool kids. And they’re still there.”
What they are trying to summon in Born Again Teen is the sensation you lose as an adult: the firsts, the moments of discovery. The first love, the first desire, the first all-nighter – the moments you don’t realise were special until years later. “There’s such a carelessness and freedom that you don’t realise you are able to honour when you are that age,” Wolfe says. “Because everything’s about: what’s next? We’re only 30 years old, but I’m thinking, let’s go back a few years – remember when nothing mattered?”
No high school reunions then? “Hell, no,” Laessig says.
“No way,” Wolfe adds. “Sometimes we get people reaching out to us, who we were at high school with. Some we were friends with, or acquaintances, maybe not close. And some who literally wanted nothing to do with us, well, with me.” She turns to Laessig. “But you’ve had the same. And they say, ‘I’d love to see you! It’s been so long.’ And I think, ‘There was no point in our relationship that you cared about anything that I was doing. And now I don’t care about what you’re doing.’”
Time is up. I have to leave for, of all things, a meeting with an old schoolfriend I haven’t seen for nearly 30 years. “Oh. My. God. You’re not! Why?” And they stand up, both leaning in to kiss me on both cheeks. “We’ve just been to France,” they explain. “We’re continental.”
“Don’t be a stranger!” Laessig says.
“We’re family now!” Wolfe chimes. “We’re all brothers and sisters!”
• Good Grief is released on Play It Again Sam on 11 March.
View all comments >
comments
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion.
This discussion is closed for comments.
We’re doing some maintenance right now. You can still read comments, but please come back later to add your own.
Commenting has been disabled for this account (why?)