A Chat with lyra messier (20.09.24)
With an experimental rush of eclectic music, singer-songwriter lyra messier draws you to genre-diverse, style-diverse and culture-diverse melodies. We have only just discovered lyra messier with her album LP7, but listening to her music seems comfortable like having a chat with an old friend and not a new acquaintance. Talking about that chat, we had a chance to speak to Lyra about her album LP7, musical styles, album covers and much more.
OSR: You have a lot of different influences for your music style (introverted dance, Hebrew and Dutch hip hop, rock and metal). What inspired you to bring all these styles together?
Lyra: There’s very little thinking involved in that part of the process, honestly. The general sound of my music is just what happens when you take everything I listen to and throw it in a blender. I grew up listening to mostly rock and electronic music, so combining those always felt natural.
My interest in hip-hop is a more recent development. It pretty much started with me discovering the South African duo Van Pletzen in 2020 through the music blog I used to write for. They make this irresistible kind of house-infused hip-hop with hilarious lyrics which was so different to all the music I had been into up until that point, and it honestly opened my eyes. Two years later a friend got me into Noga Erez, which spiralled into an obsession with the Israeli hip-hop scene, and I also listened to Joost Klein a lot and discovered a ton of Dutch rap through him. My musical diet was basically 80% hip-hop at some point last year so I felt like I kind of had to incorporate elements of it into my own sound.
OSR: What new dimensions do you feel you’ve explored through this album? (Themes, lyrics, instrumental)
Lyra: I would say this album is a lot more straightforward than anything else I have made. The songs are shorter (by my standards), the lyrics are more direct and the whole thing feels less serious. I guess that comes with the territory; a lot of the progressive rock that inspires me can be rather depressing, whereas my hip-hop influences are funny and lighthearted.
Obviously, I took up rapping, which I had not done before. This started with ‘Treinsample’, which I pretty much wrote as a bit (like ‘haha imagine if I wrote a rap too’). I guess it was also a proof-of-concept as I wasn’t sure I would be able to take myself seriously when rapping, but I ended up liking the result so much that it gave me the confidence to write and perform more music in that style.
OSR: What is the story behind ‘Doomscroll’?
Lyra: I wrote ‘Doomscroll’ basically immediately after ‘Treinsample’ about something I had been ruminating on for a while. I used to have a pretty crippling social media addiction and though I’ve mostly been able to put that behind me, I still notice myself opening Facebook or Instagram and mindlessly scrolling my feed a lot. I barely even register what I’m seeing; if you were to ask me afterwards what I had looked at, I doubt I could give you an answer. I know this is stupid and a waste of my time, and yet I still do it, as if it were a reflex. I wanted to write a song that sounds like that black hole of wasted time sucking me in.
Musically I wanted to make something like the Just Jack song ‘Starz in Their Eyes’. I find that repetitive hook very infectious and my accent already suits it. The song came together very quickly; I re-recorded the vocals at some point, but the instrumental was pretty much made in a single day.
OSR: What excites you the most about releasing this album?
Lyra: I didn‘t set out to make something more accessible, but I think this album did turn out that way. As with everything I’ve released I am mostly just excited to share these songs I am insanely proud of with the world, but I also think that the world might grow a little larger this time, which would be very cool.
OSR: Do these stories you tell come from personal experience?
Lyra: Absolutely. Music is how I deal with life. I write all my lyrics about things that provoke emotions in me: annoyance, anger, sadness. Rarely happiness. (laughs) These vary widely in scope – from my personal relationships to politics and war – but yeah, they’re all very close to my heart.
OSR: Which song was the hardest for you to write?
Lyra: Most of these songs actually came together very quickly. I would say ‘Ashkelon’ probably took the longest; its main melody came to me in a dream fully formed, but it took me a few weeks to figure out where to take the song from there.
I still wouldn‘t say any part of the writing process was hard, however, the part I usually get stuck on is the recording and production of the songs. Writing music is fun; producing it is work.
OSR: What track are you most proud of on the album?
Lyra: If I have to pick one I’m going with ‘Supernova’. It’s the prog-rock song I’ve always wanted to write, and one day it just came to me. There is also such an incredible amount of fury on my end in the lyrics to that song, and releasing it feels like I’ve finally been given some sense of closure.
‘Passive Activist’ also deserves a mention, though, for being such an insane earworm that it’s actually starting to piss me off. (laughs)
OSR: What is the story behind your album cover?
Lyra: Honestly I pick my album covers purely on a vibe level. If I find it aesthetically pleasing and I think it suits the music, I’ll very quickly just decide to go with it. I was seeing one of my favourite Belgian bands, Robbing Millions, at a venue in Ghent and I took this picture near the entrance, then when I went through my photos a few weeks later I was like ‘Huh, this could be an album cover’. Now it is!
OSR: Your songs deal with pretty heavy topics, what is your creative process for writing these songs?
Lyra: To be honest they often write themselves. Which I realise is not a very helpful answer. But as I said, I basically write to deal with how much I hate people and the world. I guess my internal tantrums lend themselves very well to music!
I write melodies and lyrics simultaneously, often looping beat ideas and improvising sentences until I find something that works. I think I’m generally pretty good at verbally expressing myself, so I can adapt based on the sorts of melodies I’m coming up with. I try not to think too hard about poetic convention and rhyming—if it sounds good and gets my point across or makes me chuckle, I write it down and move on, rather than considering tons of other options first. That approach works very well for me.
OSR: What is next for you in terms of your music?
Lyra: Quite frankly I have no idea. There will certainly be more of it, but aside from one half-finished song, I have no idea how it will sound, which is also exciting to me. When I released my last album I was already deep into writing this one, so it’ll be interesting to start fresh.
OSR: Do you have any message for our readers?
Lyra: This is very much a bedroom-sized operation and I have very little to sell and no gigs to promote, but more than anything I am also just a massive loser fangirl who asks bands to sign setlists. All this to say: keep supporting the bands you love. Go to tiny gigs and dance in the front. Follow your childhood faves on tour. Not only will it make them happy, it will make you happy.
Many thanks to Lyra for speaking with us. For more from lyra messier, check out her Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
