Lakin

Photography by: Chase Gray

Seven years of processing and internal evaluating have been embedded into singer/songwriter Lakin’s latest album release, Silent Conversations. Here, she uses lyricism, poetry, and musical tonality to address topics she’s been reluctant to speak out on for years. 

After the release of If Night Turns to Daylight, her sophomore album released in 2013, Lakin found herself facing the inevitable truths that began to surface in her life. She says, “To me, I feel like what was very present in my life at the time I released that album and before that album, was all these things about myself that either I was ignoring, that other people didn’t know, or that I wasn’t willing to face.”

In 2014, Lakin struggled with an internal conflict between spirituality and sexuality. She found herself having to choose between the god she was raised to believe and the newly found love of her life. The album Silent Conversations became a way of processing and expressing the turmoil she experienced while battling this predicament.

Lakin states, “When I was going through what I wanted to name this album, the reason why I came back to this idea of Silent Conversations, on top of the fact that it just sounds cool as a phrase, is the time period before this album.”

She continues, “2014 was actually the time that I had left the church that I was at before, or rather, they forced me to leave the church. That's when everything started to crumble… I was like okay, I need to put a pause on this and really figure out what songs I want to put on the next record to make a statement.”

At first, Lakin planned to release a simple EP instead of this full album. She even started a fundraiser to support its creation back in 2014. However, after taking a class for aspiring independent artists with Cari Cole, a celebrity vocal coach and artist development expert, Lakin started to realize this next music release could be so much more than a group of songs. 

“One of the things that really stuck out from that class that she talked about was this idea that you should always write about things that scare you… I think I kind of kept that in my mind when I was choosing the songs for this album,” Lakin says. 

After a closer examination of what she was able to produce, Lakin realized she had much more to offer than just a simple EP. “What I quickly realized was that I had this book of songs that went past four or five songs and it just seemed to speak a little more specifically to the time period I was in and what I was processing through,” she says. 

Each track on this album is a different story or idea that was carefully woven together to embody the idea of silent conversations. For example, the song Silent Conversations revolves around a past relationship of Lakin’s. The relationship got to a point where what little was being said lacked substance. It was as if what needed to be said was sugar-coated and overlooked by small talk. 

Lakin says, “I feel like everybody has had these moments where it’s kind of like the elephant in the room. It’s like you are talking in a way that you are trying to keep things normal, but you know that nothing significant is really being said because there is this whole subtext of what’s really going on,”. She continues, “The song kind of plays on this whole paradox of having this conversation that’s not being said.” 

One of Lakin’s favorite tracks, as well as one of the most poetic on the album, Flattering Affliction, speaks to a similar idea. However, this song intertwines reality and emotions she felt when facing the truths that finally began to surface. She says, “(Flattering Affictions) has this kind of paradoxical message that kind of paints these layers of what’s happening and how you are feeling and how those two interact.” 

The song itself is summed up by the portion of the song Lakin loves the most; the bridge. The lyrics read:

 “While you’re forgetting me I’m still trying to remember. Bittersweet contains us like a fire in the winter. Everything that’s worth it hurts some of the time.”

“That last line is kind of like a subtext or subtheme to the album as a whole,” she says. 

Another one of Lakin’s favorites is a track called A Mi Lado, or By My Side. It is a bright, bilingual song Lakin began writing one evening in her car. She can recall the memory vividly: 

“I think it was like mid October and it was the very first time I had been to the Boston/New England area in the fall...I’m born and raised in Southern California, so we don’t really have seasons here...I remember I was in the car going to a friend's place that I was staying at straight from the airport… It was four something in the afternoon and I was driving down the freeway and all of a sudden I get out of the city and I’m driving more into the suburbs and I’m just looking around at all these trees just speckled with all these golden colors of the fall...What I felt in that moment was a sense of serenity. It was just so stellar that I immediately was inspired and heard this melody in my head that sounded to me like what I was seeing, if that makes sense,” she says.

In awe of the sight in front of her, Lakin took out her phone and began singing the melody that came to her in the moment. You can hear that melody as the lead guitar part in the track A Mi Lado. 

Photography by: Chase Gray

The very last track on the album, See You Through, wraps up the idea of silent conversations as well as relays a message everyone in one way or another can relate to. “See You Through is basically the idea that everybody wants to belong somewhere. Everybody wants people to belong to and just to be loved and accepted for who they are,” Lakin says. 

Through the time period of seven years, Lakin has been able to rediscover who she is spiritually and romantically. After marrying the love of her life and disconnecting with the church she had associated with all of her life, Lakin took to songwriting and music producing as a way of evaluating her emotions and coming to terms with her true self. Listening to the album Silent Conversations is synonymous with walking with Lakin through her personal self-reflection. At the end of that journey, as well as the end of the album, there is one truth that can be taken away and heard. 

Lakin says, “The very last lyric of the song is: I don’t know how it is but I know we’re all searching for love to see us for who we are truly and see us through to who we could be. So it kind of ends on that note of I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think this is what could happen and this is what we should hope for.”

She continues, “That’s what I hope people get out of the album; that sense of solidarity and that sense of yeah we are all right there. Everybody goes through those things and everybody has these moments and they’re not always good, but you can only hope that they get better and that you have people around you that will see you through these hard times and see you through better times.” 

Be sure to check out the album Silent Conversations as well as Lakins website, Lakinmusic.com. There, you will find out more information on her life journey and upcoming projects such as The Collective Forgotten; where she is working on highlighting the stories of marginalized groups society tends to overlook. 

Original Article Found at: http://www.unclearmag.com