Artist Spotlight: LOONY

LOONY has just released her long awaited EP ‘soft thing’, a jazz tinged R&B masterpiece teeming with emotional depth and delicate intricacies. 

The Canadian alternative R&B soulstress is among the most exciting artists from the burgeoning Toronto scene, impressing listeners with her buttery, smooth sonic palettes and retrospective, vivid narratives. The new EP follows 2020’s ‘JOYRiDE’, and sees LOONY at her expressive and gaudy best, offering a full circle narrative tale of a relationship. Alongside her production team, Adam Pondang and Akeel Henry, LOONY has created one of the best R&B projects of the year so far, immersed with colour and life, with enough vulnerability to feel intrinsically human. 

I chatted with LOONY about using music as a cathartic release, the lively Toronto scene, and the themes behind her excellent new EP.   

Good to have you back on the Pit! We had you on the show last summer.

Good to be back!

How has the last year treated you? 

It’s been tough. I think it’s been tough for everyone. I have a lot to be grateful for, I haven’t been sick and no one close to me has been sick so it’s really been a blessing in that way, but career wise and mental health wise it’s been tough to be so shut in. There was a bunch of travel plans I had for shows, even in the UK, before this all happened so it was obviously super disappointing but I tried to think of it as a chance to regroup and get ready for when things open back up. I’m trying to look at it from a positive angle.

Yeah, it’s definitely good to be optimistic about it. Good time to get stuff written as well. 

Yeah, well I spent the last year writing and recording this new project so that’s been a good use of my time so I’m happy I had the chance to do that. 

I know in the past you’ve said that music is a cathartic release for you. In what ways does music help you cope in difficult times?

Writing and singing are the two things that I just naturally do. Even when I’m sad, if I end up singing I just feel better in my body. I can just understand my feelings better by writing them. I’m much better at writing than I am at speaking to someone so I think the combo of those two things with music has been extremely cathartic, and it feels like one of the main ways I can properly express myself and sort through some of my feelings. Sometimes if I make something that someone else can relate to then it feels rounded out and finished and that feels really good. 

So it’s almost an easier way of communication?

Yeah! I read something recently that said an artist has a simultaneous urge to hide but communicate at the same time and I was like woah that’s actually exactly what it is, I want to hide so I think about what it is I’m feeling, make something and do this whole incubation thing but I want someone to hear it and be able to react to it as well. 

Interesting! Who have you been listening to lately? 

Whilst I’ve been trying to wrap up the project I haven’t listened to anything except my own mixes because I don’t want to be influenced and change direction! But since the project has sort of finished, I really got into the ‘Dinner Party’ EP, and I’m so late! It was released like a year ago but I’ve just totally been in my own world and I heard for the first time ‘Freeze Tag’ and it’s just the best song. There was a little while where I was forgetting how much I love music, but this just jumped out to me. Then I just started devouring the whole EP. I also started listening to a bunch of jazz playlists. One of my favourite songs right now is ‘Roy’ by Ambrose Akinmusire. I’ve had that on repeat. 

Since you last appeared on the show, how do you feel that your craft has improved? 

I think I’ve just been forced to do it more often than I would have otherwise. It’s been a combination of having no choice because I’ve been stuck at home and I gotta create something, and also me pushing myself to write more. Even the creation of this last project was longer, intense writing camps with me and my two producers. It’s been a more intensive period, which I think has benefitted me and I’ve been able to realise weak points in my writing or things I repeat a lot. I’ve been able to break down what it is I’m doing and think more about new ways of doing it. It’s allowed me to focus and hone in on the writing. 

With the weak points then, you’ve been able to spot them and work on them and improve them?

Yeah, it’s given me a lot of time to think about what I’ve been doing. Sometimes maybe overthink, then realise what’s worth crafting a little differently and what’s worth leaving. 

In the interview last year you spoke in depth about the Toronto scene and how it’s quite lively right now, and from my understanding it’s come on even further than a year ago. Where do you see the Toronto scene in the wide scope of music?

