East Nashville rock band The Love-In are redefining what the ‘Nashville sound’ is with their new EP As It Lays, announced today. Set for release on September 4, the group teamed up with acclaimed producer Collin Pastore (Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers) to create the five-song EP that focuses on not only recognizing, but breaking down the ways that social norms and gender roles discourage individuality and the mirage that conformity is what we ought to strive to achieve. Yesterday, the debut single and title track “As It Lays” premiered via Underground Music Collective. “As It Lays” is out everywhere today, and fans can pre-order the full EP here.
Recently re-branding as The Love-In, As it Lays is the band’s first EP under the new moniker. Looking to literature, music, and movies, the majority of the album was influenced by strong female authors and artists and the way women have been portrayed over time. “The title track ‘As It Lays’ was inspired by Joan Didion’s 1970 novel, ‘Play it As it Lays’. I read it at a time when it felt like my whole life was falling apart,” main songwriter and lead singer Laurel Sorenson explains, “Didion’s journalistic approach to despair resonated with my own outlook. The main character has very little personal sovereignty, but finds that driving on the freeway each morning is a way to bring order to her personal chaos.”
Album closer “Pure Gold Baby” was actually inspired by two separate pieces of literature from female icons – Sylvia Plath’s poem “Lady Lazarus,” published posthumously in 1965, and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” which is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the US. “I read both works thinking I would see what it must have been like for women in the 1960s, but was shocked to find my own experiences reflected back at me,” says Sorenson, “Women are praised for being self-sacrificing and never thinking about what they want for themselves. They are discouraged from analyzing their own lives. ‘Pure Gold Baby’ is about what it’s like to try and live up to the ideal of the perfect woman. Trying to be someone’s dream girl can turn you into a real nightmare.”
As It Lays also draws on experiences and personal realizations from Sorenson’s own life. “‘Save My Life’ came out of a conversation with my friend and co-writer Kaycie Satterfield about the expectations of womanhood. We talked about how society puts women into categories that are reflected on the screen. As little girls we were often asked about who our favorite Disney princesses were, and realized the answer to that question informed the kind of women we hoped to become. As we got older we realized that pornography also informed how people viewed women and how they were expected to look and behave. The ways women are portrayed are often contradictory to one another and entirely unrealistic. ‘Save My Life’ was about letting go of those images and expectations and laughing at how unachievable they are for real women.”
On As It Lays, The Love-In strives to dismantle social narratives and expose them for what they truly are—destructive and dangerous.
All things on The Love-In can be found at https://thelovein.band
