Aimee Lay Video Premiere + Interview

Remove has the great honor of premiering Aimee Lay's trippy new video 'The Other Side of You'.  We also had the lucky opportunity to chat with the West Coast songwriter in order to learn more about her influences, quarantine activity, and releases.  We also got the scoop on Lay's last release The Other Side of You, an album chock-full of psych-pop perfection. There's a mysterious vibe to these songs that begs for close listening and careful attention. We have faith that if you dig the sun-washed sounds of yesteryear, you'll fall in love with her music.

"This video of the revisioned version of “The Other Side Of You” was newly inspired by the pandemic, lockdowns, collective grief, and current insanity-inducing war against truth, fight for social injustice, political and ideological divide... as well as Remove Records in Detroit, MI for recently discovering my album during the pandemic and contacting me to do an interview about it :) The original was recorded before ever playing it live and when we started to play it live my brother Al Lay came up with a bass line for it that I deeply regretted was not on the original. So I recorded Al playing the bass line sometime last year and then when the lockdown started, I messed around and decided to try to record myself playing drums to it. I also cranked the levels on the original super eerie atmospheric wah and pog feedback guitar played by my longtime friend Clifton Weaver. Mickey Wolf later helped me to finalize the concept of the video and added his creative interpretation.  It was originally written about trying to understand someone close to me who was experiencing psychosis and who “lost their mind” and grip on "reality". But it's also somewhat about my own inner madness at times trying to find my way in this world with all the loss and struggle for a search for meaning within it all and the terror that comes when coming face to face with that "shadow" side of both our own psyche as well as another’s. It later dawned on me that this song echoed the current state of this country’s near civil war moment, polarizations throughout the world, the collective experience of lunacy and intense introspection induced by the lockdowns, and ultimately our maddening inability to somehow understand or even tolerate the opposing point of view of a certain person or group, culture, party or religion, etc ... yet how on either the macro or the micro level, it ultimately always does boil down to or stem from interpersonal relationships in the end. So i felt this song was relevant in a whole new way, giving me a reason to finally release what i feel is a much better, fully realized version than the original released on Respectful Lust Records & Lolipop Records"

- Aimee Lay

Now read on to our interview:

Hello! Please introduce yourself.

Well, my name is Aimee Lay and I’m a songwriter/musician based out of Los Angeles, California. I’ve been living in Echo Park for a while now but grew up in the coastal South Bay area of Los Angeles.

Who are some of your songwriting heroes? 

I’ve always been predominantly drawn to music from the 60s & 70s for some reason, ever since I can remember. All genres during that time period really resonate with me and feel more pure, raw, genuine and innocent than much of what has come after, but I’m not a total purist or elitist per se either and certainly love all kinds of music. But more specifically, The Beatles to the core, the Stones, the Small Faces, Ronnie Lane, the Kinks, the Who, Velvet Underground, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Love, Motown, Stax, girl groups, the Jam, Paul Weller, PJ Harvey, the Clash. I know they’re not all exactly the most underground, cult status of bands, but these are some of the foundational ones for me. And then just through osmosis and in more indirect ways, a lot more subculture, garage or experimental bands.  Also being from the South Bay, all the SST bands were just simply part of the soundtrack. Oddly enough as well, I’ve realized that I’m lyrically very much influenced by writers like Hermann Hesse, psychologists, metaphysics thinkers, philosophers, such as J. Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Fritz Perls, Ram Dass, and a lot of the 60s counter culturists. I think that’s where the moodier, psychedelic influence comes from for me.

How did you get started with music?

It’s a bit complicated ;) My Uncle Don used to play the piano every holiday and he was magical. He tragically just passed away from covid in April, and as a consequence of the deep reflecting that it caused, I now fully realize that it was from watching him that I sensed early on what the power of playing music was and how it could greatly serve to elevate and transcend an experience like no other and bring people together in the purest, most innocent, disarming way. So I asked my parents for a piano and started taking lessons when I was 5. I only took lessons for a couple years though and sorta dropped it, later played clarinet in grammar school and junior high. I didn’t wanna be a band geek, haha, so dropped out in high school. So I was always incredibly into music, but my older brother, Al, was the one who started playing guitar and bass first and who joined bands when he was 15 as well as writing songs and recording them early on. I really looked up to him and would play the occasional shaker if he asked! Believe it or not, as a result of growing up in a beach town, I was a total sports chic, beach babe, volleyball player, haha, and then everything came crashing down in a traumatic way during the summer before my junior year of high school when I was poised to be the starting setter on the varsity team for the upcoming year. I missed one practice during summer vacation because I’d gone to a rock show the night before and failed to lie to my coach about it… my dad had somehow convinced me to tell her the truth. He was over trustingly coming from a flower powerpoint of view thinking she would respect and appreciate the honesty somehow. Well, my coach turned out to be a narcissistic, power playing ***** and instead kicked me off the team. I had to find a new identity. I managed to join the coolest band in school at the time as a backing singer that same year, befriended some punks, mods, rudeboys and girls, goths, grungers, signed up for guitar class, bought a Vespa, began to identify myself as a mod, and tried to never look back…

Your record The Other Side of You is such a gem. How did the album come together?

