Shannon Lay :: Past The Veil
Cover Photo: Joanna Grace Babb
Photo: Joanna Grace Babb
Since the release of her 2017 classic “Living Water” on Mare/Woodsist, LA-based singer-songwriter and ceramicist Shannon Lay has been carefully crafting her soothing sounds and fabulous folk for the last decade, with each new release growing closer to that poetic prophecy becoming clearer and more creatively concrete as we circle the sun in observation for inspiration and intense insight into the human experience. Having signed with the legendary label Sub Pop just moments before the painstakingly problematic and psychologically paralyzing pandemic of 2020, Lay kept her harmonious head above that living water by placing one foot in front of the other, but it wasn’t easy. The 2020s haven’t been friendly or justified in more ways than any of us know to comprehend. But individuals like Lay have truly broken through the culture’s creative crust with a sharpened songwriting spear only to reveal that liberating light on the other side of this numbing nightmare. For most of us, music has been a spiritual sanctuary, more so than it already was, while simultaneously communicating as a cultural conduit during these disturbing times. So how are artists remaining motivated and interested in creating work when the odds are increasingly stacking against them? Whether it’s a financial limitation, not having enough Instagram followers to entertain the idea of you, or your band opening for Wilco, or the complicated climate of the industry shifting in a direction that’ll make your head spin like Michael Keaton in 1988’s Beetlejuice, folks like Shannon Lay have found sonic solace in spreading the spirituality of songwriting like a blissful blanket across a spring made bed in the meditation of morning.
Photo: Rob Shelton
“This journey we’re on is a lot, and it can be hard to hang in there sometimes. But the world needs you more than ever; it needs your kindness and your loving heart, it needs your softness and authenticity. And we get there by turning towards the darkness within and embracing it rather than resisting or rejecting it.”
Her latest effort, “Past The Veil,” is pure poetry that spins like a web in the wind, as a sensational storm breaks the seams of the sky open in the distance just before the credits roll, and the complicated clouds overshadow the brilliant blue sky that rests behind it. For most of 2024, Lay and producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist Rob Shelton spent a great deal of 2024 in a “Golden State” studio in real time, carefully constructing the material that would eventually become “Past The Veil”. While battling the critical challenges of the wildfires and the anarchy of our current administration, Lay grabbed those harmonious horns, and embraced the melodic methods and artistic approaches that the songwriter wasn’t too familiar with at the time by trusting this poetic process, which eventually produced a wonderful body of work saturated in optimism, sonic softness, and spiritual solace that, let's be honest, the world needs in endless troves. Featuring tracks like “Whom God Destroys”, the album’s epic ender “I Need More Water”, “Honest Man”, and “Rooms For Less”, Lay is joined by an all-star ensemble of musicians such as Adam Starkopf, Lauren O’Connell, Jojo Faught, Emily Call, and Paul Spring, to name a few, who together help bring to the soft surface a blissful body of cosmic confidence, and victorious visions of a world overcome with priceless peace. This record sincerely reflects off the sonic shards of a metaphysical mirror that has been fixed over and over again, only this time, the carefully constructed collage of glass tells a sophisticated story of love, and lyrical light overcoming an otherwise tragic tale of sobering shadows gracefully inhabiting the planet with a flawless flow, and grace about them. Released on Lay's own label, All The Best just a few days ago, “Past The Veil” is truly a transcendent effort that will stand as one of the songwriter’s strongest signals ever cast into that artistic aether. Only this time, she hopes the music will do more than inspire others; it will transform the psyches of the people and places of our planet for the better.
