1.
Our love is like the morning clouds
Like the morning dew, that goes away
"My goal was to do something that was authentically me, which I hadn’t done before in any way."
Laura Mvula sips a scalding coffee and manages to look graceful perched on a bar stool, surrounded by straws and napkins in Greenpoint’s Uro Café. Leveling her gaze with a stately precision, she's sporting five-inch nude heels while speaking about the Biblical allusions in the above lyrics, which appear in the Psalms and several other places. On her debut release Sing to the Moon, Mvula plays with tensions in secular and sacred culture, shouldering an immense heritage and probing it with a strikingly fresh voice.
She grew up in Birmingham, England as the daughter of an Elder in a Pentecostal church, equally inclined toward musical and spiritual study. Early interviews infamously reference grueling hours of piano practice and she alludes to her dad’s strict tutelage in all things Miles Davis. Then there’s her African-Caribbean heritage alongside a British upbringing and a degree in classical composition—this influx of sounds and cultures simmers to a boiling point in Moon.
Laura muses through longing and fulfillment, consistency and capriciousness, the ephemeral and the eternal, but latches onto those issues with a personal take that feels intimate, even otherworldly. These songs grapple with existential questions wrapped in compositional structures that rarely make their way into the mainstream sonic fold anymore.
"I’m so happy in this album, for me, because it was one of the first tools that enabled me to publicly have this new conversation, and a way of expressing my questions, profound doubts, and fears. That struggle—'Like the Morning Dew' kind of defines the whole album," she said.
I'm so happy in this album, for me, because it was one of the first tools that enabled me to publicly have this new conversation, and a way of expressing my questions, profound doubts, and fears.
The song begins with Mvula’s own voice recorded in twelve part harmony and then tripled—an indication of her ingenuity and thundering determination to be heard. A song about waxing and waning, this track does get at the heart of Moon, the cyclical nature mimicking the cosmic body it’s directed toward. The album continues on in this vein, pop truncated to fit within vocal acrobatics and orchestral abandon, religious-heavy lyrics from a woman who no longer knows exactly what she believes in.
"I don't know where I'm at spiritually, but I'm okay with that,” she admitted. "I grew up in a Christian home, I still feel like I'm growing up in a Christian home," Mvula laughed. "It's my default context. That's how my worldview was shaped. I guess the conversation within myself and with the world and with my relationships is just different now."
For a woman who has taught musical education, directed choirs, participated in musical groups, and even done clerical work for an orchestra, it seems inevitable that Laura finally end up here: in the realm of the divas. Now, a cloud of celebrity has descended, and it seems more than a little unfamiliar to Mvula. In moments, her natural shyness is palpable, at other times, though, passionate responses burst forth, trumpeting her reluctance to get personal about her art.
2.
"I felt like I could have confidence in it because it was honest," she said of the album. "Considering I've always been in music in some way, it was a pretty major thing for me to produce something that I felt liberated producing."
The 26-year-old has been whisked into the fanfare both from the critical acclaim her debut EP She evoked last year, and now, the commercial and crossover success of Moon. She was signed to RCA in May of last year, released her EP in November and was almost immediately shortlisted for the Brits Critics’ Choice award. Laura also finished fourth in the BBC's prestigious Sound of 2013 awards and her full-length debut, released through Columbia, peaked at number nine on the UK charts and served as a bridge to help her gain traction in the U.S. Her reception seems to indicate that there’s plenty of space for sonic exploration despite the modern, commercialized state of music as product.
"I really don't explain my music in words, and it's not out of arrogance. I really don't,” Mvula says steadily. “But really, in terms of defining what it is, I'm wondering whether that's necessary. I'm wondering whether I confuse myself and I confuse other people when I start giving it very specific or general labels."
I really don’t explain my music in words, and it’s not out of arrogance. I really don’t. I’m wondering whether I confuse myself and I confuse other people when I start giving it very specific or general labels.