Thank you so much for saying that! Where to start. It was initially just an e.p. A guy named Michel from Beyond Your Mind Records based in Germany found it, contacted me, and wanted to release it on vinyl. He had also heard my previous e.p. entitled “Suncatcher” and asked if we could combine the two. I hadn’t done much at all with “Suncatcher” and was surprised he even found it somewhere. The problem was that they had been recorded quite differently and I strongly felt that the songs simply did not sound cohesive thematically, etc... So I began to really work on tying in all of the songs production wise, mood wise, to give them a similar vibe sonically.  Ironically, his wife’s father died suddenly of a heart attack not long before I completed the album, and he was unable to put it out. I was pretty devastated honestly, but am now grateful to him for forcing me to re-work those songs and make them sound way better.  It wasn’t until a bit later that I got around to showing the record to my longtime close friend and bandmate Curt Barlage and he really got behind it and believed in it and asked to release it on his new label Respectful Lust Records and then soon after Iggy from Lolipop Records asked to put it out on cassette. 

What was your goal with the album? It's so ambitious and meticulously crafted.

Once again, thank you so much for saying that! I wanted to make something I would have little to no regrets about. Really be true to myself, write about the way I’ve experienced the world in my own distinct way, find a way to be as fully expressed as I’d ever been so I could really step back and be as proud as I possibly could by knowing that I gave it my all for better or for worse! haha!  In the past, I’d often recorded with other people, which no matter how cool, can sometimes lead to compromises, however small or large. I had found that the recordings in which I’d felt the most fully self expressed in the past, were the ones when I had the basic tracks or at least drums recorded with someone (often my brother), and then I was able to record the rest of the parts myself in my own time and privacy. And then from that point, I’d ask someone to step in (again usually my brother) and have them help with any final production input and then with the mixing, etc. I suppose the thing is that I hear a lot of different parts, production wise, sense a perfect feeling or vibe, and it’s fun to try out a ton of different ideas without having to drag or involve anyone else through my search for the perfect sound or idea or whatever or have to feel self conscious in the middle of it all and second guess myself. And if I try something and it turns out to be lame, I don’t have to explain it to anyone else or have them witness me being a neurotic nut!  haha!  So that’s exactly how the album was recorded.

Was there any guiding influences for you while writing the record?

Well, during the time I was writing and recording everything, my father had been struggling with a complex, mysterious illness during the last few years of his life that really haunted me and my family… just as I was simultaneously going through the most significant breakup of my life. So between those things, I suppose I was really searching for the meaning of it all and trying to make sense of life. I felt almost like I was balancing on this edge, on the verge of having my very own Madcap Laughs, Syd Barrett moment! But then again, that’s also just sort of me in general anyway on any given day it seems! haha.  I heard someone mention a term, “hell in the hallway”, when you find yourself stuck in a transition from one phase (room) to another phase (room) of your life… I guess I was in a sort of major, big time hell in the hallway… still sort of am. But here we are all over again with the frick’n pandemic right?! Palpable grief, a total breakdown of everything we’ve ever known to date, immense fear of the unknown in almost every respect, a questioning of so, so many things. But at least this time it’s a totally collective experience. As one of my really good friend who’s suffered quite a bit from depression told me recently regarding covid, “at least now the entire world has been brought down to my level”! haha

  

Any interesting stories behind any of the songs?

Well, it’s all sorts of things I suppose.  Some heavy, some light.  I tend to write most when I’m in a moodier, hyper reflective, introspective space. But “Psychedelic Morning” was written after I came back from a trip to Europe and felt really alive and reborn and clear, almost as if I’d taken a psychedelic trip and come back with insights never before seen or felt. “Black Thoughts” was written in a similar vein, feeling great relief from a long depression. But then the title track is about my closest friend losing her mind from taking meth and being in a full-blown psychosis for nearly an entire year, not knowing if she’d ever return to her former self again. Plus I’d had a few other close experiences with people deeply suffering from mental illness and even committing suicide during that time. So it sort of warped my perception of reality and everything felt so heavy and tragic. “On The Run” is ironically about my longtime drummer, Erik, who’d stopped playing with me for a brief time and I was clearly devastated! haha. Many are about relationships, perceived soul connections, bonds, intuitive sensings about the inner workings of people.  The rest are just me trying to explore and cope with everything in between! haha