Stream: Empress Of, ‘I Don’t Even Smoke Weed’

Daiana Feuer on October 19th, 2018

0

Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez has some formal training, but credits Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and her mom as the most formative influences on her music. Today marks the release of her sophomore album, “Us,” on Terrible Records, the follow-up to 2015’s “Me.” Rodriguez recorded the songs all over Southern California, in Topanga, Ojai, at a studio “with no windows,” at her Highland Park home, at another recording studio shared with a cricket. “He was there, like, all month,” she says, “And I was trying to track vocal tracks and he’d be like, CHIRP, CHIRP!” She completed about 70 percent of the record alone, then invited collaborators Dev Hynes (Blood Orange), production duo Sam Griesemer and Jerome Potter of DJDS, and Spanish electronic producer Piona to sprinkle some of their magic on fun pop tracks like “I Don’t Even Smoke Weed,” a love song with an upbeat synth riff that feels plucked right out of a roller rink dance party. As explained in one of the sung-spoken verses, smoking weed usually gives her anxiety, but not when this particular love interest is around. Ain’t that sweet.

||| Stream: “I Don’t Even Smoke Weed” and “Everything to Me”