PHOTO CREDIT: Delaram Pourabdi
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE AU REVIEW, MAY 2018
Do you remember the last time you bought a CD or a vinyl record you were hangingout for? That sound of the plastic peeling off, that first time you thumb through the album booklet? We lost a lot of that with the digital age – unavoidable – but it’s a feeling of connection with music that a lot of us still chase today. Theresa Wayman is one of those people. With the creation and release of her debut solo record LoveLawsas TT, Wayman has reached an apex of her personal musical journey.
“I commend you for being a person that likes to listen to albums and have that perspective,” she says. “Not everybody does, so it’s really good. As an artist, I do feel a little bit like I’m on an assembly line. I’m doing the things that we all do to promote the album; I’m here talking to you and tomorrow its the next person…it’s just content, content, content and that’s what everybody expects. It can sometimes take the beauty out of the whole thing, so that’s really nice to hear.”
“In a way, it’s made me wanna go deeper into making art,” she adds. “That environment makes me wanna go home and just make things and express my feelings. Go to the root of what’s behind making music for me, which is figuring out my life and my emotions and who I am.”
Out just ahead of the weekend, LoveLaws is a personal look at a creative navigating emotional terrain, allowing vulnerabilities to shine through quite beautifully and honestly.
“I just can’t believe it.” she says of the final product. “I finished it and it’s here and it’s happening. It’s very fulfilling; it’s one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done.”
“It began when I was daydreaming about making music like this when I was a teenager,” Wayman says of LoveLaws‘ origins. “Through Warpaint, I’ve gotten to be able to get some of that out, but it’s not always quite the same process since we do other things. Then I started learning how to use Logic and drum machines in Logic – that was eight years ago. I started making some of these loops and song; “The Dream” started seven years ago. It’s changed a lot and I expanded on it, took it out of the computer with my brother and actually made the album out of that. As far as when the idea started, it was so long ago.”
Going from the band dynamic Warpaint operates within, to working largely on her own, Wayman opens up about how her work changed as a result, and how outside influences took their form.
“I was afraid I was going to be in a situation where I didn’t know how to communicate the control that I wanted to have over the project,” she admits. “I was working with my brother [though], he’s family and it was maybe a bit easier to get to a place of collaboration.”
“I definitely got caught up in not knowing sometimes what to do and then throwing things on and still feeling like those things weren’t right,” Wayman says, reflecting on her creative process. “Deciding on what to gestate; that gestation was crucial for the process, because I don’t always get that much time to make things right when making an album. Usually I’m up against time and money and with this, I didn’t have that pressure. I did get to set things aside and wait to see how I felt about them later; if they had a longer shelf life then I knew it was right. That’s a very luxurious process.”
“It’s been really nice and necessary, because when you are part of a band for so long, you don’t really know who you are sometimes anymore. It’s so great to be able to explore and have fun and learn about your process.”
LoveLaws, though a cathartic process for Wayman in some ways, wasn’t without its challenges. Overcoming these challenges and bringing music to life in a way that struck out from the rather guitar-heavy roots her work with Warpaint is largely known for, led Wayman to write music that she’s still loving re-discovering even know, considerable time after the writing process had been completed.
“”The Dream”, I was saying before that that was one of the first songs I wrote,” she remembers. “I wasn’t happy with the original melody I had for it; it took me a while to find how to change it because it had been so embedded in there for years. It took some real effort to reimagine it but I really, really love how it came out. I was finally able to let go of the etching that was the original melody and have a clean slate; everything happened there right at the end. It was the last thing I did before I finished, so I love listening to that because it’s still kind of new to me. Then there are other songs like “Too Sweet” and “Take One”; they still feel great to me every time I hear them which is amazing to me, because I don’t always feel that.”