It’s undeniable that there is just much talent coming out of here. I think initially people thought that Toronto only had one sound because it got popularised and carved out by some of the biggest artists in the world currently. But Toronto has a lot more to offer than just those certain sounds, there are so many different combinations of sound coming from Toronto that have helped establish how important the city is when it comes to creation. There’s a ton of different people doing amazing things, not just artists but songwriters and producers. There’s more people coming out every year and it’s really exciting because it’s a lot of unique, different stuff and it’s more than what people have come to expect from Toronto’s sound.

Where do you see yourself in the scene? 

It’s hard to say because everyone kind of knows each other in some capacity so I just see myself amongst my peers and we are all coming from a similar place. I guess I can sometimes feel competitive, but lately I’ve just been thinking about it ‘go-team-go’ type thing. I just kind of want everyone to win at this point. Musically, I’m on the live instrumentation side because I like having a full band at shows and adding off the floor sounding stuff. There’s a lot of people in Toronto who like doing the same thing, like Daniel Caesar, Charlotte Day Wilson, BADBADNOTGOOD, so musically that’s where I’d see some similarities in style and sound. 

In modern music, genre as a concept is such a fluid idea, and you as an artist blur genre, with elements of jazz, hip hop, soul, R&B, gospel, blues etc. So, what do you think of the concept of genre and what genre would you consider yourself to be? 

I totally understand, especially historically, why genre has been an important thing to give music a name and identity. I definitely see the value in it, but I just think for me it’s always felt a bit constraining, I don’t really want to have to think about it. A lot of the music I grew up on, The Roots for example is hip hop but there’s so much live instrumentation, R&B and neo-soul elements so it’s always felt blended. I think a lot of genres are blends of other things and once I started seeing that overlap - I’m the type of person who can’t get bogged down too much with rules otherwise I’ll start going crazy and questioning everything - so I just go off the feeling. Everything sort of feeds into each other. If I had to choose one, it probably is in the R&B realm. 

R&B especially is impossible to pin down.

Yeah, if somethings jazz it’s jazz, if it’s classical it’s classical so maybe this whole answer I just gave is representative of the fact that I am making R&B, because yeah it is extremely blended whereas others are easier to tell. 

Moving onto the project now, firstly I want to say it’s amazing! I really enjoyed it. How do you feel to be releasing it? Scared? Exciting?

I’m definitely scared and excited, but most of all I’m just happy to get it out. I feel like I’ve been holding on to it for longer than I’d want to. I just want to get it out there now. I feel like it’s ready. 

How long have you been working on it? 

Like the past year. Parts of it have felt harder to get done because of COVID, it feels like a lot longer. 

Could you talk me through the main themes and motifs of the project?

Last year, on a personal level, things just felt really heavy and I just felt like I couldn’t be pushed to write anything that wasn’t focusing on the lighter things on my life, like the relationships I have with people I love. Going through a lot of personal things alone, coupled with the social isolation, I realised all that is really important is our relationships with one another. That’s where it then became me getting in my head that I wanted to make this story of a relationship, so the EP documents the rise and fall of a love story, which is funny because Akeel, who is my main producer, is always saying ‘you’re so depressing LOONY, have you ever even written a love song’ and I realised last year that I hadn’t so then it felt like all I wanted to do, so I just went with it. It’s essentially a love story from start to finish. 

So it’s more of a conceptually story?

Yeah. It’s why it’s taken so long because I really wanted all the songs to be puzzle pieces and I wanted it to feel very straight forward and very simple so there was a lot of rewriting and moving around songs and rethinking how I wanted the story to rise and fall. It’s more conceptual than anything I’ve put out before.

One thing about it I love is the soundscapes, there are so warm and glowing. I wanted to ask more about the recording process itself and how it went down. 

Me, Akeel and Adam decided to just live together so that we could adhere to Covid guidelines. We lived together 2 or 3 times last year in an AirBnB and we set up a homemade studio and everyday we would wake up and create. We thought that after doing it the first time we would have the EP, but we didn’t, so we had to do it a few more times, but I think that taking some time away from one another and then coming back to it was beneficial. We were lucky that when we did need to go to the studios it was when things were open. 

