Laura Stevenson

“Music is a resource we can tap into to heal ourselves,” Laura Stevenson says. She’s talking about her studies in a music therapy graduate program, but her explanation parallels the overarching message of her sixth full-length album Late Great — a record that finds Stevenson excavating the messy emotions of heartbreak for the very first time. “When I started this new career path a few years ago, I kind of quieted my own healing relationship to music, just because I honestly didn’t have time, but this record was me getting back to it. This was me processing, and reconnecting with that part of myself and it carried me through.”

In the four years since her self-titled album was released, Laura’s entire life has been upended by pandemic-era motherhood, a painful split, and navigating new loves. Her new album is about letting go, taking charge, and learning to rebuild from the deepest layers of your being: “It’s a document of loss for sure, but it also kind of draws the map of this exciting precipice that I’m standing on. I am making my own life now. With the record, with everything, this is the first time I get to call all the shots.”

Late Great is Stevenson’s first album to be released on life-long friend and collaborator Jeff Rosenstock’s Really Records. “Laura has always had this supernatural ability to write these abstract lyrics that cut straight to your heart,” says Rosenstock, “but the feeling of perpetual heartbreak on this record is more pointed, universal and vulnerable than anything she's ever done before and it hits so hard.”

Late Great was produced and mixed by John Agnello, with the live band tracking at The Building in Marlboro, NY - an old church that used to be a pay-what-you can model venue, a suitable space for an artist with DIY punk roots. “It’s where I recorded the last one when I was about 5 months pregnant,” she recalled, “the first time I felt the baby kick, I was sitting on the couch in the control room listening back to some vocal takes.” This was a comfortable place to capture the energy of a full band, and afterwards Stevenson had several months to revamp the songs at home. “I added a million guitars,” recalls Stevenson, “I taught myself how to play the bass and made an orchestra of basses. I added percussion, synthesizers. I made it into something I really love. Poor John had to mix in like, 50 additional tracks per song.”

Late Great also features old friends and heavy hitters - Sammi Niss (Laura’s longtime drummer, who also plays in Real Estate), James Richardson (on bass and guitars), Shawn Alpay (cello), Kayleigh Goldsworthy (strings), Chris Farren (of Chris Farren) on synths, Kelly Pratt (of Beirut, Arcade Fire, Father John Misty on horns), Mike Brenner (of Magnolia Electric Company/Songs Ohia on pedal steel) and Jeff Rosenstock (piano, guitar, saxophone and arrangements.)

The result is a big, smoldering sound that makes you want to roll down your car windows and let the wind whip away your woes. “Honey” draws influences from Dolly Parton and Townes Van Zandt, but it builds into a shoegaze dreamscape of sparkly guitars and stacked vocals. “In my mix notes I just said ‘I want it to sound like 1,000 angels screaming and crying,’” Stevenson laughed.

“Not Us” shares the heartbreaking story of a couple watching others breaking up around them, only to face the impossible reality that their union was the next to crack. Later, on “Middle Love,” Laura offers the image of two drivers’ licenses sitting together on a notary’s desk as a couple separates: “A click of a pen, and the stroke of a hand, and there’s no longer you and me.”

“I Couldn’t Sleep” tackles the nervous energy of opening yourself up again to someone else and being somehow relieved that the experience wasn't what you built it up to be, while “Short and Sweet” captures the complications of being swept into a new relationship, as deceptively light as a balloon on a string: “Don’t tie it too tight / Don’t tie it at all / I cannot lose what I never had / I never knew I wanted that.”

In addition to working as a musician, Laura takes music therapy night classes, is completing 1,500 internship hours, and is raising a small daughter with a big personality. “She loves princess shit, but she also loves Black Sabbath - pretty stuff and evil rock and roll which is kinda perfect and very cool,” Laura says with a laugh. “I wear a lot of different hats, so life is pretty crazy, but I’m hoping I’m gonna look back in a couple of years and say, ‘how the fuck did I do all of that?’”