Musician Lenka

Most of you would recognize Lenka's music if you heard it: "The Show" has been aired everywhere, including in countless TV shows, as have "Don't Let Me Fall", "Live Like You're Dying" and just about every other song on her self-titled debut album. I am often skeptical when I hear about new pop musicians, but Lenka has truly got the goods. It can be easy to forget that in the most-maligned existing genre of music there also exists some truly quality stuff, a topic we actually discuss over the course of our conversation. The singer is awfully insightful and terrifically warm and accessible, as it happens, just like her music; here's hoping you enjoy this piece as much as her songs... or vice versa. I think she's earned the appreciation.

Hey, it’s nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too, on the phone!

Yeah, well, one kind of meeting.
Yeah. [laughs]

Are you in LA right now?
No, I’m in a car driving from Oakland Airport to San Francisco.

Oh, nice. Yeah, you have a concert there, when, tonight?
Yeah, I’m doing a concert here tonight.

That’s great. San Francisco’s an incredible city.
Yeah, it’s so fun. I know, I love coming here.

But you’re based in LA, right?
Yeah. I live in LA in theory, but I’m not there that often, lately. [laughs]

Yeah, with your current tour! You’re not coming as far as New York, but you’re—where’s the farthest east?
Um, maybe Chicago, or something, but I will get to New York sooner or later. It won’t be too far off, I just haven’t talked about it yet, but I’m sure you’ll see something popping up any day now.

I hope so! When did you move to LA from Australia?
It kind of happened gradually over the last few years, but I usually choose the milestone of signing a release—and that happened in March—as the point when I was more centered over here, because I was staying with friends and minding people’s houses and whatever I could find for the past on-and-off years since late 2006. So it’s been like a few years, but one year of more permanence.

Then how did you start the gradual process? What made you decide to come to LA?
Well, I came over to South by Southwest in 2006 with Decoder Ring, the band that I played with in Australia, and we also did a few shows in LA and New York, and I’d never been to the States before, and I’d actually had no desire to go to LA. I was an actor in Australia and I had so many friends that would come over to LA to give the acting a go, and, you know, it’s a really popular thing for an actor to do, move to La-La Land. And I was like, “I’m never doing that. I don’t ever want to do that.” But when I got there I was really pleasantly surprised, and I thought it was really cool. I wasn’t expecting that. So, anyway, I played a few of my solo demos to someone who suggested that I come back over and write with some people and do some shows and give it a go, so I did that for two weeks and it went quite well; the songs came back really well, and people’s responses to what I was doing was quite good, so I came back again for a couple of months and then I came back again for a couple of months, and one thing just lead to another, really, and I ended up signing a deal. So, yeah, that’s the way it happened. It was kind of a happy accident, just sort of trying to follow—I mean, I was into the idea of having an adventure, but I didn’t necessarily plan to land where I landed. It just sort of happened.

Right. Well, life’s full of happy adventures.
It is. [laughs]

So now that you’re in LA for the singing, are you still acting?
I’m not right now, no. First of all, I don’t have any time at all, and energetically I just want to focus on my music for a while. I’d like to give that a chance to be its own thing before complicating everything with having too many strings to my bones. You know there’s that whole stigma attached to people who do two things? I’d like to avoid that for as long as possible. [laughs] But that said, I love the craft of acting and if the perfect role came up I’d definitely try and do it. But I’m not, like, trying to find work right now.

Yeah, a lot of the time when actors try to cross into music or musicians try to cross into acting it doesn’t end well. Although sometimes it does. I mean, look at Zooey Deschanel.
I know, absolutely, she’s been doing just fine. She gets away with it. But she has a very strong sense of herself. She’s not trying to be something that she’s not and I think that’s key if you want to do that. But often people are much more critical of actresses in music or musicians in acting. But we’ll see. I mean, I love being creative, and I want to do all sorts of things so I’m constantly making art in any kind of medium, and to keep doing that, if it happened to be a film or a play, I’d definitely do it.

Well, probably the biggest problem with crossing over from one to the other is that people generally try to cross over into the poppiest of the pop instead of actually trying to learn what they’re doing first, which is unfortunate.
Yeah, I think that a lot of people don’t actually take it seriously and learn the craft. They just go, “I’m famous; I can do what I want.” [laughs] I don’t know. I personally respect the craft a lot because I studied it and continued to do it for a long time, so if I were to do that I would take it pretty seriously and make sure I was putting a little bit of effort into doing a good job instead of just, like, whatever.

