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APPROVAL With her new self-titled release marking her first album in five years, LIANNE LA HAVAS opens up about the lessons from Prince that inspired her to take a more DIY approach. Words: Sean Kerwick. Having been through love, loss angovers and heartbreak in the intervening unravel in years, the tracks are submerged by unpredictable ways. the light and dark we all face in life as it Some knock you out cold trails the arc of a relationship. While the while others summon a lush, bass-driven ‘Read My Mind’ is a strange spell of productivity. Straight doe-eyed, lovelorn gawp across a room after Glastonbury 2019, Lianne La Havas (“What you waiting for?”), the stirring and her band got to work, favouring ‘Please Don’t Make Me Cry’ simmers a trip to the studio over their comfy in a sticky pool of hopelessness (“You warm beds. “We were all proud of our won’t find another dream if you don’t get hangovers last year,” she says with a no sleep”). chuckle over the phone from her South London home. The latest LP marks the first selfproduced effort of her discography. The resulting impromptu session not “On the last album, I wrote with a lot of only birthed the ethereal cover of people and found a lot of things I liked Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes’ that graces and didn’t like during the process,” she her self-titled third album, but also explains candidly. “I didn’t know how I helped solidify the LP’s sound - a rawer, wanted to do it but I knew that it had to stripped-back and live approach. It was be nobody else’s ideas but mine. It was an answer Lianne had been searching the first time I had people looking to me for in the five year gap that now stands for what to do, instead of me looking between ‘LLH’ and previous album to them.” ‘Blood’. Having found something of a mentor “Because of the story - the tracklisting in Prince from working with him before and the timeline - it makes sense that it his death in 2016, did he inspire the comes from all these different years and DIY approach at all? “He taught me to moments to be this one thing,” she says. believe more in myself and to not let
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“Your vision can’t be wrong if it’s coming from you!” somebody tell you that your vision is wrong. It can’t be wrong if it’s coming from you!” she says. “I started out making my own stuff on my computer, so this was a chance to take everything I’ve learnt - all the good bits and all the bad bits - and do it myself. Prince was definitely instrumental in inspiring that.” The resulting sound finds a pleasing sweet spot between La Havas’ rich arrangements and the warm, crunchy live instrumentation that underpins them. It’s an intriguing homegrown new chapter that oozes with confidence. ‘Lianne la Havas’ is out 17th July via Warner / Nonesuch. DIY
