Chicago band
Lala Lala is centered around the dark-yet-vulnerable songwriting of Lillie West. West's songs reached a wider audience with her 2018 album The Lamb, a collection of straightforward and intuitive indie rock songs about sobriety, trauma, and recovery. The album brought
Lala Lala to legions of new listeners for the first time, but was preceded by the more lo-fi rawness of West's 2016 self-released debut,
Sleepyhead. Though The Lamb wasn't quite refined,
Sleepyhead presented the project in a far grainier and messier way. In between the two albums, West lost a close friend, experienced a home invasion, and went sober, all of which were reflected on directly in her songs. That direct songwriting perspective highlights just how different things were for West at the time
Lala Lala was starting out.
Sleepyhead's blown-out drums, growling bass lines, and walls of layered vocals all look to '90s grunge as the template for West's lyrics about restlessness and social anxiety. "Dream Song" zips along impatiently, with West rushing lyrics about dreams of a better situation as if she just wants to finish one song so another can start. Boring small-talk conversations and dragging social obligations show up on "Fuck with Your Friends" and "Cool Party but Then We All Left," the latter cloaking a tender interplay between drifting guitar and dissatisfied vocals in dreamy reverb. The short album lasts less than half an hour, wandering between solo songs like "Bully" and full-band explosions like the stand-out "Nothing." Hooky and uncluttered pop songs married to painfully intimate lyrical narratives drew many fans to The Lamb, and
Sleepyhead is as strong of a statement as The Lamb's more subdued updates to its uncooked beginnings. Listeners intrigued by riskier production and the happy accidents of lo-fi recording might even prefer the scattered and sometimes unhinged sounds. ~ Fred Thomas