Yeah, it’s the same sort of the exchange, “I can do what I want because I’m famous,” that gets so many big stars here in New York on Broadway when a lot of them can’t act!
I know. Yeah, it’s a shame for all the people that are not famous that are not in the role, but it’s the way the world works and everyone wants that big name in their production so I understand that.

Yeah, the producers do have to make money, otherwise the thing wouldn’t exist in the first place.
Yeah, exactly.

So how did you transition from being a part of Decoder Ring to having a solo career?
I just wanted to do my own thing, really. I loved singing in Decoder Ring and we had a great time together and it was very inspiring for me, but it was quite a different genre from what I wanted to be doing. They’re quite an experimental, mostly instrumental group. I wasn’t getting to do that much singing or anything, so I wasn’t really one hundred percent satisfied. So I just kept writing stuff for myself that didn’t fit with the band and started demoing it up. I always intended to do something solo; I fell into Decoder Ring and decided that I loved it, and it was sort of a wonderful distraction for a few years but then I realized that I had to…! [laughs]

Yeah, your album is very much vocally driven, so if you didn’t get to do a lot of that in Decoder Ring I’d understand what might have motivated you.
Yeah, [with the band] it was mostly just textures and stuff like that.

What was a lot of your inspiration for the songs specifically on the album?
I was going for something that was poppy and accessible and upbeat but not cheesy or trite. You know, I wanted it to have a soulful throwback sound, a bit Beatlesy, somewhere between it sounding organic and slick, a little bit of electronic—but I don’t know, you make choices all along the way, like which instruments you want to use. I decided from the get-go that I wanted to use as many unusual instruments as possible or euphonic instruments. There’s a lot of horn and percussion. With each producer I met with along the way I was like, “I don’t want it to just be piano and guitar. I want it to have as many interesting sounds as possible.” It was actually really fun, especially if you’re working with someone who’s got a sack of instruments, and I just played around and found sounds! [laughs] It was definitely an experimental process and you find your way there in the end, but I did have an idea that I wanted to make something that would have a soothing cheerful sound, you know?

Right.
Right? [laughs] Something that would make people happy. That was my intention.

When you’re going for pop sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s such a thing as “good pop” because there’s so much stuff that’s just sent through the studio so many times that it doesn’t even sound human. Sometimes you forget that in the same genre there’s stuff that actually uses instruments and real people singing. [laughs]
Absolutely. I don’t think pop is a dirty word. It means popular music, you know? Like, Bjork was doing pop music and she was an early influence of mine, and she called her music pure pop. This is early Bjork, of course, not the really, really crazy stuff that she does now—

Miss Swan Lady. I think now she’s most known for that swan she wore on the red carpet once, right?
Yeah, but it’s gotten weirder since then. I mean, that outfit would feel quite lovely now. I still buy all her records and put myself through the torture of listening through some of those tracks, but—but early on it was very weird instrumentation but still melody and songs that made you feel good, or made you feel something, and were very accessible and catchy. And that’s pop music, even if it’s kind of weird, you know? I don’t think pop music has to be urban or American Idol-sounding; it can be a lot of different things.

No, that’s exactly what I was saying: the fact that pop music doesn’t have to be—
Terrible. [laughs]

The sort of over-plasticky stuff that you get on MTV sometimes.
It doesn’t have to be overproduced. It doesn’t have to be unoriginal. I love it. It’s my favorite genre, really, although most of my favorite types of music are a little more left-of-center. But I wanted to make music that was really accessible. I would really like teenagers to relate to my music, so I think about the music that I liked when I was a teenager and usually it’s not too weird. Not really that weird or out there.

Also, if you start in a more accessible place, that gives you the freedom to experiment more later on.
That’s true, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But I’ve done my time doing experimental music and I’ve realized that it’s hard enough being a musician anyway, and if you’re doing music that not that many people want to listen to it’s even harder. You don’t know if you’re going to make a living and all that.

I just meant that you’d have more freedom later to incorporate more far-fetched influences. Really heavy jazz, South African music, etcetera, later on because you’re starting from such an accessible place.
True, true. You can add a few spices. [laughs]

For more on the excellent Lenka, visit her website or MySpace.