THE WAY FORWARD … IS RETRO POP
NEW YORK five-piece Lucius are earning rave reviews and a growing following for their blend of 60s pop, classic soul and rocked-up country. They sometimes seem like across between a Motown girl group and an indie band as Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig sing their hearts out and male musicians laconically bash their rhythm guitar (Peter Lalish), lead guitar (Andrew Burri) and drums (Dan Molad) behind them. Imagine the Shangri-Las backed by the Strokes. Their music has also been compared to the epic rock of Arcade Fire and the sweet harmonies of Haim, those three Jewish sisters from LA whose 2013 debut album reached number one in the UK.
The band’s two Jewish members— Wolfe and Molad — just happen to be married, which could make for a combustible but highly commercial mix. Just ask Fleetwood Mac, another male-female outfit whose members were romantically linked and whose various break-ups fed into the recording of Rumours, one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.
At the moment, though, they are very much together, indeed literally, with Wolfe, Molad and their three bandmates squeezed on to a tiny stage in a venue in south London where the fast-rising group have been invited to perform for a tough industry-only crowd to promote their debut album, Wildewoman. The girls are wearing matching platinum blonde wigs, mini dresses, black capes, tights with one black leg and one white, and silver stacked glam heels. You would think they had escaped from camp early-70s sci-fi TV series UFO. Meanwhile, the three male instrumentalists sport a uniform of blue-and-white hooped shirts, black trousers and dark facial fuzz.
It’s all very stylised and aesthetically correct, although at the end of the gig Lucius drop their Brooklyn cool, step down from the stage and, in the middle of thevenue,playtwotunes,acappellaandunplugged, surrounded by a gawping, thoroughly mesmerised audience. It’s like one big campfire singalong.
The JC had been warned that although happy to be interviewed, Wolfe wouldn’t discuss religion. “She has nothing to say about being Jewish,” we were told by her team. Turns out she is voluble on the subject.
“My mother was born in Romania — her surname before she married my dad was Rabinovich — and her father moved the family to Israel when she was 11 to escape Ceausescu,” she explains, taking a seat backstage and shouting over the noise of the PA, which is playing loud throbbing dance music. “Then he won a car in the lottery and because my mum’s sister had already moved to LA, he gave her the car and she used the money for a plane ticket to the US.”
Wolfe’s upbringing was sufficiently Jewish that she had a batmitzvah, but these days it is the cultural side of things that she carries with her. “I don’t go to temple much anymore or ‘practise’,” she admits. “But because my mother grew up in Israel and my husband’s parents are both full-on Israeli and very Jewish, it means I identify very strongly with the religion. I’m Jew-‘ish’.”
Were her parents pleased when she announced that she was marrying “in”? “Yes, it was important to them. It’s one less thing to think about. When you can understand that tradition, it’s just easier.”
Would she insist on a Jewish upbringing for her children, were she and Molad to become parents? “There would be no way around not bringing them
up culturally Jewish. It’s just in us, especially having Israeli parents and relatives. I would want them to experience the same traditions I did. I have such good memories of sitting around the Passover table on Seder night and finding the afikoman.”
Wolfe and Molad live in Ditmas Park — near Ocean Parkway and between Flatbush and Midwood — a heavily frum area. Think Golders Green multiplied by Stamford Hill.
“It goes from Chasid to modern Orthodox, a whole long row of religious Jews,” she marvels. “It’s like being in Amish territory.”
Wolfe grew up “a lonely kid” in Los Angeles where the Haim girls were “friends of friends of friends”. But she was part of a huge Jewish community, particularly at the LA County High School for the Arts that she attended, where she remembers 65-70 per cent of students being of the faith.
“I felt I blossomed there because for the first time I met other musical people like me,” she says laughing because the music in the background has suddenly gone all soft and romantic to match her now poignant backstory. It was only when she went, aged 18, to the Berklee College of Music in Boston (famous alumni: Quincy Jones and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen) that she met people who had never before encountered members of such an exotic sect. “In fact,” she recalls, still surprised, “Peter [Lalish] told Dan he was the first Jew he’d ever met!”
It was at Berklee that she met her other soul mate, Laessig, like her a fan of gospel and original R&B as well as the likes of Björk and Bowie for their “strong visual aesthetic”. On a whim they decided to re-record the whole of the Beatles’ White Album. They only got as far as Happiness Is A Warm Gun, because by then they had already begun writing their own songs. They have since written music for TV adverts for Nissan, Sears and Mercedes. It was their voices, together with that of actor Willem Dafoe, that were broadcast in an advert during the US finale of award-winning crime drama Breaking Bad. They also penned the 11 songs for Wildewoman, a collection every bit as polished and fulsomely melodic as Haim’s Days Are Gone.
What’s it like being in a band with her best friends? “We disagree for sure,” she replies. “And we all have different ways of doing things. We know when each needs space.” How about being around her other half 24/7?
“I can’t imagine doing it with anybody else,” she says of life on the road with Molad. Do they bring their domestics into the studio and on to the stage? “No, we don’t. There’s so much respect. I can’t say it’s not hard sometimes because you’re spending every waking moment with that person. But you also get to share all the happy, momentous things that are happening.”
So he’s never come at her wielding a drumstick? “No,” she says with an indulgent smile. “Definitely not. He couldn’t hurt a fly.”
Finally, what next for Lucius? Global domination? They certainly seem to be on their way. Wolfe warms to the idea and offers her most Jewish phrase. “From your mouth to God’s ears.” Lucius play at Oslo in Hackney on April 16. Wildewoman is released in May