Video: Shannon Lay, ‘Nowhere’

Kevin Bronson on June 10th, 2019

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As a member of FEELS, Shannon Lay was party to post-punk rage, rebellion delivered by way of riffs and biting lyrics. Lay’s solo folk-pop has been no less visceral, although instead of volume it relies on weighty quietude and poetry. Her songs are the true soft bulletins.

The Redondo Beach native’s first music arrived in a rush — two solo albums, “All This Life Going Down” and “Living Water,” released in the span of a year in 2017. Last week, Lay announced that her new album, “August,” would be out Aug. 23 via Sub Pop. And with the news came the first single “Nowhere” and its video, directed by Lay and Chris Slater, which culls footage from her travels and life in L.A.

Lay explains that the album’s title refers to the month in 2017 when she quit her day job to focus on music. There’s a line in the title track: “Open the doors that you cannot.”

“Everyone is capable of so much, but we have a tendency to stand in our own way,” she says, adding that the album is “a thank-you to the universe. I always picture music as this river. Everyone’s throwing things into this river, it’s a place you can go to and feed off of that energy and feel nourished by the fact that so many people are feeling what you’re feeling. It’s this beautiful exchange.”

The sublimely doubled and tripled vocals on “Nowhere” fuel the song’s buoyant intentions. “It’s about getting somewhere and not doing anything or meeting anyone,” Lay says. “The idea of just having a quieter journey, zero expectation.”

If you’re looking for a point of reference, “August” includes a cover Karen Dalton’s 1971 single “Something on Your Mind.”

||| Watch: The video for “Nowhere”