Dancing through Darkness

Lucius rolls into the State Theatre on April 30.

BY MILENA CALCAGNI

With their new album Second Nature (April 8, 2022) rising from the ashes of the pandemic, Holly Laessig of Lucius shares a few silver-lining secrets.

What’s kept your heart pounding during lockdown? Writing a song starts with writing a letter to yourself so you can look at it, let it go, and make something joyous out of it. After being in quarantine so long, we knew our listeners might need that sense of release and escape too. We’re all dancing our way through the darkness. She’s a powerhouse! This was the first time we’ve written with other writers, not just each other. It makes you face yourself and dare to let another person in to write with you. Brandi does so much as an artist herself, but never at the expense of supporting other artists. She’s always lifting others up around her.

Beyond dressing alike, you and Jess Wolfe sound like vocal twins. Practice or intuition? When we first started singing together, we were figuring out how we could both leadsing. We have very different voices separately, but when we sing together we create a third voice. If you’re acting like one unit, the harmony will be a lot tighter.

Tell us about a happy accident. We were in the studio a few years ago when our guitar player, Pete, runs in and says, “You guys have to come outside!” So we look up in the sky, and the craziest UFO you’ve ever seen is there! We were recording this really weird, spacey music at the time, so it was like we were in a science fiction novel, looking at each other like, “We’re going to be abducted!” It was the first launch of SpaceX, but they hadn’t announced it, and nobody knew it was happening.

What are you most looking forward to in Maine? I just want a good lobster roll! The last time we were there we got some at Eventide Oyster Co. So good! n