Lauren Early is a musician as inspired by Courtney Love as she is by Lisa Simpson—while the former proved a role model for women in a male-dominated popular rock genre, the latter taught a young Early to shred the sax. Yet neither Hole’s grungy energy nor Lisa’s brass instrument of choice explicitly made it onto the LA songwriter’s debut EP, Patience, which is instead a dreamy elegy to the local DIY scene she was weaned on.
Having been a touring member of her Smell-reared peers in Girlpool and Surf Curse, Patience sees the songwriter setting out on her own, producing and playing all the instruments on the five-track debut. Inspired in part by family tragedy, medical issues, and a stint in New York, the EP weaves in and out of influences—from soft rock recalling Hand Habits on opener “Stupid Now,” to subdued dream pop reminiscent of early Beach House on “Lemon,” to the Lala Lala–esque whisper-vocals on “Heaven.”
“I’ve been playing music literally my entire life but have never released anything before this, mostly because it seemed really scary,” Early claims, providing some backstory for the EP. “As time passes, that’s felt more and more ridiculous, and then this past year I had a series of weird medical things that kept making me question if I’d be able to live a productive life. Turns out I’m fine, and the thing that weighed on me most was not taking music seriously enough. Patience is the beginning of me showing up for myself and doing that.”
Patience is streaming in full today. You can order it here, stream it below, and read more about how the record together from Early herself beneath the embed.
“When I was first conceiving of the EP, I wanted to name it ‘Make My Bed,’ which is the name of one of my songs which actually isn’t on the EP at all. Then, coincidentally, King Princess (who low-key kind of looks like a clone of me) put out an insanely successful EP called…wait for it…’Make My Bed.’ Then I wanted to name it ‘Pull Up’ to match the cover image. I like the idea of being able to lift your entire weight. But then I thought people might misinterpret it and think of it like ‘pull up to the party’ or something dumb.
“Then I just let the EP name itself, and ‘patience’ was obvious because it took a lot of patience to do this. There have been so many stop-and-gos along the way of making this and putting it out. I feel like people love stories about persistent people (especially women) who really believe in themselves and take what they’re doing seriously and keep chugging along to make their dream real—but a lot of the time, in practice, the same people who are into that narrative meet women like that and they’re basically like, ‘Who the fuck does this cunt think she is!?’ That happens to me a lot, and was relevant to my experience trying to get people to take this release as seriously as I’ve been taking it (my heroes are Courtney Love and Cardi B and I’m a Sagittarius, for context).
“‘Patience’ also came into play because I experienced some pretty crazy medical things in the course of the past year while making this and trying to find a way to release it. And, also, ‘patience’ rings true because I feel like I’ve been working up to taking music this seriously forever.
“Anyway—I was driving down Sunset Boulevard last month and saw a huge billboard for ‘Patience’ by Tame Impala. LOL. And then, literally yesterday, I saw an ad for Mannequin Pussy’s new album…called Patience. At this point it just feels like the inner workings of the indie-music world is pulling a prank on me or something and honestly I think it’s funny.”
