Meet your new indie-pop obsession! Girlhouse is back with her newest single “happy now”.
I am still smitten by the grunge guitar, conversational vocals, and blunt authenticity that comes with girlhouse. This track moves from her recent “the girlhouse ep” and develops into this fresh and captivating indie-rock side of this pseudo surf rock. Her voice is rich and passionate and pairs so fantastically with this early 2000’s sounding guitar. I think this is the track to add to my sunset drives playlist and I fully plan on blasting this through the end of summer.
Speaking about the new song, she said, “Happy now started as an angry poem towards someone in my life that was really emotionally challenging to me, but as we started producing it and I started looking at the lyrics from a different perspective, I realized I was projecting everything I hated about myself towards this other person. Happy now is my heart, gladiator screaming “are you not entertained?!” to my body after doing all the things and following all the people that should, in theory, make me happy but in the end left me feeling empty.”
If you like girlhouse, well you are in luck! Alongside news of her latest single, girlhouse has also announced a string of live shows, supporting The Snuts on their highly-anticipated US tour and Coach Party when they embark on a UK stint later this year. See the full list of live shows below:
Tour Dates:
July 28 - Neenah, WI - Bazaar After Dark Festival
July 30 - Chicago, IL - SCHUBAS LOLLAPALOOZA AFTERSHOW: Supporting THE BACKSEAT LOVERS
Sept 30 - Nashville, TN - The Basement - Headlining Show
US Dates Supporting The Snuts:
Tue/Oct 5, 2021 Baltimore, MD Metro Gallery
Wed/Oct 6, 2021 Philadelphia, PA Underground Arts
Fri/Oct 8, 2021 New York, NY Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sat/Oct 9, 2021 Cambridge, MA The Sinclair (late show)
Wed/Oct 13, 2021 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
Thu/Oct 14, 2021 San Francisco, CA The Independent
UK Tour Dates supporting Coach Party:
20th Oct - St Albans
21st Oct - Bristol
22nd Oct - Brighton
23rd Oct - Ipswich
26th Oct - Oxford
27th Oct - Guildford
28th Oct - London
29th Oct - Amsterdam - London Calling Festival
Ever since she was a teenager, girlhouse’s Lauren Luiz has always felt the pull to try and experience new things. Growing up in the city of Portland, a place of polar opposites with the very liberal on one side to those wielding confederate flags on the other, she first began to make her mark as an actress in her early twenties. Appearing in shows like the NBC hit series Grimm, she felt like her career wasn’t really going to fully begin unless she moved to the heart of the action, Los Angeles.
Driven by her first serious breakup, she migrated to LA in 2013 to pursue her acting career, where she got her first big break in a production of Spring Awakening. The production was all through sign language and half of the cast was deaf, so it gave her a truly unique experience and taught her to sign. The show took her to Broadway, New York, saw her perform for President Barack Obama at The White House, as well as appearing on The Seth Meyers Show. And while her music had yet to come to the forefront of her creative spirit, it was this pursuit of an acting dream that led her to the places and people she would come to build her music career around.
She first moved in with a friend she had met while attending the Old Vic School in Bristol, and began to work at the Diesel Jean store at the city’s Beverly Centre mall. It was here that she met her future band mate/producer Tyler Thompson, who was working at the Sony Store at the time. The two had an instant creative connection and stayed firmly in touch when Lauren had to uproot to New York for her production. But once that show ended, she returned to LA and the pair formed their first musical venture WILD together with another band mate.
Together, WILD became a huge force on the US folk-pop scene. They went onto release a handful of singles and an album that garnered them more than 50 million streams, a slot at SXSW, and sync deals with the likes of Mazda, Switch, and Pixar, it felt like they have found a special connection that they could build something truly special around. But while WILD was still going strong, Lauren had spent the entire time writing music for herself, something different to what the band had been producing so far and so began to explore a new aesthetic.
This was the formation of girlhouse, a solo project that Lauren felt was more in keeping with how she was as an artist and gave her a creative outlet to drive her own passions. But her connection with Tyler had become so tight over the years, she felt that he was the only one to help her realise her dream and so became the producer for her debut EP ‘the girlhouse EP’.
Inspired heavily by the works of fellow female singer-songwriters such as Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, and Lucy Dacus, ‘the girlhouse EP’ was written during a turbulent time for Lauren. Growing weary of the LA scene and what it had to offer, the collection became a break up letter to the city she once so badly wanted to be a part of. Combining personal stories of family and friends, she felt that although the music was the start of something new, it also meant a halt for her acting and life in LA as well, resulting in a wonderfully heartfelt introduction to her work.
girlhouse now feels like the most confident and fulfilling direction she has taken so far. Now living in Nashville, her personal life still continues to inspire and influence her music, offering us all a window into her soul and creating a bright and sweeping world for us all to enjoy.
Review by Hannah Schneider