“Good evening, Lost Angeles. Are you feeling this?” singer-songwriter Lily Kershaw sang into her microphone with a sense of cool conviction.
Dizzying and haunting, the Los Angeles native, whose newly-released June EP Lost Angeles captivates, paints a portrait of Los Angeles that is haunting, honest and authentic.
Kershaw continued to sing: “Liquid gold took it’s hold / It took a girl home now you’re cold.”
The song “Party Meds,” one of many standout singles from her EP, is alluring and captivating. With slow and steady beats that pick up with the sound of cool finger-snaps and reverberating synths, Kershaw creates a moody and dark atmosphere with her music. Her voice takes you in as she speaks matter-of-factly, as her songs seem to document her very vulnerable and emotional experiences through sensual beats and lyrics.
She chants: “I’m just a little too late / I’m just a little too late” and then questions the listener: “Do you like your party meds? Do you like your heroes dead?”
As a performer, Kershaw is incredibly lively and kind, despite the very vulnerable and confessional nature of her music. She played a 45-minute set for her EP release show at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles last Thursday, June 14th, and was all smiles. She debuted songs from her new EP and played more stripped-down acoustic fare such as the acoustic-folk friendly “Miss America” and a sultry rendition of “Moon River.”
“Moonlight,” a more upbeat ballad that features lush and quiet drumbeats and rising synths could almost be anthemic as she sings: “We were lying in the moonlight / Everything it felt so right / You used to love to take me home.” The song, which romanticizes the pure and quick feeling of love and connection, is a poignant memorialization of a connection that has long gone.
As she packed the room with her closest friends and family, with good friends and actresses Emma Roberts and Juno Temple in attendance, her excitement and gratitude was greatly felt. She acknowledged her mother and called out friends’ names onstage — and she was extra excited to spot her good friend, actress and director of the stunning stop-motion music video for her single “Another,” Noël Wells (“Master Of None,” “Saturday Night Live,” Mr. Roosevelt).
As a whole, Kershaw is a stunning musician and artist whose Lost Angeles EP “offers an antidote to the long-mythologized Los Angeles glitz” — per her PR at Nettwerk Music Group. Yet, the thing that stood out the most to me about Kershaw’s music was its incredibly disarming ability to make you surrender.
Fifteen seconds into her single “Another,” I was hooked. I was caught in a moment of arrest as she gently calls the listener in a haunting yet candid refrain, “Your lover’s gonna leave you.” The song continues to wash over you in an almost euphoric and downward spiral of heartbreak, as she sings, “So you lose your lover / You’ll take another” — yet, she isn’t one to lose herself easily.
Kershaw offers a catalogue of music that both eases and uplifts, as we surrender to the hypnotizing quality of her music yet take in lyrics that are honest, authentic and somehow revealing of ourselves.
Her newly-released and aptly-titled Lost Angeles EP is available now via Nettwerk Records.
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