What is the music that Mvula has made? It doesn’t fit neatly into any genre at all and Moon’s equivocation has certainly become part of the appeal. “Orchestral soul” is the sobriquet that she’ll grudgingly go along with when firmly pressed, but no amount of phrasing seems to sum up the looming compositions contained within this record. Her background at Birmingham Conservatoire has been cited by many, but Laura brushes it off, admitting that she felt out of place there.
"I'm not sure I would even call myself a composer," she said. "Yes and no. Because I didn't necessarily always use the course at the time I was studying. I didn’t maximize all the opportunities I had. In fact, there were quite a few times when I thought about leaving because I didn't feel like it was for me. It was a classical composition course and I was sort of writing these songs. It didn’t feel like an even match."
Music is so much more, I fear that we will become quite narrow.
An examination of the jangling early single "Green Gardens" speaks to this point. The track piqued international interest almost instantly, but it’s no classical composition— although the skeleton is there. It’s a bit of baroque pop drenched in bells, hand claps, and warbled, synthesized vocals—hell, listen closely to find even a killer bassline buried in the mix. The yarny qualities of Laura’s music never feel messy though, more like spinning tops whose centrifugal force lets them fall flat into silence at just the right moment.
"I think it's wonderful that what I'm doing is unique, but I don’t think it's unique full stop," she said. "I don't feel like it should be revolutionary. We all have the capacity for some creativity. Music is so much more, I fear that we will become quite narrow."
3.
After her checkered experience at the Conservatoire, Mvula took a job as a receptionist, answering phones at the offices the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). Despite the menial labor, she couldn’t quite abandon the music world. At the time, too, Mvula’s concerns had turned more personal. A chance meeting through a compulsory choir class in school led to a romance with talented baritone singer, Themba Mvula, who soon after became her husband.
“He stood out and we just became friends at first. We were really friends first. He supported my ideas and seemed to really connect with them, and we both had similar backgrounds and upbringing. His dad was a pastor and my dad was an elder at a Pentecostal church. I think we had similar intrigue,” she said.
Perhaps this partnership is another element that keeps Mvula from succumbing to a lowest common denominator that many women in entertainment sink to—there’s not a trace of sultry pop succubi in her sound or image. In fact, there’s a direct defiance of these structures on songs like “That’s Alright,” a swift backhand to mainstream conceptions of beauty and “Diamonds” which might be best described as a foil to Rihanna’s recent single of the same name. Seeking to infiltrate the sexualized culture of entertainment through a different angle, Mvula sees music as a cultural force, a vehicle for expression and identity.
“Music, in its purest form, I’m discovering more and more, has the power to do incredible things. I’m so thankful to my husband for helping me feel like I have a place in music. And I know his feeling—not that I don’t have thoughts of my own, but I find him an inspiring person to be around—his feeling is that everything has its place and has the capacity to do something.”
It seems telling that after years of staying in the shadows, the backdrop of the stage, that Mvula has found the courage and confidence to stand out after finding a supportive and loving partner. There’s not much emphasis placed on relationships as cocoons for emerging artists, the critical aspect that feeling safe relationally can have on an artistic personality. The way she talks about her husband cements this idea—her eyes light up in a way that is only akin to how speaks on the music itself. If there’s two twin passions in her life, it’s the entwined relationships she shares with music, her husband, and, the rest of her family. It’s impossible to omit that Laura’s backing band contains her sister Dionne Douglas on violin and brother James Douglas on cello (Douglas was her maiden name).
Coming off her first headlining show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom—which sold out—it seems her expansive sound is settling into 2013 with decisiveness. She’s been closing her live set with a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” recently arranged by James, which is the perfect bookend to her own questioning tracks. And as long as she keeps asking why, it doesn’t really seem to matter if the answer is simply, “I like livin’ this way”—the uncertainty is part of the process.
Struggle, spirituality, and self-discovery: these aren’t necessarily the elements that popular culture has glorified, but in Laura’s art they seem luminous, compelling, and perhaps most importantly, human.