In terms of the production, did Covid make the later stages more difficult?

Definitely yeah, but the EP still has more people on the production side than the previous project. We were still able to collaborate with more people than we had in the past so we were able to make it work, it just wasn’t always the easiest. 

Was it more digital then, sending stuff back and forth?

Yeah for some. We were lucky that when restrictions opened up, we had horn players and background singers come do days at the studio. It happened in a bunch of weird, different ways. 

It seems like the way we make music and collaborate is becoming more digitalised than ever. 

Yeah, we were mixing a few of the songs over zoom and I hated it. 

Would you prefer if it was all face to face. Would you find that easier? 

Yeah it’s easier. It’s not always easier if I have to write, but when it comes to recording or mixing, there’s something about the energy in the room which is real and has an impact on what you’re making. 

How did the Mick Jenkins feature come about? 

Honestly, it’s such an underwhelming story. We had this song with an open verse and I started thinking about who I would want on it and I felt like he would come on the track with something super cool, and I think my manager just reached out to his manager and he listened to it and immediately was like yeah I’ll hop on it and literally sent back a verse in like a few days. It would have obviously been a lot better if it was in person but it happened really quickly and organically and he killed the verse. 

Did you give him a narrative brief or just let him do what he wanted with it? 

Because he is a lyricist he understood the concept really quickly and was down to go from that. It was great how well he fitted into it without me having to say much, and I’m pretty picky so usually I would!

Which track did you enjoy making the most? 

Maybe ‘raw’ because it was a weird day and I wasn’t expecting to get much out of it. It took me like 4 hours to even start to get a concept down but I worked my way through it and at the end of the night even with the demo we all felt really good about it. Half way through, another producer came into the session and added their drums and gave this new idea of a certain bounce and it felt super organic. It felt like a struggle half the time and the other half just felt pure magic and by the time it was all done we just loved the song. 

I guess the harder you work for it the better it feels when the end product comes. 

Yeah it was a weird combination of things feeling really perfect at times and not knowing what was going on the other half. I guess the fact that it all happened in like a day made it more satisfying at the end. At that point we thought the project was done, but then we thought this is going to change things, we are definitely adding this and knocking something else out. It was just exciting to figure out this new life and where to put it. 

Was that the last track written? 

No, we still had one more thing like that later, but it was a different process. We thought it was going to be the last song but then we ended up adding 2 more. 

Was it always going to be 8 tracks?

It was always 8. We had to cut a good number of songs throughout the course of it.

Must be sad, cutting songs that you’re attached to?

It is. I think what made it easier for this one is because it was a concept project, some fitted in better with the story. 

If there’s somebody who hasn’t listened to you before and you are introducing them to you as an artist, what track are you putting on? 

I think ‘raw’ because it incorporates a lot of the things that I like to do. It has bouncier moments and slower, more soulful moments so I think that’s the best representation of my sound.

What’s your favourite track on the EP?

My favourite is ‘faceless’. It’s my weird artist pick. It’s the most special to me on a personal level and it feels good to me.

Looking forward to the future then, what are your goals and plans for after the EP drops. Are you looking to get some live shows in finally?

Yeah! I’m trying to get my live set sorted and adding a bunch of these songs. Just prepping, because I’m hoping to do some shows soon. I just want to be ready for when things open back up, so the rest of the year for me has a big focus on live shows because I got a whole band and they are great. Also, continuing to make something new, starting something new… I don’t know if that’s album mode but definitely something new. 

In terms of a tour then, would you come this side of the pond? 

Absolutely! If I was allowed to! I’ve been wanting to come over there for so long. Yes that’s one of the first places that I’m just dying to go to, to play and to create because I feel like there’s such a cross over between Toronto and UK slang and some of the best artists come out of the UK so I feel like it’s the place to be. 

Amazing, thanks so much!

Check out LOONY’s new EP below!